Fig. 6.7 Rome, Altar of Peace. Plan showing fragments discovered up to 1935. (G. Lugli, Mon. Ant., p. 185)
Fig. 6.8 Rome, Altar of Peace. Plan showing results of Moretti’s excavation, still in situ under the Palazzo Fiano. (Moretti, op. cit., Pl. 5)
These were all decorative elements. Under the Palazzo Fiano still remain the tufa footings and some of the travertine pavement ([Fig. 6.8]). These, though they were not removed, made it possible to visualize and reconstruct the plan. The altar itself, in the center of its enclosed platform, proved to be U-shaped, with the open end of the U facing west, toward the Campus Martius, and approached by a flight of steps. The whole was fenced off by a marble wall about thirty feet square and sixteen feet high, with wide doorways on east and west. Since the pavement sloped, and there was provision for drainage, the inference was warranted that the altar was originally open to the sky. Each face of the enclosure wall bore two wide horizontal decorative bands separated by narrower bands, on the outer face of meanders, on the inner, of palmettes. On the outer face the wide upper band bore a frieze with over 100 figures; the lower one motifs from nature: acanthus scrolls, bunches of grapes, the swans of Augustus’ patron Apollo, and a lively population of small animals. The inner face carried, above, a motif of swags of fruit festooned between ox-skulls (bucrania); below, a series of long, narrow, recessed, vertical panels, giving the effect, in marble, of a wooden fence. Many of the Slabs were found where they fell and were easily fitted into their proper place in the reconstruction ([Fig. 6.9]). Of the slabs in museums casts were taken. Thanks to careful observation of joins, repeats of floral motifs, the identity of historic figures, veins in the marble, and treatment of unexposed surfaces, these slabs, too, found their proper places. The job was done in the workrooms of the Terme Museum, with twenty-four large cases of fragments to work with, plus the full slabs and casts. The altar was finally rebuilt on the banks of the Tiber next to Augustus’ mausoleum.
The result was worth the effort, for the Altar of Peace is universally acknowledged to be the greatest artistic masterpiece of the Augustan Age, blending Roman spirit with Greek forms, occupying in Roman art the same exalted position as the Parthenon frieze in Greek, and destined to inspire, as we shall see, many monuments with historic subjects in the following decades and centuries.
Fig. 6.9 Rome, Altar of Peace, G. Gatti’s reconstruction. (MPI)
Fig. 6.10 Rome, Altar of Peace, frieze with portrait of Augustus. (MPI)