Publications

This volume from the American Academy in Rome represents the interests of the AAR, its fellows, residents, and the larger international community who utilize its excellent library and facilities. The Memoirs series (MAAR) presents a selection of ambitious articles on subjects represented by the AAR. These topics include, but are not limited to, Roman archaeology and topography, ancient and modern Italian history, Latin literature, and Italian art and architectural history.

Volume 54 includes the following essays: "From Gregory XIII to Louis XIV: The Art and Politics of Reform in France" by Nicola Courtright; "Gregory XIII and Political Pragmatism in the Age of the Pax Hispanica" by Thomas Dandelet; "Pope Gregory Xiii, Jurist" by Jack Freiberg; "Mimesis, Ceremony, Praxis: The Cappella Paolina as the Holy Sepulcher" by Margaret A. Kuntz; "A Dragon for the Pope: Politics and Emblematics at the Court of Gregory XIII" by Marco Ruffini; "Gregory XIII and the Accademia di San Luca in Rome" by Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe; "Three Passages on Tiberius and the Courts" by Leanne Bablitz; "Porta Triumphalis and Fortuna Redux: Reconsidering the Evidence" by Melanie Grunow Sobocinski; "Rewriting Vergil, Rereading Rome: Maffeo Vegio, Poggio Bracciolini, Flavio Biondo, and Early Quattrocento Antiquarianism" by Elizabeth M. McCahill; and "The Art of the Appraisal: Measuring, Evaluating, and Valuing Architecture in Early Modern Europe" by John Nicholas Napoli.

About the Author

Vernon Hyde Minor, Editor

Vernon Hyde Minor, FAAR'00, is a specialist in Italian art of the 17th and 18th centuries. He has taught in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado and the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois. At Colorado, he also was rostered for several decades in the Department of Humanities and Comparative Literature, an inter-disciplinary program. More recently he has been a Research Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Brian A. Curran, Editor

Professor Brian A. Curran, FAAR'94 has been appointed to a three-year term as the Editor of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome (MAAR) effective in September 2010. Until then he will serve as Associate Editor working with Vernon Minor who will have served six years as Editor. An Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Curran teaches courses in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, historiography, antiquarianism, and the history and theory of sculpture. Before coming to Penn State in 1997, he was a Teaching Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University and (from 1984 to 1990) a member of the curatorial staff in the Department of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In addition to the Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize (The Robert H.Lehman Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in the History of Art awarded in 1994), Dr. Curran has received numerous teaching awards as well as fellowships and grants, including a Samuel H. Kress Institutional Fellowship at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, a Research Grant from the Renaissance Society of America, and a residential fellowship at the Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center in Florence, Italy (2005-2006). Dr. Curran received his B.F.A in painting and art history from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1979. He went on to earn an M.A. in art history from the University of Massachusetts /Amherst in 1989 and an M.A and PH.D in art and archaeology from Princeton University in 1997.

Piranesi was an architect, engraver, antiquities restorer and dealer, draftsman, archaeologist, furniture and fireplace designer, author, and bookseller. His creations in paper and in stone garnered considerable renown in his own lifetime, allowing him to transform himself from a penniless son of a stonemason to a wealthy entrepreneur. However, despite attempts to catalogue and analyze his work, little is known about Piranesi. Since Henri Focillon published his monograph on the artist in 1918, scholars have sought to expand his interpretive strategies used to examine Piranesi and his work. This volume is a representative sampling of the contemporary scholarship on Piranesi, with each essay scrutinizing a particular aspect of his oeuvre. By engaging with material found in eighteenth-century manuscripts and printed materials, as well as the texts and images Piranesi produced, the nine essays by esteemed contributors add to the rapidly growing and diversifying field of eighteenth-century studies. The outcome is a volume that will add to the expanding, glittering mosaic of Piranesi's life and his work.

Jacket illustration: G. B. Piranesi, engraving with inscription in ink. Biblioteca Corsiana, Rome, 29 H 22.

"The contributors offer a fresh view of Piranesi, one that not only serves to capture an ephemeral 'state of the question,' but should also redirect subsequent research in new and productive channels."
—John Pinto, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University

"These essays help us to see Piranesi in a new light.  Erudite . . . highly readable . . . a major success."
—Marcello Fagiolo

About the Author

Mario Bevilacqua, Heather Hyde Minor and Fabio Barry

Mario Bevilacqua is Associate Professor at the University of Florence, Italy. Heather Hyde Minor is Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Fabio Barry is Assistant Professor at the American University of Rome, Italy.

This study of an important class of ceramics from the key coastal colonial site of Cosa in southwest Tuscany documents the rise of republican Rome to dominance in central Italy in the third and second centuries B.C. The town and territory of Cosa constitute one of the most extensively explored sites of the Roman republican period on the Italian peninsula. Excavation and survey work by the American Academy in Rome and others at Cosa over the past half century have greatly enriched our knowledge of the development of public and domestic urban and rural architecture, the organization and exploitation of the resources of the countryside, and the patterns of economic exchange to which they testify. These latter are particularly evident in the varieties of imported and locally made black-glaze pottery that have been recovered in the excavations. While we tend to think of the ubiquitous Greco-Italic amphorae as the commercial indicators par excellence of mid to late republican Italy, this class of tableware is no less important for understanding both the maritime and inland routes of exchange.

"Ann Scott presents our best picture of Late Republican black-glaze in central Italy from the third through the mid-first century B.C. In Cosa: The Black-Glaze Pottery 2, she reassesses and updates the material published fifty years ago by Doris Taylor as well as presenting more recent deposits of black glazed pottery from Cosa."
—Shelley Stone, Professor of Art History, California State University, Bakersfield

"This admirable study will quickly establish itself as the classic treatment of a topic of central importance for the archaeology of central Italy in the Roman republican period."
—Bernard Frischer, Director, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and Professor of Art History and Classics, University of Virginia

Jacket illustration: Russell T. Scott

About the Author

Ann Reynolds Scott

Ann Reynolds Scott is Lecturer in Classics at Ursinus College.

It was not until the third century BCE that geopolitical realities beyond Italy forced Rome to recognize the importance of the sea to its own fate. Two centuries later, following the fall of Egypt in 30 BCE, Rome emerged as the dominant maritime power. Once in place, Rome's dominance of the sea became an important component of its imperial history. No other power before or since has controlled the Mediterranean basin or exercised an imperial naval tenure to such an extent.

Derived from the proceedings of the conference "The Maritime World of Ancient Rome" held at the American Academy in Rome 27-29 March 2003, this volume was conceived to provide a forum for recent research on subjects relating to the maritime life of Rome and the vast empire it created. With contributions from eminent scholars from around the world, this volume builds upon and extends the scope of the American Academy in Rome's first volume on Rome's maritime life, The Seaborne Commerce of Ancient Rome: Studies in Archaeology and History. It will be of interest to scholars investigating maritime aspects of the Roman period and to upper level students studying the maritime affairs of the Roman period.

Cover Credit: Roman merchantman under sail entering or leaving Portus, ca. 3rd century AD. Courtesy Fototeca Unione, AAR.

"From papers on warship slipways to prostitutes, and from piracy to hydraulic concrete, this volume will be a required source for researchers dealing with maritime life in Roman times. As with all good scholarship, the combined gravitas of the contributions here pushes research forward by discussing new fieldwork, reviewing critically previous conclusions, studying evidence in new patterns and experimental archaeology."
—Shelley Wachsmann, Meadows Professor of Biblical Archaeology, Nautical Archaeology Program, Texas A&M University

"The Maritime World of Ancient Rome provides both theoretical and descriptive discussions of recent scholarly work devoted to expanding our modern understanding of the role of waterways and seas in Roman life. Drawing upon history and archaeology through cogent and accessible contributions by top scholars, the collection will stimulate discussion and debate for years to come. Readers will, like me, be inspired by the overarching perspective of the maritime network and its influence on so many aspects of life in the ancient Roman world."
—Cheryl Ward, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Florida State University

"The Maritime World of Ancient Rome is not just of interest to maritime scholars but also to anyone working on the ancient Roman world."
—Hector Williams, Trustee, Vancouver Maritime Museum, and Professor, Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, University of British Columbia

About the Author

Robert L. Hohlfelder, Editor

Robert L. Hohlfelder, Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is a world-renowned expert in underwater archaeology. He has published widely on ancient maritime history, late Roman and early Byzantine history, and ancient numismatics. His many books include King Herod's Dream: Caesarea on the Sea. He is currently at sea leading a National Geographic expedition to Rome, the Amalfi Coast, and Sicily.