MARBLE SLAB: TOP PHOTO, COSMATESQUE CREST OF NICHOLAS V, C. 1450. BOTTOM PHOTO, ROMANESQUE PLUTEUS FROM A SACRED ENCLOSURE, C9 CE. VATICAN MUSEUMS When this slab was carved for use in a schola cantorum or a presbytery enclosure in the C9, it was undoubtedly already a piece of spolia from some ancient monument. But it was carved with a typical Romanesque design of arches containing crosses, all richly decorated with guilloches, and six birds per arch carrying food in their beaks (a metaphor for the Eucharist), with couples of splendid grimacing wild felines. The reuse of classical motifs like the column, the arch, and the guilloche indicates a desire to associate the authority of the Church with that of the ancient empire. The same impulse can be seen in the 1450 inlay on the other side, which employs the imperial stones, porphyry and serpentine, to assert papal authority.

#SpoliaSunday takes us into the #VaticanMuseums, where visitors to the Stanza della #Segnatura, one of the #Raphael Rooms, walked across a #spolia marble slab inlaid with a #Cosmatesque version of the #crest of #NicholasV which was a reused C9 piece of a schola cantorum. #AncientBluesky 🏺

LORENZO AND JACOPO DI COSMA. PULPIT OF THE GOSPEL, 1190-1210. S. MARIA IN ARACOELI In this church of conspicuous spolia, the two pulpits at the mouth of the transepts are notable examples of the genre. They were once probably united in a single pulpit with two platforms side by side in the predecessor to the Aracoeli on this site, S. Maria in Capitolio, but were later separated, which explains why we can see the rough interior of the pulpit. At left, a large white marble slab with an inscription set sideways forms the slope of the handrail. Within the curve of the pulpit itself, white marble uprights separate slabs of pavonazzetto to either side of a piece of porphyry below and a Romanesque marble relief of an eagle whose rough back we see at centre. This pulpit was used especially when the Holy Roman Emperor was present, hence the imperial purple stone and eagle.

#SpoliaSunday is every day at the #Aracoeli in #Rome. This mighty basilica took its form c. 1268 when it was given its long nave by its new #Franciscan tenants. Here is the interior of the #pulpit of the #Gospel, from c. 1200, full of #spolia including a reused #inscription. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Adjacent to cloister entrance #HolyTrinityBristol for #AdoorableThursday

Two orders of segmental arch bearing fine Romanesque decoration. The relieving arch above suggests that this is a #FrankenDoor and the decorative masonry is #Spolia

SPOLIA IN THE GRAND STAIRCASE, 1791. PALAZZO BRASCHI After almost a century of popes refraining from nepotism, Pius VI Braschi threw the rules-based order into the trash so he could enrich his nephew, Luigi Onesti Braschi. To construct the scalone d'onore or grand staircase in the new palazzo Braschi, Pius stripped 12 columns in rose granite from the 1475-1479 cloister of the Friars in the Ospedale di S. Spirito and more from the nuns' cloister, replacing them with travertine substitutes. They originated in a large ancient portico called the Hecatostylon, adjacent to the theatre of Pompey. At the same time, Pius cut veneers of rose granite from the huge memorial column of Antoninus Pius to make the pilasters at right. It had been extracted from the hill of Montecitorio in 1705, badly damaging it in the process, and which was later irreparably fractured in a fire in 1759. This column was used like an organ donor to repair the obelisks at Montecitorio and atop the Spanish Steps.

A plethora of #spolia decorates the grand staircase of #palazzoBraschi in #Rome, but we will confine ourselves to the rose granite #pilasters around the walls, sliced out of the #AntonineColumn in 1791, and the rose granite columns at right, taken from the Ospedale di S. Spirito. #AncientBluesky 🏺

SPOLIA COLUMN EMBEDDED IN THE UPPER ARCADE OF THE CONSERVATORY CLOISTER (1565) This ancient complex was founded by king Ine of Wessex in 727 CE as a hospice for Anglo-Saxon pilgrims near the basilica of St Peter. It was vastly enlarged by Innocent III in around 1200, after he had a dream of Tiber fishermen hauling up nets full of unwanted babies. This vocation as an orphanage was expanded under Pius V, who had this cloister built to house children. His crest appears between the arches. Restorers looking for ancient columns in the wall found this in 2025. It might have come from the Horti of Agrippina, Nero's mother, which occupied this area in the C1 CE. Scratch the surface of almost any wall in central Rome and you're likely to find a reused column.

The Conservatory Cloister was added to the #OspedaleSantoSpirito in #Rome by Pius V in 1565, to house #orphans put up for adoption. It had two levels of arcades but the upper was walled up in the C17. Recent work found the #spolia columns buried in the brickwork. #SpoliaSunday #AncientBluesky 🏺

CHILD'S SARCOPHAGUS WITH EROTES, 175-200 CE. PALAZZO MATTEI DI GIOVE This beautiful little sarcophagus was given pride of place in the disposition of Asdrubale Mattei's antiquities collection in the courtyard of his palace. It sits atop two little lion-headed trapezophoroi (carved supports) and has a lid much too small for it, with a reclining child on it. The front is framed on both ends with spiral-fluted columns, and four internal pilasters create five square panels in which five delightful Erotes with wings and chlamys dance. The first at left is holding up a string from which hangs a drum and the second brandishes a baton tied with a ribbon. The central Eros is a sort of Orpheus, holding a lyre in one hand and a plectrum in the other. The fourth bears a thyrsus and the last Eros, or the first if they are in procession, is carrying a reversed torch, symbolising death.

A child's #sarcophagus is always sad, even when it's part of a gigantic #spolia centrepiece at the back of the courtyard of #palazzoMattei di #Giove in #Rome. This one, from 175-200 CE, has #Erotes dancing between pilasters, evoking the innocent joys of a childhood cut short. #AncientBluesky 🏺

These are more likely than not original C12 carvings now #Spolia set into the north chancel wall. They would have been part of a corbel table external to a building. External because one or both of these represents the Devil #FridaysFacesInStone #StMaryPortbury #NorthSomerset

WELLHEAD, 800-825 CE. PALAZZO VENEZIA This splendid Romanesque wellhead is of white Luni (Carrara) marble, almost certainly from the ruins of the early C4 Baths of Constantine, but the marble, whose profile is all that remains from an ancient capital, was already reused from an earlier building, as Constantine pillaged abandoned structures to decorate his Baths on the Quirinal hill. This wellhead is carved with a series of arches and columns covered in braided guilloches enclosing crosses, also decorated with guilloches, with Romanesque versions of acanthus leaves flanking each cross and a six-petalled flower in the upper quadrants. Scrolls and peaked pediments rise from the tops of the arches to the lip of the well, with palmettes in the spaces between the arches. The long use of this wellhead can be seen in the grooves inside, worn by centuries of rope for the water-bucket. This decoration shows how Lombard sculpture reinterpreted Roman forms.

Centuries of #spolia. This #Romanesque wellhead was carved during the #Carolingian #Renaissance in #Rome, from a huge marble column capital probably from the lost Baths of #Constantine on the #Quirinal. It was in the now-vanished S. Agata in Diaconia, today in #palazzoVenezia. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Atrium spolia (Ephesus, Turkey) The so-called "double church" at Ephesus is believed to be the church where the Council of Ephesus was held in 431. The Council proclaimed Mary as "Theotokos," or God-bearer/Mother of God. Though it i...

Greek and Latin inscriptions from the #Roman era used for the pavement of the atrium of the so-called "double church" at #Ephesus, known as the Church of Mary, which dates to the 5th c. It may have been the site of 431 Council of Ephesus.

📷🇹🇷 flic.kr/p/qtm1Br

#photography
#archaeology
#spolia

Mouse's #FridaysBitsAndPieces. Highlights of the #ScamperDownTheSomersetCoast #HuttonToBrentKnoll leg that Mouse didn't get around to sharing. Now weather worn and reduced to #Spolia this rood at #StChristopherLympsham is a great survivor. Mouse share because #ItWouldBeRoodNotTo

The winner for the diversity of doors and doorways award for the #PortisheadToWestonSuperMare leg of the #ScamperDownTheSomersetCoast is #StPaulKewstoke: Part II; doorway to rood stair. Wave moulded #Ogee surmounted by a Romanesque #Spolia head spewing hood mould #DoorwayThursday

Interior of Santa Sabina (Rome, Italy) The basilica of Santa Sabina was constructed in the fifth century on the Aventine hill. It is one of the earliest Christian basilicas in Rome and still preserves much of its original architecture with...

Basilica of Santa Sabina, #Rome. Built in the 5th c. on the site of a temple of Juno, it is one of the earliest Christian basilicas in Rome and still preserves much of its original #architecture. The columns are #spolia from the temple.

📷🇮🇹 www.flickr.com/photos/60661...
#photography #Italy #travel

Original post on zirk.us

Basilica of Santa Sabina, #Rome. Built in the 5th c. on the site of a temple of Juno, it is one of the earliest Christian basilicas in Rome and still preserves much of its original #architecture. The columns are #spolia from the temple.

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RELIEF, 250-275 CE, ON C18 STATUE BASE. MUSEO DI ROMA This relief was gently sawn off what I can only presume was a fragmentary sarcophagus of the C3. It shows two standing cows, their heads together at centre, behind two others, one on the left lying down on the ground with its hoofs demurely folded, one on the right settling down with its front legs folded but rear legs still upright. They took are facing each other and in fact they all look like they're making unfavourable observations about a fifth cow not in the scene. Three trees in the background complete the scene. The relief is attached to a newer marble back, to decorate the base of a statue of an Antonine emperor on the grand staircase of palazzo Braschi. This transfer of reliefs can be found on all the statue bases in this staircase, and also elsewhere, on the statue bases in the Hall of Mirrors in palazzo Colonna, for instance.

#SpoliaSunday takes us to #palazzoBraschi to recognise a small but persistent #spolia genre, the ancient relief sheared off a #sarcophagus fragment to adorn a statue base in the C18. The scene here is a bucolic one, of four cows, apparently enjoying a good gossip. 250-275 CE. #AncientBluesky 🏺

DOMUS SOLARATA, C9 CE. FORUM OF NERVA Here we see, at dusk, the still-impressive portico of a high-medieval house built into the ruins of the Forum of Nerva using stone, including the tufo from the Forum Romanum-facing end of Nerva's Forum. There are bits and pieces of marble, and the vestigial upper floor seems to have been made with marble chips and mortar. This was an aristocratic house, with a curtis or court toward the Forum Romanum and a hortus or garden on its other side. The portico followed the edge of the important street called the Argiletum, which crossed the Forum of Nerva. The pavement of marble had been removed a century or so previously to be burnt into lime, so the new pavement was cobbled together from other stone fragments and even horse bones.

For #SpoliaSunday, a medieval #domus "solarata" or of two floors stands in the #Forum of #Nerva, made up entirely of found #spolia stone from the vicinity in the C9. In front of its portico, the ancient street called the #Argiletum was repaved with spolia, including horse bones. #AncientBluesky 🏺

ARTIST OF THE SCHOOL OF ANDREA DEL VERROCCHIO (MICHELE MARINI DA FIESOLE?). TERRACOTTA PANEL WITH GORGON FACE, 1485-1495. MUSEO DI ROMA When the medieval street called via delle Botteghe Oscure was widened in 1936, the C15 house called "of the Terracottas" fell to what Mussolini called "His Majesty the pickaxe". It stood on the edge of the neighbourhood called the Calcararia or Place of the Lime Kilns, which spread across today's largo Argentina and toward piazza Venezia as well as riverward close to the Ghetto. This was a monumental part of the ancient city, with the theatres of Pompey, Balbus, and Marcellus, the Hecatostylon, the two Porticus Minuciæ, and many temples, offering rich spoils to the scavatori or marble-diggers. The whiter the marble, the higher the lime content, and the kilns burned night and day for centuries, fed by the monuments of the ancient Campus Martius. This Medusa is sooty with the black carbon deposits from the lime kilns: no wonder she's screaming.

For #SpoliaSunday, not a piece of #spolia but a frightening terracotta Medusa from 1485-1495. It once decorated a house in the area of the #Calcararia in #Rome, and its blackened patina derives from the smoke from the constant burning of ancient marble in the #lime kilns nearby. #AncientBluesky 🏺

The later English Renaissance utilised reimaginings of classical themes. A number of churches have faux Romanesque doorways like this. However it is possible that the construction utililized some #Spolia, the shafts and capitals may be typical examples🐭

CROSS OF HUMAN SKULLS, C18-C19. S. MARIA DELL'ORAZIONE E MORTE The famous Capuchin Cemetery at the mouth of the via Veneto was only one of three crypts in Rome that used human bones as decoration. This one did too, though the construction of the Tiber embankment involved the demolition of three other burial chambers. (The third, that of the Sacconi Rossi on the Tiber Island, has never been open.) This confraternity was given its charter by Julius III in 1552: its purpose was to bury the penniless dead from the land around Rome and those who drowned in the Tiber. It ceased operation after a cholera outbreak in 1837. All that remains is this large underground room with a cross made of skulls, the skull being the classic memento mori, and several glass-fronted cupboards with more skulls in them. Once this crypt held 8000 bodies.

#SpoliaSunday gives us an example of human remains as #spolia. This is a #cross made of the skulls of the poor dead, collected by a pious confraternity in the C18-C19 to give them #Christian burial in the #crypt of S. Maria della #Morte in #Rome. #AncientBluesky 🏺

PILASTER, C. 140 CE, IN FOUNDATION, C18. OSPEDALE DI S. GIOVANNI IN LATERANO The vast complex of the medieval and modern hospital of San Giovanni - Addolorata at the Lateran covers and conceals an aristocratic district with several large domus incuding the domus Anniorum, the huge residence of Annius Verus and his wife Domitia Lucilla, the parents of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. This broken marble pilaster, still in situ, comes from a garden peristyle with two pools. Between the pilasters, a marble transenna or balustrade separated the garden from the shady covered peristyle that surrounded it.

#SpoliaSunday shows the ruthlessness of #spolia reuse and today is no different. Here under the "new ward" of the Ospedale S. Giovanni in #Rome, from the C18, we find a C2 CE marble #pilaster built into the foundation, probably from the family #domus of #MarcusAurelius. #AncientBluesky 🏺

South of chancel #StDecumanWatchet #Somerset for #StonemasonryMonday

Curious niche with inexcusable, seemingly cast concrete canopy that is, well, inexcusable. The jambs are an assemblage of #Spolia, including what looks like a section of nook shaft #ThingsThatMakeMouseGoHmm

They left me behind! This little fella (worry not, pronouns checked) has been left to 'look after the fort' both metaphorically and in reality. This corbel predates the castle by some way, so it's at least a second home for this #Spolia #RaglanCastle #Wales #FridaysFacesInStone

CIBORIUM ARCHES, C8-C9, REUSED IN THE ABBOT'S THRONE, C11. CRYPT OF S. ALESSIO This Aventine church claims a C4 pedigree, but first emerges into written history during the reign of Leo III (795-816) as a diaconia or food distribution centre. The ciborium over the high altar in the upper church could conceivably have been a commission by that pope, who is best known for his coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas Day, 800, in Old St Peter's. The crypt was rebuilt by Cluniac Benedictines in the C11, who had been given the church and its adjoining abbey in c. 1050. Probably this was when the old and rather small ciborium was dismantled and two of its four sides were adapted as the arms of the abbot's throne, as the crypt also functioned as a chapter house. We can clearly see one side of the forner ciborium, with its braided arch and stylised trees, topped by wavy curls.

He's a Cluniac, #Cluniac, on the floor / And he's praying like he's never prayed before! #SpoliaSunday takes us to the #spolia rich #crypt of #SantAlessio on the #Aventine in #Rome, where a reformist community of monks reused a #Romanesque #ciborium to built the abbot's #throne.

Just #Spolia and probably inserted during the C19 renovation. many piscina seem to have been preserved or re-set (re-sited) during this period. Many had already lost their bowls to the frenzy of the Reformation and the zealots of the Commonwealth🐭

CIBORIUM ARCH, C8-C9, RECUT INTO ALTARPIECE FRAME, C16. MUSEO DELLE CIVILTÀ This marble slab has had several lives and started out as a panel in an unknown ancient Roman structure. In the late C8 or early C9 it was given gorgeous Romanesque relief carving and a central arch still visible despite later reuse. It became part of a ciborium or altar canopy in the church of Santa Cornelia along the via Flaminia, part of the huge papal farm or domusculta Capracorum founded by Hadrian I (772-795). The Romanesque is not really Roman-like at all: this is a descendant of Celtic art with barely-recognisable Roman themes, like the peacocks, symbols of immortality, and the grapevine. The technique shows signs of drilling as well as carving, another sophisticated Roman technique for punctuating a relief with a spot of dark shade. Sometime in the C16 this slab, from the by then disassembled ciborium, was turned over and cut into the top part of a square or rectangular frame.

#Spolia was rarely reused only once. For this #SpoliaSunday we're in the #MuseodelleCiviltà to look at the splendid carving of this #Romanesque #ciborium or altar canopy, the marble taken from some ancient #Roman structure, and later reused again as part of an altarpiece frame. #AncientBluesky 🏺

The Latin inscription is in the frieze beneath a highly sculptured cornice and pediment decorated with a cross and vinescroll. It is supported by four decorated columns with ornate Cornithian capitals and pilasters to each side. Much of the stone has a slightly golden gleam in the sun.

"Holy God of the Angels who brought about the resurrection"
The monumental inscription on the early #medieval Tempietto del Clitunno, a jewel-like monument on the Via Flaminia and also rich in Roman #spolia
#Umbria
#EpigraphyTuesday #Architecture

The destiny of most niches and hagioscopes is as a holder for flowers just as here in the porch of #AllSaintsOtterhampton #Somerset. It's #Spolia of course, probably a piscina or stoup once upon a time. The bottom stone is a replacement and it's lost its top #StonemasonryMonday

COLUMN BASES, C. 304 CE. COURTYARD, S. MARIA DEGLI ANGELI Behind a large dark chapel in S. Maria degli Angeli is a little courtyard occupying part of the natatio or swimming pool of the Baths of Diocletian. Here is a random collection of marbles from the Baths, including a sarcophagus (surely from after the abandonment of the structure), a piece of marble decoration in the form of a shield, and two column bases which flank a rectangle of marble, possibly another base. These are among the few remaining pieces of the decoration of the natatio after it was thoroughly despoiled over the course of the Middle Ages and into the C17. Strangely, bases are among the rarest survivals from ancient Roman buildings, perhaps because they were easily moved and reused, or burned in the lime kilns.

For #SpoliaSunday, we're on site in the #BathsofDiocletian in #Rome looking at #spolia from the same Baths, in a part that belongs to the church of #SantaMariadegliAngeli and not to the @MNR_museo. This courtyard has an odd jumble of ancient #marble. #AncientBluesky 🏺

East of nave by chancel arch #AllSaintsOtterhampton #Somerset for #SpoliaSunday

Chamfered #Ogee arches, somewhat erratically carved, built into the wall #Spolia

SPOLIA INSCRIPTION REUSED IN A WALL, 200-240 CE / C16-C17. VIA DEL GESÙ This squared and flattened piece of stone was once part of a larger inscription from the first half of the C3 whose remaining text reads "M(arco) Aurelio [---] / Cocceius Minic[---] / rationalis et [------". The reference to Marcus Aurelius is misleading as after the mass enfranchisement of the Constitutio Antoniniana in 212, many new citizens took on the emperor Caracalla's chosen names (he adopted M. Aurelius' name to give his dynasty an association with a great emperor of the past), so this could be anyone. We do know of a Cocceius Minicianus, an equestrian, an early C3 member of the same plebeian gens Cocceia that produced the emperor Nerva. This looks like a dedicatory inscription. Its raised frame has been chiselled off, as we see in the rough strip at bottom, and it had been reused at least once before, as the square hole at centre with associated incised channel suggests. The block was incorporated into the palazzo Frangipane probably in the C16 or C17.

#SpoliaSunday takes us along via del #Gesù in #Rome, where a block of ancient #marble built into the wall of the C16/C17 palazzo #Frangipane shows signs of use and reuse. No doubt many other pieces of #spolia are still hidden under the plaster façades of the city. #AncientBluesky 🏺

Detail of the engaged shaft clearly shows that it's #Spolia
#SpoliaSunday from #StMichaelBrentKnoll #Somerset