 A view of one of the rooms of the villa. | |
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| Coordinates | 42°0′7.49″N 12°29′37.03″E / 42.0020806°N 12.4936194°E |
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The Villa of Livia (Latin: Ad Gallinas Albas) is an ancient Roman villa at Prima Porta, 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) north of Rome, Italy, along the Via Flaminia. It may have been part of Livia Drusilla's dowry that she brought when she married Octavian (later called the emperor Augustus), her second husband, in 39 BC. However, it may also have been a gift given to her by Octavian upon their betrothal. The ancient sources (e.g. Suetonius) tell us that Livia returned to this villa following the marriage. It was her sumptuous country residence complementing her house on the Palatine Hill in Rome.
Remarkable frescoes of garden views were found which have since been removed to the Palazzo Massimo museum in Rome.
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Villa di Livia
Transcription
STEVEN ZUCKER: It's a hot day in Rome, but the ancient Romans had figured out how to stay cool. BETH HARRIS: They did. We're in a room that reconstructs a room in the villa of Livia. Livia was the wife of the emperor, Augustus. There was a lovely summer house, a resort, of sorts. And in the villa, there was one room that was partially underground, dug into the rock. STEVEN ZUCKER: Which meant they would stay much cooler in the summer. BETH HARRIS: And we can really appreciate that today. STEVEN ZUCKER: But the sense of coolness would come not only from the actual temperature, but also from the decoration. BETH HARRIS: From the very cool colors that this room is painted in, what the artist did was paint an amazing illusion of a landscape, a garden, as though the walls were not walls at all, but views out beyond a fence, beyond a wall, with trees and bushes and fruits and plants and birds. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's as if the walls have literally dissolved, and this is the great example of the second style of Roman wall painting. BETH HARRIS: The first style was characterized by an attempt to recreate in paint and stucco the marble walls that we've decorated Greek palaces. STEVEN ZUCKER: A kind of faux marble, a kind of trompe l'oeil. BETH HARRIS: Exactly. Now here, instead of the illusion of marble, the artist has created an illusion of nature. STEVEN ZUCKER: And it's nature that spreads out all around us. And it's not a menacing nature. It's a beautiful, cultivated nature. It's full of playful birds. There's fruit in the trees. There are blossoms everywhere. BETH HARRIS: And there's light. The artist has used atmospheric perspective, so that the trees and the leaves that are closest to us are rendered more crisply than the vegetation in the background. STEVEN ZUCKER: The only real architecture that's represented is, as you mentioned, a straw fence, perhaps, within something that looks a little bit more substantial, in a pink-gray. The artist has used that outer wall in order to create a subtle rendering of perspective. And you can see that, as the wall reaches out in a couple of places to enclose trees that are just at the border. BETH HARRIS: So we see poppies and roses and irises and pomegranates and-- STEVEN ZUCKER: Quince. BETH HARRIS: So there's a real sense of variety in the plants, in the flowers, in the fruit, in the types of birds that we see, in the positions of the birds-- some with their wings stretched back, some sitting quietly, some in the sky. There's a real search for the variety of nature. My favorite part is on this one tree that is framed by that pinkish-gray wall. The branches move in exactly the haphazard way that a tree grows. And then there are places where we see light on the leaves and branches and other places where the leaves are in shadow. STEVEN ZUCKER: It seems as if, actually, there's a breeze that's come up. And it's blown some of those leaves over, so that we're seeing the more silvery underside. And then we get the darker shadows of the tops of the leaves. So there's this real sense of the momentary, and of this being a breezy, beautiful day. BETH HARRIS: Yeah, you can almost hear the leaves rustle in the wind. STEVEN ZUCKER: I think my favorite plant is probably the acanthus that grows up around a pine on one of the short sides of the room. And probably the other element that I find most interesting is that in this open-air space, there is perched precariously on that outer wall a bird cage. Now, throughout this entire room, there are paintings of birds that are free, and flying through the open sky. But here we have a bird in a cage. And it reminds me, as I stand in this room, that although these walls have dissolved, I'm still inside.
Location
The villa occupied the height dominating the view down the Tiber Valley to Rome. Some of the walling that retained the villa's terraces can still be seen.[1]
The location was strategically important due to the iron-rich cliffs of red tuff that approach the river Tiber at this point, the confluence of several roads, and the northern entrance to Rome. The name Prima Porta ("First Door") came from an arch of the aqueduct over the Via Flaminia, which brought water to the villa and which travelers saw as the first indication of having reached Rome.
History
It was built and modified in four stages. The earliest stage is of a Republican date, the latest of the time of Constantine the Great.
Its Latin name, Villa Ad Gallinas Albas, referred to its breed of white chickens,[2] which was said by Suetonius to have auspiciously omened origins.[3]
Rediscovery
The site was rediscovered and explored as early as 1596, but it was not recognized as the Villa of Livia until the 19th century.[4] In 1863–1864, a marble krater carved in refined low relief was discovered at the site. On April 20 1863, the famous heroic marble statue of Augustus, the Augustus of Prima Porta, was found at the villa; it is now in the Vatican Museums (Braccio Nuovo). The magisterial Augustus is a marble copy of a bronze statue that celebrated the return in 20 BC of the military standards captured by the Parthians in 53 BC after the defeat of Crassus at Carrhae.
In the 19th century, the villa belonged to the Convent of Santa Maria in Via Lata. The villa and gardens have been excavated and can be visited. There are three vaulted subterranean rooms, the largest of which contained superb illusionistic frescoes of garden views in which all the plants and trees flower and fruit at once. These have since been removed to Rome, where, following cleaning and restoration, they have been reinstalled in the Palazzo Massimo. The vault above the fresco was covered with stucco reliefs, some of which survive.
A new series of more meticulous modern excavations was initiated in 1970. More modern scientific work began at the site in 1995, carried out by the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma and directed by Professor Gaetano Messineo, in tandem with the Swedish Institute in Rome.[5]
Garden Room Fresco
The purpose and layout of the Villa Livia are important to the understanding of both the purpose and layout of the space. The Roman activity of "[d]ining was much more than the satisfaction of human need — it was a ritual of great social and political significance."[7] In terms of layout, the room is underground and dimensionally 40 feet long by 20 feet wide.[8] There are no separating moldings, no painted architecture, and no visible structural elements — the room unexpectedly transports the viewer "outside" in a completely enclosed underground space with a barrel-vaulted ceiling.[9] The enclosure is striking because of the spatial play of the room itself with its illusionistic quality, there is incredible accuracy of plant species, and the variety provides a landscape that in reality cannot exist as one garden.[10] A low stone wall contains the thickest and largest plantings, and in between the viewer and the space rests another fence with a narrow grass walkway.[11] The garden layout encompasses a "perfect combination of variety and abundance with stylization and order" as nature grows freely while simultaneous evidence of human activity is present, specifically as some birds exist in cages and a neatly manicured lawn is visible closest to the dining room space.[12]
Gallery
References
- ^ Robert Piperno, "A Walk to Malborghetto"
- ^ Pliny's Natural History 15.136f
- ^ Suetonius, Galba 1.
- ^ F. Nardini, Roma antica IV, Roma 1820, p64f.
- ^ Gaetano Messineo (2001). Ad Gallinas Albas: Villa di Livia. L'ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER. ISBN 978-88-8265-167-1.
- ^ "Painted Garden, Villa of Livia". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved February 11, 2013.
- ^ Giesecke, Annette Lucia (2001). "Beyond the Garden of Epicurus: The Utopics of the Ideal Roman Villa". Utopian Studies: 15.
- ^ Gabriel, Mabel McAfee (1955). Livia's Garden Room at Prima Porta. New York: New York University Press.
- ^ Gabriel, Mabel McAfee (1955). Livia's Garden Room at Prima Porta. New York: New York University Press. p. 7.
- ^ Giesecke, Annette Lucia (2001). "Beyond the Garden of Epicurus: The Utopics of the Ideal Roman Villa". Utopian Studies: 23.
- ^ Giesecke, Annette Lucia (2001). "Beyond the Garden of Epicurus: The Utopics of the Ideal Roman Villa". Utopian Studies: 23.
- ^ Evans, Rhiannon (2003). "Searching for Paradise: Landscape, Utopia, and Rome". Arethusa: 303.
Sources
- Carrara, M. (2005). "La Villa di Livia a Prima Porta da praedium suburbanum a villa Caesarum". In B. Santillo Frizell and A. Klynne (ed.). Roman Villas Around The Urbs: interaction with landscape and environment. Proceedings of a Conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 17-18, 2004. Rome.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - M. Carrara, 'ad Gallinas Albas', in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae: Suburbium, vol. III (2005. Rome), p. 17-24
- Jane Clark Reeder, 2001. The Villa of Livia Ad Gallinas Albas. A Study in the Augustan Villa and Garden. in series Archaeologica Transatlantica XX. (Providence: Center for Old World Archaeology and Art) (Bryn Mawr Classical Review 20)
- Calci, C.; G. Messineo (1984). "La Villa di Livia a Prima Porta". Lavori e studi di archeologia. 2.
- Allan Klynne and Peter Liljenstolpe. "Where to Put Augustus?: A Note on the Placement of the Prima Porta Statue." American Journal of Philology 121.1 (2000) pp. 121–128.
- Giesecke, Annette Lucia (2001). "Beyond the Garden of Epicurus: The Utopics of the Ideal Roman Villa". Utopian Studies: 13–32.
- Gabriel, Mabel McAfee (1955). Livia's Garden Room at Prima Porta. New York: New York University Press.
- Evans, Rhiannon (2003). "Searching for Paradise: Landscape, Utopia, and Rome". Arethusa. 36 (3): 285–307. doi:10.1353/are.2003.0022. S2CID 161576098.
External links
Media related to Villa di Livia (Rome) at Wikimedia Commons
| Preceded by Villa Gordiani |
Landmarks of Rome Villa of Livia |
Succeeded by Insula dell'Ara Coeli |
Major exhibits at the Museo Nazionale Romano | ||
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| Ludovico Ludovisi Collection |  | |
| International | |
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| National | |
This page was last edited on 2 May 2024, at 21:01