Piranesi's Candelabra and the Presence of the Past: Excessive Objects and the Emergence of a Style in the Age of Neoclassicism (Classical Presences)

Near the end of his life, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) created three colossal candelabra mainly from fragments of sculpture excavated near the Villa Hadriana in Tivoli, two of which are now in the Ashmolean Museum, and one in the Louvre. Although they were among the most sought-after and prestigious of his works, and fetched enormous prices during Piranesi's life, they suffered a steep decline in appreciation from the 1820s onwards, and even today they are among the least studied of his works. Piranesi's Candelabra and the Presence of the Past uncovers the intense investment, by artists, patrons, collectors, and the public around the start of the nineteenth century in objects that made Graeco-Roman Antiquity present again. Caroline van Eck's study examines how objects make their makers or viewers feel that they are again in the presence of Antiquity, that not only Antiquity has revived, but that classical statues become alive under their gaze. what it takes to make such objects, and what it costs to own them; and about the ramifications of such intense if not excessive attachments to artefacts. This book considers the three candelabra in depth, providing the biography of these objects, from the excavation of the Roman fragments to their entry into private and public collection. Van Eck considers the context that Piranesi gave them by including them in his Vasi, Candelabri e Cippi (1778), to rethink the processes that led to the development of neoclassicism from the perspective of the objects and objectscapes that came into being in Rome at the end of the eighteenth century. Cover 1 Piranesi’s Candelabra and the Revival of the Past: Excessive Objects and the Emergence of a Style in the Age of Neoclassicism 4 Copyright 5 Acknowledgements 6 Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Introduction 22 0.1 A Changing Objectscape 25 0.2 Human–Thing Entanglement and Neoclassicism, c. 1800 27 0.2.1 In the Presence of Antiquity, at Last 29 0.2.2 Torchlight Visits 30 0.2.3 Talismans 32 0.3 The Material Turn c. 1800 and the Emergence of a New Style 34 0.4 The Argument of This Book 36 1. ‘A Neo-Classical Dream and an Archaeologist’s Nightmare’: Piranesi’s Colossal Candelabra in the Louvre and Ashmolean Museum 40 1.1 The Emergence of the Candelabra 40 1.2 The Lives of Piranesi’s Candelabra 54 2. Candelabra in Antiquity, their Rediscovery, and Reception 60 2.1 A Brief History of Candelabra 62 2.1.1 Roman Candelabra and Their Survival 65 2.1.2 The Paschal Type 70 2.2 Roman Candelabra and Their Cultural Meanings 75 2.3 Piranesi’s Candelabra and Roman Specimens 78 2.4 Piranesi on Composition 80 2.4.1 Pompei and Alexandria 83 2.4.2 Alexandria and Alexandrianism 84 2.5 A Drastic Change in Appreciation 89 3. Making Antiquity Materially Present 94 3.1 The Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi . . . 95 3.2 The Museo Borgiano and Related Ethnographic Collections 100 3.3 Plaster Cast Collections as Restoration Laboratories 105 3.4 Restoration 107 3.4.1 Eighteenth-Century Concepts of Restoration 111 3.4.2 Psychological Aspects of Restoration 112 4. Animal Features 116 4.1 Animal Features in Piranesi’s Late Works 118 4.2 Patterns and Sources 125 4.3 Reluctant Animal Servants 130 4.4 Totemism 136 5. Animation, Immersion, and the Revival of Antiquity 144 5.1 Changing Reactions to the Liveliness of Statues 148 5.2 ‘At Last I Am in Conversation with Things’: New Narratives of Looking at Statues in Rome 152 5.2.1 Laocoon and Medusa 152 5.3 Torchlight Visits and Tableaux-vivants 156 5.4 Empire Objects: Entanglement Embodied 161 5.5 The Immersive Powers of Objects 168 6. Movement, Animation, and Intentionality 170 6.1 Animation and Human–Thing Entanglement 170 6.2 The Uncanny Valley 171 6.3 Movement and the Attribution of Causality and Intentions 175 6.4 Theory of Mind and the Attribution of Life to Artefacts 178 6.5 The Attribution of Anthropomorphism to Art Works 181 7. Conclusion: ‘Antiquity is Only Now Coming into Being’: The Origins of the Style Empire and the Turn towards the Object, 1770–1820 186 7.1 The Candelabra and Their Lives 188 7.2 The Progeny of the Artefacts in Piranesi’s Museo 191 7.3 A Radically Changed Objectscape 195 References 202 Index 218 This volume explores the creation and reception of Piranesi's three colossal neoclassical candelabra. Caroline Van Eck's study explores the intense interest taken by producers and consumers of art objects in objects that made the classical live again in the late 1700s and early 1800s.