Clough and Amours de Voyage Gallery

The Quirinal (sometimes referred to as Monte Cavallo or ’Horse Mountain”’/“Horse Hill”) is the highest of Rome’s seven hills and home to Qiurinal Palace, the seat of the papal government in the mid-19th century. The 4th century BCE Roman copies of the 5th century BCE Greek original colossal marble statues of the "Horse Tamers”—identified as Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri )—were discovered at the nearby Baths of Constantine and were restored and installed in their current location in the eponymous square by Sixtus V in 1588. In a letter of March 1819 to Thomas Love Peacock,…

Facing south and overlooking the Tiber River toward the Castel Sant’Angelo and beyond to the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica, this view—in one of the earliest photographs of the cityscape—features some of Rome’s most important landmarks. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, this vantage point had been popular with painters such as J.M.W. Turner, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Karl Kaufmann, all of whom produced interpretative images of this scene. Late in the nineteenth century, photographers took advantage of both the emerging technology, as well as the popularity of the view…

Severed from both the medieval brick wall of the convent by which it was once flanked on the right, as well as the stone buttressing that fortified it on the left, and missing several of the original segments, the arch was in a precarious state of decay at the turn of the 19th century. The somewhat controversial decision in the early 1820s to dismantle and reconstruct the arch—replacing, for example, the missing marble columns with locally sourced travertine stone—as a freestanding structure rather than preserve the monument in its current state, resulted in a structure that by the …

Monte (Mount) Testaccio—from the Latin testa and the Italian cocci, both translating to, “potsherd”—is a 150-foot high mountain of discarded amphoras that had been used for shipping oil from the Roman provinces from the late Republic (2nd c. BCE) onward. After its access to the port was sealed off in the late decades of the 3rd century CE, its usefulness as a dump ceased. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the site was a gathering place for religious festivals, jousting tournaments, and public spectacles. Prior to its re-evaluation and investigation as a location…

The Roman Forum (Foro Romano, in Italian) was once the heart of the ancient Roman Empire, including many of its government buildings. The site was scavanged for raw materials at various times since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the nineteenth century, the site began to be cleared of debris and restoration projects were undertaken. It is now a tourist site filled with architectural fragments and ruins. 

Overview of St. Peter's Square by Robert MacPherson (ca. 1860s). St. Peter's Square is a large piazza in Vatican City, Rome directly in front of St. Peter's Basilica. The ancient Egyptian obelisk that is visible in this photograph was erected at this site in 1586. St. Peter's Basilica is one of the most celebrated works of Renaissance architecture and the largest church in the world.  

Having served a multitude of unrelated functions—from a bullring to a wool factory, and having suffered the effects of both fires and earthquakes, in 1749 Pope Benedict XIV declared the Colosseum a sacred site based on the likely erroneous belief that Christian martyrs had been sacrificed to the lions in the arena. He subsequently banned the pillaging of its stones for use in the construction and restoration of other buildings, and the ruin became less of a tourist destination and more of a stop on a religious pilgrimage. By the 19th century, botanists were flocking to the building to…

Despite both its name, as well as its history as the center of Spanish life during the Baroque period—the Palazzo di Spagna serving as Spain’s embassy to the Holy See—the Piazza di Spagna and its environs, referred to by the locals as the “ghetto de l’inglesi” (“English ghetto”), grew into a frequently traversed and popular gathering spot for English Grand Tour visitors and British expatriates in the 19th century. The view from the Piazza di Spagna at the base of the scalinata (staircase) looking up toward the Church of Trinità dei Monti was favored by tourists who would commission…

The current version of St. Peter's Dome was designed by Michelangelo in 1547. A native Tuscan, Michelangelo would have looked as much, if not more, to the Duomo of Florence as to the Pantheon for both artistic inspiration and architectural guidance. Ovoid in shape—unlike the hemispherical dome of the Pantheon—and rising steeply, the upward thrust of St. Peter’s dome illustrates the movement away from the balance and symmetry by which the Renaissance was defined, and toward the mannerist tendencies for exaggeration that will develop into the baroque. Michelangelo died in 1564 leaving…

Having undergone multiple architectural, ornamental, and functional changes—beginning with its reconsecration as a Christian Church in the 7th century CE—in the 19th century, the interior of the Pantheon little resembled its original self. The exterior of the temple had also suffered through multiple modifications, including Pope Urban VIII Barberini’s stripping of the bronze—repurposed for the manufacturing of arms—from the portico beams. To justify the removal, he claimed the metal was intended for the decoration of Bernini’s Baldacchino in St. Peter’s, a seemingly lesser offense. Of…

Reflecting the cumulative efforts of no less than a half dozen significant architects, spanning the succession of twenty pontifcates, and witnessing the passage of one hundred and twenty years from groundbreaking to consecration, St. Peter’s Basilica (Basilica di San Pietro) is the culmination a two-thousand year campaign to both formally and grandly mark the presumed burial site of St. Peter, the first bishop of Rome, and erect an unprecedented and unparalleled paean to Catholicism. Replacement of the neglected and dilapidated 4th-century church built by Constantine, the Roman Empire’s…

The Apollo Belvedere, a 2nd century CE Roman copy of a 4th century BCE Greek bronze, is so named because of its one-time home in the small Bramante-designed sculpture court (Cortile del Belvedere) of the summer residence connected to the Vatican Palace. Having been transported to Paris amongst the trove of artworks confiscated by Napoleon as part of his 1796 campaign in Italy, it formed part of the Louvre’s collection until 1815 when it was repatriated to the Vatican, and where it has remained in the Museo Pio-Clementino since. As “the highest ideal of art…

The Piazza del Campidoglio (on top of the Campitoline Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome) includes such statues as Castor and Pollux perched atop pedestals at the head of the Cordonata (ramp) and to either side of the entrance to the piazza; the Trophies of Marius flanking the Discouri; and a replica of the 2nd century CE bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius situated at its center. Here, one can also find the Musei Capitolini (Capitoline Museums—the cluster of buildings that circumscribe the trapezoidal-shaped piazza on the Capitoline Hill, the geographical and…

Built by Emperor Hadrian in 134 CE as a triumphal passageway—connecting both the left and the right banks of the Tiber River, as well as the Campus Martius to the Castel Sant’Angelo—the Ponte Sant’Angelo was originally dedicated as the Pons Aelius in honor of, and in homage to Hadrian’s family; Hadrian erected the Castel to which it leads, as well. Intending it as both a mausoleum (Moles Hadriani) for himself and his family, as well as the burial place of successive Antonine emperors—with the last interment that of Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) in 217—the imposing bastion has…

Described by Murray in the 1858 edition of his guidebook as one of “the three principle artists in photography at Rome” (Crawford 360), Robert MacPherson, whose work is pictured here, was the first photographer to be granted access to, and given permission to document the interior of, the Vatican Palace. In discussing exposure times dictated by the collodio-albumen technique—which was best suited for subjects requiring long exposure—he employed in the process, he stated that ”[w]here the light was deficient…in one or two cases, even an exposure of two days was necessary to produce a good…

The sculpture of the Sleeping Ariadne is a marble copy of a 2nd century BCE Greek original from the school of Pergamon. Purchased by Pope Julius II in 1512 from the collection of Angelo Maffei, the sculpture was originally housed—atop a Roman sarcophagus and adapted to accommodate a fountain—in the Cortile delle Statue (Courtyard of Statues, Vatican) alongside the recently unearthed Laocoön and Apollo. Relocated several times, it was permanently installed in Galleria delle Statue (Statue Gallery) of the Vatican Museums in the late 1700s. George…