Cultivating Egyptian All'Antica Imagery as Emblems of Rome in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

Sixteenth-century artists, patrons, and antiquarians sought to glorify Rome by reviving the ancient past. While much scholarly attention has focused on classical antiquity’s rebirth in the Renaissance, further study of the complex early modern “memory” of ancient Egypt both as Rome’s powerful ancient ancestor and as a foreign and pagan “other,” is warranted. This dissertation will illuminate how Egyptian imagery in Cinquecento portrayals of Roman space served to identify the city and symbolize Rome’s far-reaching authority. Reconstructions of Roman all’antica environments in the form of landscape paintings, city views, domestic decoration, garden design, and urban plans will be examined for the multi-temporal viewing experience they provided, and for their messages of identity, inheritance, virtue, and power. Artworks and designs by Raphael and his workshop artists as well as the Late Renaissance artist and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio will be analyzed for their symbolism, style, patronage, and iconography, as well as for their relationship to Renaissance concepts of memory, topographic symbolism, urbanism, and phenomenology. The examples discussed in this dissertation elucidate the various ways that the Renaissance memory of Egypt, manifested in different artistic styles and materials, was adapted to meet the needs of various artists, patrons, and audiences, all while evoking the physical space of Rome, its antiquity, and its eternal spiritual and political supremacy.