Roman Architecture is a course for people who love to travel and want to discover the power of architecture to shape politics, society, and culture.
19.3 Baroque Facadism at Petra
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From the course by Yale University
Roman Architecture
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From the lesson
Baroque Extravaganzas: Rock Tombs, Fountains, and Sanctuaries in Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya
The baroque phenomenon in ancient Roman architecture where the traditional vocabulary of architecture (columns, pediments, et al) is manipulated to enliven building façades and inject them with dynamic motion. Appearing in Rome in the late first century A.D., baroque architecture was foremost in the Greek East where high-quality marble and expert marble carvers made it the architectural mode of choice. It foreshadowed Borromini’s showpieces of seventeenth-century Rome.
Meet the Instructors
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
I want to move I want to now go East to look at some of the most
spectacular examples that survived of what we
are calling baroque architecture in Roman antiquity today.
And I want to begin in a site that is, that is, that is in modern Jordan.
I'm showing you a map of the Eastern Roman Empire.
And we see the site in question. Petra, or some say Petra,
you can call it either one, Petra or Petra.
You see Petra over here, which is in Jordan today.
And you can see its relationship to the Red Sea, to Egypt, to Alexandria,
to Judea, modern Israel and to some of these other sites.
One in fact the, couple of others that we'll look
at Baalbek today, and the site of Gerasa which is where
that oval piazza or forum comes from.
Here's another map of Petra, just to show
you where it is located today within Jordan.
Its relationship to Amman and to the ancient site
of Gerasa, as you can see up at the bottom.
A fairly close to the Israeli border as you can see
as well as to Aqaba down below. Just to get you in the mood for
Petra we are walking here.
There are incredible cliffs here as well as desert, incredible cliffs and
we're walking here through what is known as the Siq in Petra.
And I want to mention that this is one of
those interesting provinces where in order to understand the architecture that
was built during the Roman period, you have to have
a sense of the local customs, of what happened here before,
the buildings that were built prior to the Roman period.
And we know that the so-called Nabataeans - N-A-B-A-T,
Nabataeans, A-E-A-N-S, Nabataeans, lived here,
inhabited this part of the world before the Romans got there.
And we know that the Nabataeans
built architecture, and that they built architecture
primarily out of the stone of the cliffs and also out of mud.
And one can imagine the kinds of things that you see
here, the rock cut tombs, already begun during the Nabataean period.
And it's interesting, if you look very
closely at some of the detailed decoration here.
You can see something that any of you who wrote your paper
on the temple of Bel at Palmyra remember the, sort of stepped the
stepped motif decoration. We see the same sort of thing here.
But just important for you to know that the Nabataeans were
building with stone and with with mud before the Roman period.
And so when the Romans came in, they began to build their own architecture, obviously
the impact of what have been built there earlier had made an impression on them.
They too decided to build their
tombs out of the living rock of Petra, and they are
among the most spectacular and unusual tombs that survived from the period.
And I want to show two of them to you today.
The so called Deir, D-E-I-R, and the so called Khazne, K-H-A-Z-N-E.
We will look at both of them with the Deir first.
And if you look at the Deir, and the way that,
in which it has been created by carving it out of the living rock.
You should not only be impressed but you should say to yourself, wow, this is
Roman façadism at its greatest, at its most obvious as well.
This is really Roman façadism because all there is is the facade.
There's nothing else.
The tomb itself is located inside the rock.
The tomb
chambers are inside the rock.
They didn't do anything to them except hollow them out, nothing much else there.
They've concentrated all of their efforts on the facade, which seems
to grow out of the rock almost as if by nature.
And if you look at this tomb, the Deir you should also be struck
immediately by the way in which what the Romans have created here
the aversion and built architecture of what we saw already
in 60 to 50 B.C. in second style Roman wall painting.
It is exactly the same kind of thing, this idea of
breaking a triangular pediment open to reveal a tholos that lies inside.
In this case on a second story. We see all of the elements
that I've already mentioned, or most of
the other elements that I've already mentioned.
We see here in this facade the use of the traditional vocabulary of architecture.
The columns, the entablature above, and pediments and
so on down here, triangular pediments down here.
We see all of those, but used in a way that the Greeks would never have done.
And we see, we see less in this one.
I'll show you better examples of this interest in over-ornamentation.
There is ornamentation here but it's actually fairly simple.
So this one doesn't partake of that as much as other, others that I can show you.
But it does, but it does definitely by using the traditional
vocabulary of architecture, the surface is
enlivened by creating elements that project.
Look at these columns on either side with their
projecting in entablatures standing alone or more pilasters than columns.
In this case, standing alone, projecting a receding bay,
a projecting bay, a receding bay, a projecting bay.
Instilling motion across this surface by
means of the traditional vocabulary of architecture.
Again, in this case on two levels. Here's another few of the facade
of the Deir on the left hand side of the screen.
And you can see the material used is obviously the rock itself.
This has been literally carved out of the
living rock so that it's obviously the same
stone and the same color as the rock that still that still serves as its backdrop.
And then over the house of the labyrinth again just to show
you again the close, the close resemblance of this sort of thing,
in the mid-second century AD, in what is
now Jordan to second style Roman wall painting.
And I show you again the tholos within the broken triangular pediment.
But the main difference between the two, and here is where
we do get into this whole concept of decoration and even over-decoration.
The main difference between the two is when you're
standing again in the house of the labyrinth looking
through the actual columns toward the painting and you see that
the, the triangular pediment has been broken to reveal the thollos.
As I mentioned before you still have a sense
of space and you still have a sense of
reality even though the pediment has been broken you
still have a sense of you're looking at a tholos.
And you're meant to think that that tholos lies inside a
peristyle corridor, garden, that is outside the house that you are seeing
through a window.
So you read the tholos, or at least I read
the tholos, as further back than the broken triangular pediment.
That is entirely different here.
Yes, there's a tholos, yes there's a broken triangular pediment.
But the tholos has been turned into a decorative motif among many.
It is a tholos, yes, but it doesn't look like a working tholos, so to speak.
You can see that it has a niche in
the center of it, just like the other bays have niches that probably held a statue.
But you don't have a sense that there is any space in there.
It is, It is a decoration on the surface a, on
the facade of this structure just like all the other decorations.
And that is a major difference between the way in which
the tholos in the Deir and the tholos is used in typical
second style Roman wall painting.
You may also have noticed some of the decoration, and I'm going to
show you some details now so that we can look at those together.
Here you get a very good sense of the
color for the stone, of the rocks, of Petra.
But you also see here a capital that
is unlike any capital that we have seen before.
And this is where we see the influence of the Nabataeans.
The Nabataeans were building buildings
that had capitals that looked like this.
Sort of interesting, undulating capitals, but very plain.
Plain with a, with a concave side, and then a
kind of knob in the center as you can see here.
These are Nabataeans capitals, and in this mid-second century AD tomb, you
can see that they are looking, they're clearly looking at models from Rome.
They are clearly looking at the kinds of paintings
that I have already reminded you of.
But at the same time or, or let's say drawings made from
those paintings that are circulated or the architects may have had access to.
But they are combined with local elements in this case Nabataean capitals.
And then if you look at this detail over here, you will see that they've
used a kind of triglyph and metope
system with the panels and then the triple-striated
bands that we saw was characteristics of Greek Doric architecture that's used here.
But look at what's in the metope .
We don't see anything like this in Greek or Roman architecture.
The metopes, in fact, in Greek architecture
usually filled with figural scenes, figural panels.
But here we see these large discs, and a
disc in each one of these of these square panels.
These are Nabataean discs.
They are used in earlier Nabataean architecture.
So once again, this very interesting and very fruitful coming together of Nabataean
elements and of Roman elements in
this extraordinary tomb of the mid-second century.
And then I show you on the left-hand side
of the screen the finial that caps the tholos.
And a, a fellow sitting over here at the base
of the finial is very helpful to us because he
gives us a sense of human scale. This is this man.
He's small compared to the finial.
So you can imagine how small he is in relationship to the tomb as a whole.
So, once again, bitter, bigger is better, reigns
supreme in Jordan as it did in Rome.
Where we can see that the Romans are building very large in the second century.
If we look at this finial here, this decoration with
the apex.
We see that they have used one of these Nabataean capitals again here and that,
that supports a kind of fat vase on the top with a, with a top on it.
A and, that, that you see that sort of thing in, in
Roman art you see it sometimes in second style Roman wall paintings.
Probably a Greco-Roman motif that has been combined with the Nabataean capital here.
And you can also see from looking at this, as well as the tomb as a
whole, that the architect is really treating these
buildings almost more as sculpture than as architecture.
Molding them in a way that a sculptor might.
And that's not so different from what we saw Rabirius, for example, doing in his
octagonal room and in the fountain at the, at the palace on the Palatine hill.
Here again Borromini, Francesco Borromini Sant'Ivo
the uppermost part of that.
Just to show you again the kinds these are, by no means,
ex, you know, exact, there's no exact relationship between these two at all.
And this one has different features than that.
But just to show you that it's this
kind of thing that unquestionably inspires architects like Borromini
in the 17th century in Italy to create the kind of, of of, of lanterns and so on,
that they do for the churches that they design.
Here's another interesting comparison.
This is another wonderful view of the Deir in Petra which shows you I guess best off
all the way in which is carved out of
and still embedded into the rock of Petra itself.
Magnificent.
And I compare it to another Borromini church this is the famous San Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane most, most, better known
as San Carlino, the little, little San Carlo.
San Carlino as you see here.
And you see what Borromini has done. He has an, he has the undulating facade.
He is using the traditional vocabulary
of architecture just like these architechts are.
These nameless architects are.
The columns and the entablatures and the pediments and so on and so forth.
He's using all of those here.
He even has the tholos in the second story, in the upper story right there.
But he is use and he is, and he is also very
taken with the whole idea of the, of an actual undulating wall.
As you can see also in this view.
But he is doing the same sort of thing that we see architects doing here.
And I don't think that there's any question
that the sort of building that we see
on the right, the Deir, was, had impact on architects of the 17th century.
We know that some of them traveled to this part of the world.
We know that drawings were made That books were made, that these were brought back.
These were seen by people in Rome in the 17th century.
And of course they had local things to see as well in Italy.
And that they were influenced by what they saw.
The other rock cut tomb, the other very impressive,
there are many of these in Petra.
I'm only showing you two out of a fairly nice variety.
But I want to show you the other most famous one, the Khazne, in, in, Petra.
It also dates to the mid-second century AD.
Once again, carved out of the living rock. Once again, pure facadism.
This is nothing more than a facade. You can see how
in this case, once again, second two storied.
Very similar scheme to what we saw at the Deir.
With a temple front down below and a tholos above
that is revealed by the splitting of the triangular pediment.
As you can see well.
Once again the tholos definitely treated as a decorative motif.
Yes, in this case it has a statue on a base.
But a statue on a base that
is not a real statue on a base, but a statue
on a base that is carved onto the, onto the stone.
So once again we get a sense that this is a
decorative motif rather than an actual statue standing in the Tholos.
And the same for the items on the bases on either side.
You can see the triangular pediment very well.
You can see the way it has been split aside to reveal the tholos.
You can see down below,
a real temple front, in this case.
This one is much closer, to its Roman
prototypes in the sense that even the decorative
motifs are Roman unlike in the Deir where
we saw the Nabataean capitals in the discs.
Here we see actual versions of the Corinthian order used.
The Corinthian order used here.
This looks very much like a real temple
front with an actual pediment sculptural decoration, a frieze
as well.
We're beginning to see in this one not only the use
of the traditional vocabulary of architecture, not only the enlivening of
the surface using that traditional
vocabulary of architecture through these through,
in such a way that it
creates motion, projection, recession, projection, recession.
But we also are seeing here in a way that we did not in the Deir.
This interest in excess ornamentation,
ornamenting every surface that you possibly
can with sculpture friezes, with pedimental
sculpture with with statuary carved into the stone in all of the niches.
And but then again a much closer relationship to earlier Roman
precedence by the temple front by the use of the Corinthian order.
But this one too a very similar Athenial at the top of the tholos
but using a kind of Corinthian capital with one of those vases on top.
Vases, by the way, that we often see in second style Roman wall painting.
Once again one could come up with a lot of comparisons
for the Khazne with monuments with
seventeenth century baroque buildings in Rome.
This may not be the best, but it's one of
my favorites and I decided to show it in this context.
But it's the Church of Santa Maria.
It's right near the Piazza Navona Santa Maria Delapache.
Designed by Pietro da Cortona.
Same sort of idea, you know, the temple-front down below.
Yes, this is a different kind of temple-front because
it's a round temple and not one with a pediment.
But the same general idea of having a
temple-front below and then a second story above.
All of this enlivened with traditional vocabulary of architecture.
Columns, columns,
pilasters, a window in the niche right up there.
Very interesting.
A segmental pediment inside a triangular pediment.
Just to show you that this kind of experimentation that we see in 17th
century baroque architecture, mostly in church building but also in palaces is so
clearly so clearly inspired, let's say by the baroque architecture of
Roman antiquity. Couple more details here.
Here's a wonderful view from down below showing
you the tholos of the Khazne at Petra.
And comparing it to once again some of the
confections of baroque architects in Rome of the seventeenth century.
Namely Sant'Ivo again, with its curved facade and, and and wonderful
eight-sided dome, and some of the interior decoration also of Sant'Ivo above.
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