The Capitoline Museums (Italian Musei
Capitolini) are a group of art and archeological museums in Piazza del
Campidoglio, on top of the famous Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy. The
museums are contained in three palazzi surrounding a central trapezoidal
piazza in a plan conceived by Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1536 and
executed over a period of over 400 years. The history of the museums can
be traced to 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated a collection of important
ancient bronzes to the people of Rome and located them on Capitoline
Hill. Since then, the museums' collection has grown to include a large
number of ancient Roman statues, inscriptions, and other artifacts; a
collection of medieval and Renaissance art; and collections of jewels,
coins, and other items. The museums are owned and operated by the
municipality of Rome.
The statue of a mounted rider in the centre of the piazza is of the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is a copy, the original being housed on-site
in the Capitoline museum. Many Roman statues were destroyed on the
orders of Christian Church authorities in the middle ages; this statue
was preserved in the erroneous belief that it depicted the Emperor
Constantine, who made Christianity the official state religion of the
Roman empire.
Museums and collections
A bronze of Constantine I is included in the museum's collection.
The Capitoline Museums are composed of three main buildings surrounding
the Piazza del Campidoglio and interlinked by an underground gallery
beneath the piazza.
The three main buildings of the Capitoline Museums are:
the Palazzo Senatorio, built in the 12th century and modified according to
Michelangelo's designs;
the Palazzo dei Conservatori, built in the mid-15th century and redesigned
by Michelangelo with the first use of the giant order column design;
and
the Palazzo Nuovo, built in the 17th century with an identical exterior
design to the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which it faces across the
palazzo.
In addition, the 16th century Palazzo Caffarelli-Clementino, located off
the piazza adjacent to the Palazzo dei Conservatori, was added to the
museum complex in the early 20th century.
Capitoline Museum
The Capitoline Museum is located on two floors in the Palazzo Nuovo, and
contains statues, inscriptions, sarcophagi, busts, mosaics, and other
ancient Roman artifacts.
Palazzo dei Conservatori Museum
The Palazzo dei Conservatori houses a museum of the same name, containing
ancient sculpture, mostly Roman but also Greek and Egyptian. As of 2005,
the Palazzo dei Conservatori Museum is currently undergoing major
renovations, and most of the exhibition spaces are closed to public
access.
The second floor of the building is occupied by the Conservator's
Apartment, a space now open to the public and housing such famous works
as the bronze she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, which has become the
emblem of Rome. The Conservator's Apartment is distinguished by
elaborate interior decorations, including frescoes, stuccos, tapestries,
and carved ceilings and doors.
The third floor of the Palazzo dei Conservatori houses the Capitoline Art
Gallery, housing the museums' painting and applied art galleries. The
Capitoline Coin Cabinet, containing collections of coins, medals,
jewels, and jewelry, is located in the attached Palazzo
Caffarelli-Clementino.
In the Hall of the Galatian (Palazzo Nuovo) it can also be appreciated the
marble statue of the "Dying Gaul" also called “Capitoline Gaul”.
Other scultures at the museum include:
the statue of Capitoline Venus, from an original by Praxiteles (4th
century BC)
the colossal statue restored as Oceanus, located at the museum courtyard
(Palazzo Nuovo)
fragments of the Colossal statue of Constantine originally in the Basilica
of Maxentius
a fragment of the Tabula Iliaca located at the Hall of the Doves (Palazzo
Nuovo)
the famous Bernini's Medusa
the statue of Cupid and Psyche, placed at the Hall of the Galatian
(Palazzo Nuovo)
the impressive relief from the honorary monument to Marcus Aurelius,
located at the main staircase at the Palazzo dei Conservatori.
Galleria Congiunzione
The Galleria Congiunzione is located beneath the Palazzo dei Conservatori
and the piazza itself, and links the three palazzos sitting on the
piazza. The gallery was constructed in the 1930s. It contains in situ
2nd century ruins of ancient Roman dwellings, and also houses the
Galleria Lapidaria, which displays the Museums' collection of epigraphs.
Tabularium
Main article: Tabularium
The Tabularium, also located underground beneath the piazza, occupies a
building of the same name built in the 1st century BC to hold important
Roman records of state. The Tabularium looks out from the rear onto the
Roman Forum. The main attraction of the Tabularium, besides the
structure itself, is the Temple of Veiovis.
Architecture and design
An Italian euro coin shows a stylized depiction of the Marcus Aurelius
statue over the distinctive pattern of the piazza.
The existing design of the Piazza del Campidoglio and the surrounding
palazzos was created by famed Renaissance artist and architect
Michelangelo Buonarroti. The commission for the design was from the
Farnese Pope Paul III, who wanted a symbol of the new Rome to impress
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who was expected in 1538. The location,
the Capitoline Hill, had once been the heart of pagan Rome, though that
connection was largely obscured by its other role as the center of the
civic government of Rome. As a result, the piazza was already surrounded
by existing buildings. Approximately in the middle, not to
Michelangelo's liking, stood the only equestrian bronze to have survived
since Antiquity, that of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor.
Michelangelo provided an unassuming pedestal for it. The only reason
that this sculpture survived the Authorities of the Christian Church in
the Middle Ages, is that it was thought to be a statue of Emperor
Constantine, who was the first Emperor of Rome to designate Christianity
as the official religion of the empire, and who was baptised into the
Christian faith on his death-bed (337 AD).
Michelangelo completed a design for the piazza and remodelling of the
surrounding palazzos. However, executing the design was slow work:
little was actually completed in Michelangelo's lifetime, but work
continued faithfully to his designs and the Campidoglio was completed in
the 17th century, except for the paving design.
Michelangelo provided new fronts to the two official buildings of Rome's
civic government, which very approximately faced each other, the Palazzo
dei Conservatori and the Palazzo Senatore, which had been built over the
Tabularium that had once housed the archives of ancient Rome.
Michelangelo devised a monumental stair (the Cordonata) to reach the
high piazza, so that the Campidoglio resolutely turned its back on the
Roman Forum that it had once commanded, and he gave the space a new
building at the far end, to close the vista. The Cordonata is a ramped
stair that can be accessed on horseback by the sufficiently great,
though it was not in place when Emperor Charles arrived, and the
imperial party had to scramble up the slope from the Forum to view the
works in progress. The unfolding sequence, Cordonata piazza and the
central palazzo are the first urban introduction of the "cult of the
axis" that would come to occupy Italian garden plans and reach fruition
in France.
The Palazzo dei Conservatori was the first use of a giant order that
spanned two stories, here with a range of Corinthian pilasters and
subsidiary Ionic columns flanking the ground-floor loggia openings and
the second floor windows. Another giant order would serve later for the
exterior of St. Peter's Basilica. A balustrade punctuated by sculptures
atop the giant pilasters capped the composition, one of the most
influential of Michelangelo's designs. The sole arched motif in the
entire design are the segmental pediments over the windows, which give a
slight spring to the completely angular vertical-horizontal balance of
the design.
The bird's-eye view of the engraving by Étienne Dupérac shows
Michelangelo's solution to the problems of the space in the Piazza del
Campidoglio. Even with their new facades centering them on the new
palazzo at the rear, the space was a trapezoid, and the facades did not
face each other squarely. Worse than that, the whole site sloped (to the
left in the engraving). Michelangelo's solution was radical. Since no
"perfect" forms would work, his apparent oval in the paving is actually
egg-shaped, narrower at one end. The travertine design set into the
paving is perfectly level: around its perimeter, low steps arise and die
away into the paving as the slope requires. Its center springs slightly,
so that one senses that one is standing on the exposed segment of a
gigantic egg all but buried at the center of the city at the center of
the world, as Michelangelo's historian Charles de Tolnay pointed out. An
interlaced twelve-pointed star makes a subtle reference to the
constellations, revolving around this space called Caput mundi, the
"head of the world".
The paving design was never executed by the popes, who may have detected a
subtext of non-Christian meaning. Benito Mussolini ordered the paving
completed to Michelangelo's design — in 1940.
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