ARTIST: H. Daumet

PAYMENT INFORMATION : Visa & Mastercard through Paypal. Please email us if you have any questions. All returns accepted!

BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND HISTORY ABOUT THIS PRINT :

Hadrian's Villa (Villa Hadriana) is a large Roman villa built by the emperor Hadrian in the early second century CE. The villa was a sumptuous complex of over 30 buildings, covering an area of at least 100 hectares (c. 250 acres), maybe even 300 hectares, of which much is still unexcavated. The villa was Hadrian's preferred residence when he was in Rome. His choice of an imperial palace outside Rome, instead one of the several palaces in Rome, was probably influenced by the miserable relations he had with the senate and the local Roman aristocracy. Hadrian only arrived in Rome eleven months after Trajan's death, and denied any wrongdoing, but his relationship with the senate never recovered from the crisis. As a consequence Hadrian stayed very little in Rome. He travelled extensively throughout most of the empire in two prolonged periods, in 121-125 CE and in 128-134 CE, and when in Italy he preferred to stay away from Rome. A grandiose imperial palace outside Rome, but not too far away, was the perfect answer. The Villa Hadriana became the imperial residence. The villa was located just outside ancient Tibur, modern Tivoli, some 28 km E. of Rome. It stood on a hillside, surrounded by two minor tributaries to the Aniene, which flows into the Tiber just N. of Rome. Tivoli, and hence the villa, was easily reached from Rome by land via the Via Tiburtina and by boat on the Aniene, which was navigable at the time. Other reasons for choosing that particular location for the villa were more practical. Tivoli was (and still is) famous for the travertine quarries, but there were also ample supplies of tufa and of pozzolana and lime for the production of cement. The water resources at the site were very abundant. The hill on which the villa stood was surrounded by two small streams, and the hills behind Tivoli provided water for four of the aqueducts that supplied Rome. Especially the baths of the Villa of Hadrian required vast amounts of water.

The villa complex was vast in scale, spreading over an area of c. 2×1 km. The central part of the palace was a traditionally structured villa, oriented on a NW.-SE. axis on the side of a hill. It included (from the NW) a garden with a elongated fountain and a view towards the valley, two buildings often identified as a Greek library and a Latin library, a large courtyard followed by the main residential part of the palace, which included a building with Doric columns. Further back was another grand court with a portico and richly adorned rooms, the so-called Golden Court (Piazza d'Oro) due to the very rich finds from there. On the NE. side of the imperial palace were rooms for guests, the Hospitalia with bedrooms and a large triclinium. Further down the N. slope was the so-called Terrace of Tempe with a vantage point on the lower valley, the Pavilion of Tempe. To the SW. of the libraries stood a strange circular building, which is usually called the Maritime Theatre. It consisted of a colonnade around a small lake with an central island with what appears to have been a small residence. Besides this structure was a large hall, probably an audience hall, called the Hall of the Philosophers, and a bathing complex with a sun heated room, the Heliocaminus Baths, both aligned on an almost N.-S. axis. In the back, on the S. side of the building with Doric columns, stood the barracks of the guard. On the N. side of the hill, below the terrace in front of the libraries and apparently somewhat detached from the rest of the complex, stood a Greek theatre and a portico with a round Temple of Venus. A large part of the complex is oriented on a E.-W. axis. It dominates the SW. slope of the hill, and some parts are constructed on an artificial platform which houses the servant accommodation. Closest to the imperial palace and the barracks of the guard were a building with a peristyle pool and a cryptoporticus. Further W. and at a substantially lower level was an elongated nymphaeum, previously often thought to be a stadium due to the particular shape. Next was a building with three exedrae, probably a triclinium. The largest structure on the E.-W. axis was the Poikile, which was a huge rectangular colonnade with a pool in the centre. Half the structure rests on a large artificial platform.

To the S. of the Poikile, still on the SW. slope on the hill and partly dug into it, was another part of the complex, aligned on a more N.-S. axis. Here were two bathing facilities, the small baths and the large baths, separated by some large halls of unknown purpose. Attached to the hillside behind the large baths were more barracks, known as the Praetorian Pavilion. The dominating feature of this part of the villa is the Canopus, which is an elongated lake surrounded by a colonnade. A the end of the lake was a Temple of Serapis, dug into the hillside. On the hill above the Canopus were probably gardens and other buildings, but this area is only superficially excavated. This includes a circular structure, maybe a mausoleum, several underground passages and a Temple of Pluto. S. of the Canopus was another set of buildings, oriented on a mostly NW.-SE.-axis, which included a panoramic vantage point, gardens and some structures identified as an Academia, after the famous Academy of Athens. These two parts of the villa are not accessible to the visitors. Below much of the complex run a series of underground roads, passages, storage facilities and slave quarters. Most of the infrastructure needed to run such a huge complex was neatly tucked away, out of sight, out of mind. The original purpose if the individual buildings is often unknown. Of certain identification are the three bathing facilities, the Poikile (a porticus miliaria used for walks after dinner), the actual imperial residence (the Residential Villa, the Building with Peristyle Pool and the Building with Three Exedrae), and finally the servant accommodation in the substructures on the W. side and in the Praetorian Pavilion, which is connected to the underground service facilities. Due to the loss of all the upper parts of the buildings, it can be very hard to get an idea about how the villa appeared at the time of Hadrian. The visitor today can "see through" the villa, and easily get an impression of park-like open spaces, but this is misleading. What now appears as open spaces could have been a narrow passage, a dining room or a tall domed hall, but that is all but lost now. The ancient villa have been much more city-like, with more closed spaces, surrounded by walls and domes now lost. Many of the buildings stood several storeys high, but are now almost completely collapsed.

INFORMATION ON THE HISTORY OF THIS PRINT: Louis XIV, the King of France, was a generous patron of the arts. During his long reign (1643-1715), he sought to raise standards of taste and sophistication in the Arts and so a number of royal academies were founded, including the Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1648), the Academie de France in Rome (1663) and the foundation of the Academie royale d'Architecture (1671). This formalized a system for the training of French architects and by elevating artisans to academicians, the power of the medieval guilds was eroded and centered instead on the patronage of the king. Subsidized by the state, the Academy of Architecture was free to those, aged fifteen to thirty, who could pass the entrance examinations. By the nineteenth century, students were obliged to complete a number of increasingly demanding concours or competitions, the most prestigious of which was the Grand Prix de Rome, a rigorous annual examination (a first competition was in 1702, then 1720, then yearly) that provided the winner advanced study at the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici, where classical antiquities could be seen at first hand. Each year, for the four or five years they were in Rome, the students, supported financially with pensions, (hence their name of pensionnaires) were required to produce two sets of drawings, or envois, of Rome's ancient and medeival monuments: the état actuel, which was an exacting representation of the extant state, documenting the site with the precision of an archaeologist, and the état restauré, a more imaginary and often idealized restoration including the rendering of shade and shadow, which was accompanied by a written description of the monument's antiquity and construction. Often times, the views of the architects differed from those of the archaeologists in that the students wanted to use such buildings as inspiration for their own work, and hence reconstructed them omplete and coloured, often at the disagreement of the archaeologists.

The drawings submitted for the annual Grand Prix de Rome were on themes chosen by the Academy. The subjects set are indeed grand in scale and often in reach: triumphal arches (1730, 1747, 1763), palaces (1752, 1772, 1791, 1804, 1806), city squares and markets (1733, 1792, 1801), town halls (1742, 1787, 1813), law courts (1782, 1821) museums (1779) and educational institutions including libraries (1775, 1786, 1789, 1800, 1807, 1811, 1814, 1815, 1820) - all schemes for the promotion of civilization as the ancients would have understood the term. Stylistically, the entries usually share common characteristics: a grand Roman manner, with columns and orders, vaults and polychromy; an insistent and regular geometry, usually the square or the circle but sometimes the triangle; a penchant for the hemicycle, the propylaea and the pyramid; and finally a desire to impress by symmetry and the contrast between plain and decorated surfaces.

These ground plans (a drawing projected on a horizontal plane) and elevations (which was projected on a vertical plane) first were shown in Rome at the French Academy and then were forwarded to Paris to be shown to the members of the Academie des Beaux Arts, one of the constituent bodies of the Institut de France, which was responsible for the Rome Academy. They were also exhibited to the public in Paris. In the fourth year, after a thorough study of architectural detail, the student presented a complete restoration of a classical building. Although drawings of ancient classical ornament had been made for generations before the winners of the Grand Prix de Rome descended on the Villa Medici, the young Frenchmen were the first to go about the work systematically. The drawings were limited to, and solidly based on, the carefully studied remains. Further, their presentation in formal academic renderings offers more information than could possibly be supplied even by a large number of photographs.

Appreciation of these drawings cannot be complete without some explanation of the technique of India Ink was rendering. Extreme discipline is required to produce these finely studied works of art. Even the simplest drawings require painstaking care and preparation before any of the washes are applied. Great skill is required to do the neccesary linework. All of the information must be recorded before tone is even thought about. The drawing is then meticulously transferred in ink to the watercolor paper and the paper mounted on a board. The rendering itself requires infinite care and patience. Each tone is built up through many faint layers of wash so that the ink seems to be in the paper rather than on it. Each surface is graded so that the final effect of the drawing is that of an object in light and space, with a sense of atmosphere surrounding it.