Few ancient monuments in Rome can claim a design as idiosyncratic and varied as the Septizonium. Constructed in ad 203 to celebrate the Parthian victories of the emperor from Libya, Septimius Severus, it served as a colossal fountain that took the form of a theatre stage, or scaenae frons, with three tiers of gradually diminishing Corinthian columns, three large exedrae, and bays that alternately projected and recessed. Located at the southeast corner of the Palatine Hill, its impressive façade would have confronted all visitors entering Rome by the Porta Capena.
Modern scholarship has tended to approach the Septizonium from an archaeological, philological and/or historical perspective. Detailed surveys of the monument began in the late nineteenth century; the meaning of the building's name has been extensively scrutinized from the 1920s onwards; recently, excavations have rekindled interest in the site and theories have been advanced about its role in Severan propaganda. My work, by contrast, addresses the influence that it exerted on Renaissance architects and their designs, and in the process examines the building's rich and diverse architectural fortuna.
By the second half of the fifteenth century, the Septizonium had been reduced to one and a half bays. Confusion reigned about the structure's former function: some believed that it had served as the entrance to the emperor's palace or as a statement of imperial might; others considered that it had risen to seven floors; others still that it had served as the tomb for Severus himself; a few even recognized its formal similarity to a classical Roman theatre screen. Today, nothing of the building remains above ground, so complete was its demolition at the hands of Pope Pius V in 1588. The site is now marked by a pavement tracing the monument's approximate plan and olive trees stand in place of the exedrae. It is, though, still possible to gain an idea of the original elevation from architectural drawings and antiquarian accounts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Indeed, the Septizonium during the Renaissance was one of Rome's best-documented ruins.
In the absence of archival records demonstrating an interest in the Septizonium from architectural patrons, I turned to the drawings and written accounts. At the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe of the Uffizi I was able to piece together the complex pictorial history of the monument. Here, I uncovered a drawing of the Septizonium that has gone unremarked in modern reports on the subject. Further discoveries came during my time in Rome, thanks in large part to the British School at Rome's magnificent collection of early books on Rome, many of them formerly owned by Thomas Ashby. Such a wealth of printed material, as well as manuscripts held at the Vatican, allowed me to trace the historical context of the drawings.
Combining these two strands of research — the pictorial and the literary — I began to chart the Septizonium's place in Renaissance architectural design: architects appear to have followed the various antiquarian interpretations of the ruin, since they used its distinctive form as a model for patrician villas and triumphal arches, even for a mausoleum and a theatre backdrop. My findings will appear as a long article or a stand-alone study. It has resulted already in a further project that will assess the response to ancient multi-tiered towers (such as the Lighthouse at Alexandria) and staged tombs (such as Hadrian's Mausoleum) during the Italian Renaissance.
I would like to thank all the staff, residents and guests of the BSR. One of the BSR's great strengths is its sense of community and the resulting collaboration between disciplines; my work benefited immeasurably from the insights of artists and academics alike. I am particularly grateful to Maria Pia Malvezzi and Valerie Scott for helping me gain access to the primary sources related to the Septizonium, and to Robert Coates-Stephens for his thought-provoking questions about this most enigmatic of Roman buildings.
