This Roman classical masterpiece has, then, ancestors; what about its descendants? They are many: from the Sanctuary of Fortune contemporary and later architects learned much. An example of this influence is the Temple of Jupiter Anxur at Tarracina, above the Via Appia where it touches the coast sixty-seven miles south of Rome. Here the use of concrete, of opus incertum, of arch and vault, of setting and landscape, is in the unmistakable idiom of Sulla’s architect. It is an architectural complex and a seascape which mediates, as Palestrina does, between man and nature. It is designed to capture attention from the colony below, to become more impressive as one approaches, and to give a gradually widening view of the sea as one ascends. The temple was oriented north and south, with a portico behind ([Fig. 5.8]). It is set at an angle upon a tremendous concrete podium, with arched cryptoporticus as at Palestrina. On the seaward side the play of light and shadow on the podium arches is enormously impressive; on the side toward Sperlonga the sturdy blind buttress arches are again strongly reminiscent of what we have seen on the Terrace of the Half-columns. Within the cryptoporticus (the vaults under the Temple platform) the play of light and shadow is again very satisfying, and yet the structure is functional as well: the cryptoporticus lightens the huge weight of the concrete, and the sturdy concrete construction has stood the test of time.
Another Sullan descendant is the Tabularium (Public Records Office) in Rome ([Fig. 5.9]), finished in 78 B.C. by Quintus Lutatius Catulus, to whom Sulla’s veterans transferred their allegiance after Sulla’s death. It was a part of Sulla’s plan for monumentalizing the Forum, to provide, as it were, a scenic backdrop for it, which serves at the same time as a terrace-level to give order to the Capitoline Hill above. Its plan, its frontality, and its use of arch, vault and concrete is in the Palestrina tradition. There is a cryptoporticus in concrete, fronted by arches framed in half-columns placed at points in the wall which required extra strength. The upper levels of the Tabularium were removed by Michelangelo when he designed the Palazzo del Senatore, Rome’s city hall. Perhaps this may be taken as a symbol of the extent and the limits of the influence of Palestrina’s architect on Renaissance masters. One archeologist, Heinz Kähler, has argued, ingeniously but without carrying conviction, for an influence of the Cortina Terrace and the exedra above it upon the design of Pompey’s theater in Rome: one nabob borrowing architectural effects from another.
Fig. 5.9 Rome, Tabularium. (Fototeca)
Fig. 5.10 Tivoli, Temple of Hercules Victor, reconstruction.
(Fasolo and Gullini, op. cit., Pl. 27)
Finally, about the time of Cicero’s consulship (63 B.C.), Palestrina influenced the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor at Tivoli, well-known to many from Piranesi’s etching as the Villa of Maecenas. Like Kos and Palestrina (Cortina Terrace), it had a portico on three sides, and a temple against the back wall. Nowadays it houses a paper-mill, but forty years ago the portico was uncluttered. There was an approach by ramp and semicircular stair ([Fig. 5.10]), very theatrical, like Palestrina and the Tabularium; the material is again concrete faced with opus incertum. The podium is again supported on concrete vaults, and lightened by a complicated arrangement of subterranean rooms. A vast cryptoporticus pierces the whole podium to carry the Via Tiburtina, the main road from Rome to Tivoli. The famous terraced gardens of the Villa d’Este nearby, with their plays of water, felt the inspiration of Palestrina; their architect, Pirro Ligorio, has left sketches of our site made by him on the spot. Pietro da Cortona, Bramante, Raphael, Palladio and Bernini also knew and sketched Palestrina. Another successful terrace plan inspired by Palestrina is Valadier’s treatment in the 19th century of the steep slope up the Pincio from the Piazza del Popolo in Rome.
Palestrina inspired the architects of the Roman Empire, too: for example—one among many—it influenced to some extent (see also p. [267]) the architect of Trajan’s Market in Rome, who uses terracing, concrete, and framed arches (but the arches are flat, the framing is pilasters instead of half-columns, and the façade is brick instead of opus incertum.) The inspiration does not stop here: it is to be found on the Palatine, in Hadrian’s villa near Tivoli, Diocletian’s Baths in Rome, and his palace at Spalato, and the Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum.
From his building, from which the history of Roman architecture really begins, we can reconstruct the personality of the architect. It makes the whole history of Roman architecture come alive, when we really know one complex. The architect was a master of the manipulation of surface, of light and shade, of counterthrust, controlled views, the unitary plan, of space both full and empty. For him, organic function is also decorative; the stylistic fact is the constructive solution; his organization is clear, his use of the classical “orders” of Graeco-Roman architecture, Tuscan and Ionic, in stone as bearing walls is classical in its combination of beauty and function. The plan of his Sanctuary imposed itself as well on the secular plan of the colony below. He is a real genius, one of the greatest architects of all time. He achieves his magnificent results by creative imitation of earlier models, and in this he is Roman. Because his imitation is creative, it does not peter out in formalism, but has a seminal effect upon other architects of the Republic, the Empire, the Renaissance. A detailed study of his masterpiece not only leaves us profoundly impressed with the patience, thoroughness and imagination of Italian archaeologists; it reinforces again the lesson of the continuity of history and the cultural importance for the whole western world of the Roman Republic.