The Caesar of Paris

by Susan Jaques

  TWO

  ARCHES OF TRIUMPH

  After his 1800 victory at Marengo, France’s first consul told his brother Lucien: “I will arrive at Paris unexpectedly. My intention is to have neither triumphal arches nor any kind of ceremony. I have too good an opinion of myself to estimate such baubles, trinkets. I know of no other triumph than public satisfaction.” As Thomas Gaehtgens describes, Napoleon soon prohibited Lyon from erecting a triumphal arch in his honor and rejected a suggestion for a similar arch at the Place du Châtelet in Paris.1

  Five years later after his stunning victory at Austerlitz, Emperor Napoleon I made a complete about-face. “You will march home through arches of triumph,” he promised his soldiers.

  Napoleon proposed a series of monumental arches for Paris. “One of the first two must be a Marengo arch and the other an arch of Austerlitz. I shall have another erected somewhere in Paris, to be the arch of Peace, and a fourth to be the arch of Religion,” he wrote in spring 1806. “With these four arches I am confident that I can finance French sculpture for twenty years. . . . Generally speaking, no opportunity should be missed to humiliate the Russians and the English.”2

  Napoleon would scale back his grandiose plan to a pair of arches—the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile based on Rome’s most celebrated ancient models. As Diana Rowell explains, “. . . the Napoleonic regime mixed, manipulated and reinvented the language of Rome’s various arch forms to create a particularly forceful instrument of contemporary propaganda.”3

  Like the Forum and Capitol of ancient Rome, the Louvre-Tuileries complex became France’s cultural and political nerve center under Napoleon. He ordered a triumphal arch erected for the Place du Carrousel, located between the Louvre and Tuileries. In 1662, to celebrate the birth of his first child, Louis XIV turned the area into a parade ground. The cavalry performed an Italian-style pageant here known as a carrousel, giving the interior court its name.4

  Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel would do double duty—creating an elegant entry for the Tuileries Palace and uniting the Louvre and Tuileries (an unrealized ambition of the Bourbon kings). Before the Battle of Austerlitz, Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine planned to top the masonry guardhouses at the gate of the Place du Carrousel with two enormous lanterns. Now they tabled that idea and began designing a triumphant arch. The result was a sophisticated take on the Arches of Septimius Severus and Constantine, two of antiquity’s most notable surviving arches.

  The arch, which first appeared in the second millennium B.C.E., became hugely popular in ancient Rome. The architectural form featured in some of Rome’s greatest engineering feats—including the Colosseum (70 to 80 C.E.) and the aqueducts that supplied fresh water to the city and its provinces. Commemorative or triumphal arches make their debut in the Roman Republic in the early second century B.C.E.; Scipio Africanus’s triumph over the Carthaginians was among the earliest.

  From Augustus on, the triumphal arch commemorated the victories of emperors in permanent, lasting form and celebrated the apotheosis of imperial power. As Christopher Tadgell explains, Augustus instituted the eastern inspired “cult of the emperor” in which divine rulers achieved apotheosis, joining the gods after their deaths.5

  Triumphal arches were erected in the Forum, the heart of Rome’s political and ceremonial life. Among the earliest of these was built by Augustus in 19 B.C.E. to celebrate a diplomatic coup—the surrender of standards captured by the Parthians. On top, Augustus is shown as a conqueror in a chariot drawn by four horses. To celebrate another victory over the Parthians, Nero built a triumphal arch in 62 C.E. on the sacred Capitoline Hill. Featuring sculpture and statues focusing on war and victory, the arch was topped with a quadriga driven by Nero, flanked by personifications of Peace and Victory.

  The history of the Arch of Septimius Severus goes back to 192 C.E. when the elite Praetorian Guard murdered Roman emperor Commodus and confirmed Pertinax as his successor. When Pertinax tried to enforce new disciplinary measures, the Guard killed him too. Lifting Pertinax’s head on a lance, they announced that the throne was available to the highest bidder—in this case Didius Julianus. Meanwhile, Septimius Severus, governor of the province of Pannonia was declared emperor by his own legions. Severus marched on Rome to avenge Pertinax. After a nine-week rule, Didius Julianus was also killed by the Praetorian Guard and forty-eight-year-old Severus was proclaimed emperor. One of Severus’s first actions was to fire the Praetorians and recruit his own bodyguards.

  Born into a wealthy family in Leptis Magna (today’s Libya), Severus became a senator and rose through the ranks with posts in Sardinia, Spain, Gaul, Sicily, and Pannonia (today’s western Hungary and parts of eastern Austria and several Balkan states). He grew up speaking Punic (Carthaginian), and learned Greek and Latin. As a widower, Severus married Syrian Julia Domna. Descended from a priestly caste, her family was preeminent in the cult of the sun god Elagabalus. The couple established a new dynasty with their sons Caracalla and Geta.

  Having seized control by force after a bloody four-year civil war, Severus badly needed to legitimize his shaky new dynasty. “Physically strong but small” according to Cassius Dio, Severus had himself represented in portraits to resemble Marcus Aurelius and had himself and his family adopted into the Antonine family.6 Toward this same end, the autocratic emperor glorified his victory over the Parthians with a spectacular triumphal arch.

  For maximum impact, Severus chose the northwest corner of the Roman Forum, possibly where Severus’s triumphal procession in 202 began its ascent to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. The location was also diagonally across from Augustus’s three bay Parthian arch, which may have been the model. The prestigious site reflected Severus’s ambition for immortality. “By building the arch in the Forum,” writes Susann Lusnia, “Severus forever enshrined himself and his family in one of Rome’s most sacred and history-drenched locales. He put himself in the company of Vesta, Castor and Pollux, Saturn, and Concord, among the memories of great Romans and great events in Roman history.”7

  Dedicated in 203 C.E., the Arch of Septimius Severus featured a central passageway with a coffered semicircular vault and two smaller arches. The triumphal route ran through the central arch; steps led to the side passageways.8 On the attic, an enormous gilded bronze dedicatory inscription praised Severus, his two sons, and their two victories over Parthia (modern Iran). Constructed of concrete, travertine, and marble, the arch measured over sixty-eight feet tall, seventy-six feet wide, and nearly thirty-seven feet deep. The eight freestanding columns and exterior facing were made of banded gray and white Proconnesian marble (from today’s Marmara Island, Turkey). Travertine was used for much of the core of the arch.9

  Instead of traditional half-columns, the Arch of Septimius Severus featured detached or freestanding fluted columns on tall pedestals. The bases of these columns featured reliefs of Roman soldiers and Parthian prisoners. Inside the south pier, a staircase led to the roof topped with a gilded bronze statue of Severus and his sons driving a two-wheeled chariot drawn by six horses. Facing the Arch was the Equus Severi, a colossal gilded bronze equestrian statue of the emperor.10

  While military scenes had been used in the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius and in complexes for specific emperors and dynasties, the Arch of Septimius Severus was Rome’s first known triumphal arch with battle imagery as its central decoration.11 Above each of the side arches are four enormous, richly decorated relief panels, possibly in Carrara marble, portraying major battles from the two Parthian wars. Battle imagery served a political and dynastic purpose. “The battle scenes were important elements of the propaganda message of Severus’s Arch in the Forum,” writes Susann Lusnia. “The panels of the arch not only glorified the military exploits of the emperor and his sons, but also bore witness to the legitimacy of his sons’ succession and the continuation of Severan rule at Rome.”12

  Though similar to the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, the
decoration of the arch may have been inspired by the brightly painted battle scenes commissioned by Severus and sent back to Rome for his triumphal procession, posits Maggie Popkin.13 Such large scale panels were part of a tradition started during the Roman Republic. According to Richard Brilliant, the variety of styles in the relief panels indicates the hand of different sculptors or workshops, perhaps to help expedite completion of the monument.14 Unlike his cookie-cutter soldiers, Severus is portrayed with physical accuracy.15

  Weakened by gout and arthritis, Septimius Severus died in February 211 after an eighteen-year rule in the Roman town of Eboracum (today’s York, Great Britain). Caracalla and Geta ignored their father’s deathbed wish for them to rule as co-emperors. In December 211, Caracalla used his mother to lure Geta to a meeting where he was ambushed and killed. Five years later, an officer in the imperial bodyguard murdered the unpopular twenty-nine-year-old Caracalla. The mastermind of the assassination, Praetorian Guard commander Marcus Opellius Macrinus, succeeded him.

  Though Septimius Severus’s dynasty was short-lived, his arch had a lasting impact. A century later, Constantine adorned his own larger triumphal arch with similar war scenes. Like Severus, Constantine chose a highly visible location—the Triumphal Way next to the Colosseum, just before a turn into the Roman Forum and ascent to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Adding to the drama, the central passageway of Constantine’s Arch framed a view of a colossal bronze statue of the sun god Sol by the sculptor Zenodorus.

  It was Hadrian who moved the Colossus of Nero from the entrance of Nero’s Golden House to make room for his Temple of Venus and Roma. According to Elizabeth Marlowe, Romans could not miss the gleaming sun god perfectly aligned with a figure of Constantine driving the quadriga on top of his Arch. The positioning advertised Constantine’s worship of Sol, who appears several times in the Arch’s sculptures and reliefs. “Like all Roman emperors before him,” writes Marlowe, “Constantine . . . saw no contradiction between his worship of Christ and the worship of himself and his family in the traditional rites and practices of the Roman imperial cult.”16

  Begun in 312 and dedicated on July 25, 315 C.E., the Arch of Constantine celebrated the tenth anniversary of the emperor’s reign. Carved on the attic or top section on both sides of the arch, the inscription read: “To the emperor Flavius Constantine the Great, pious and fortunate, who by divine inspiration and his own great spirit with his army avenged the state in rightful battle against the tyrant and all his faction, the Senate and the People of Rome dedicate this arch adorned with Triumphs.”17 The “tyrant” was Emperor Maxentius, whose six-year reign ended at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312.

  Like the Arch of Septimius Severus, the Arch of Constantine featured a triple bay—a large central passage flanked by two smaller passageways. Each façade has four freestanding Corinthian columns on tall pedestals. The carved decoration combines an assortment of Constantinian decoration and spolia, art removed from earlier monuments. The fourth-century reliefs include spandrels with victories and river gods, column pedestals, two roundels on the short sides, and a frieze depicting Constantine’s defeat of Maxentius and his entry into Rome on a quadriga.

  From the second century came four statues of Dacians and the Great Trajanic Frieze, likely removed from Trajan’s Forum. Measuring ten feet high and over fifty-eight feet long, the continuous bas-relief of carved battle scenes was cut into four panels and recycled for the main passageway and the attic of the short sides of the Arch of Constantine. Flanking the inscription are four reliefs from the age of Commodus featuring scenes from the life of Marcus Aurelius. Eight circular marble reliefs depicting hunting and sacrificial scenes were removed from a Hadrianic monument that did not survive. Portraits of second-century emperors were replaced with likenesses of Constantine.

  The purpose of the spolia appears to be political. As Emidio De Albentiis explains, having seized power after a bloody civil war, Constantine sought legitimacy through association with illustrious predecessors like Trajan, Hadrian, Domitian, and Marcus Aurelius.18 Constantine’s power grab goes back to Diocletian who formed the Tetrarchy in 293, naming Maximian as co-Augustus, and Galerius and his father Constantius as subordinate Caesars. The arrangement lasted a short time. The ambitious Constantine defeated his rivals and reunited the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire in 324. Symbolizing the end of the Tetrarchy, Constantine’s Arch was “the first state monument to depict civil war explicitly in its sculptural decoration,” writes Maggie Popkin.19

  The Arch of Constantine was one of Rome’s last official works. In 330, after Constantine transferred his court to Constantinople, Rome was abandoned. Roman architecture continued to be a model for Constantinople’s building program which included the Hippodrome, aqueducts, and the Hagia Sophia. Under Constantine, Christianity replaced paganism as the main religion of the Roman Empire. During the early Christian period, the triumphal arch’s military and political symbolism was replaced with religious associations. Roman architects added arches between the nave and apse of churches, alluding to Christian triumph over death. During the Middle Ages, the Arch of Septimius Severus was incorporated into a church and fortress by the Frangipani family, with towers added to the top. Parts of the monument were lost in the process, including the original crowning equestrian statuary.

  The Roman arch continued to be a popular for Renaissance churches. Leon Battista Alberti used the single arch for the nave and façade of the Church of Sant’Andrea in Mantua; Andrea Palladio added arches to the façades of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore in Venice.20 From the early sixteenth century, temporary arches made of wooden frames and banners or canvases became a feature of royal entries into cities. Albrecht Dürer supervised a huge triumphal arch woodcut for Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I who gave hundreds of copies away as gifts. Palladio designed an arch for a visit to Venice by France’s Henri III in 1574. Temporary arches were erected for the coronation processions of the popes through Rome.

  Rome’s Arch of Septimius Severus had long been a favorite of artists. From the Renaissance on, attempts had been made to excavate the half-buried monument, including a request by Percier and Fontaine. In 1803, Pius VII commissioned Carlo Fea to excavate and build a retaining wall. Now Percier and Fontaine turned to the arch for their most impressive work, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel.21 With their help, Napoleon revived Rome’s triumphal arch, long associated with imperial power.

  The first stone for the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was laid on July 7, 1806. Leaving the passage free on its four faces, the arch offered a triumphal entrance to the Tuileries. Percier and Fontaine used the three arch format of the Arches of Septimius Severus and Constantine. From the Arch of Septimius Severus, the designers borrowed rectangular reliefs over the lateral arches. Like the Arch of Constantine, Percier and Fontaine used colored marble. “With red marble columns and bronze capitals and bases, the Arch was the first work of 19th-century French architecture to break with the classical tradition of monochrome masonry,” writes Jean-Philippe Garric.22

  Much to Fontaine’s annoyance, Dominique-Vivant Denon participated in the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel project. In his Journal, Fontaine had this to say about his rival: “The director of the painting museum, M. Denon, whose taste and pretensions in art are not in agreement with ours, is one of those unwelcome flies which cannot be caught, and against which one must have patience.”23

  According to Pierre Rosenberg, former director of the Louvre, his predecessor Denon played a role for Napoleon similar to that of culture minister André Malraux for French president Charles de Gaulle. Like Malraux, Denon understood the political power of cultural display. He was “a man of action, a practical man, an organizer.”24

  For the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, Denon took a page from the playbook of Septimius Severus. In the third century, the Roman emperor ordered that his victories be painted and exhibited. According to Clifford Ando, Severus “understood the need to inform Rome about his activ
ities in spite of his inability to be in Rome himself.”25 Similarly, Denon saw that Napoleon’s military achievements were lauded in Paris where he spent little time. The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel functioned in a similar way as the Arch of Septimius Severus.

  The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was decorated with bas-reliefs, with subjects chosen by Denon and designed by Charles Meynier. A team of neoclassical artists executed Meynier’s sculptural program, including Clodion, Claude Ramey, Pierre Cartellier, Jean-Joseph Espercieux, Louis-Pierre Deseine, and Jacques-Philippe Le Sueur.26 Resting on pilasters, the eight rose marble columns (four to each façade) were topped with statues of French soldiers in full dress uniform—reminiscent of the Dacian prisoners above the columns of the Arch of Constantine taken from Trajan’s Forum.

  Denon also oversaw the decoration for the top of the arch, commissioning a gilded lead sculptural group from François-Frédéric Lemot. Napoleon, dressed as a Roman triumphator, drove a chariot of Victory drawn by four horses, flanked by two figures of Fame. In modeling Napoleon’s face, writes Thierry Sarmant, Lemot may have been inspired by his pupil Lorenzo Bartolini’s massive bronze bust for the Musée Napoléon.27 The work was to be made of gilded lead—a material as solid as bronze, but three times less expensive.28

  The horses were extraordinary. The arch would be capped by the antique gilded bronze horses nabbed in 1798 by Napoleon from St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. Scholars suggest they were made in the Roman imperial period between the second half of the second century or early third century C.E. Around 330 C.E., Constantine transported them to Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) where he had them installed atop the triumphal gate leading into the Hippodrome, symbol of Byzantine grandeur.

  During the Fourth Crusade in 1204, Western European armies led by Venice sacked Constantinople, bringing about the fall of the Byzantine Empire. During the pillage, many of the Hippodrome’s bronze statues were melted down and turned into coins. Other treasures were taken to Venice, including the ancient horses. After fifty years in the Venice Arsenale, the expressive horses with their flaring nostrils and green patina caught the eye of Florentine ambassadors and were placed in pairs in the loggia over the central portal of St. Mark’s Basilica. Through the centuries, the horses hadn’t lost their association with triumph and imperial power.