“The Spectacle of the Everyday: Thoughts from a Walk in Rome”
By Christine M. Staton
citation: Staton, Christine. “‘The Spectacle of the Everyday: Thoughts from a Walk in Rome.’” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, August 13, 2021.
I traveled to Rome for a few days this spring during a longer sojourn in Italy to visit some friends, both humans and artworks. I rendezvoused with two old friends, Enrico and Giovanni, both natives of Rome just outside Termini Station. After a few minutes of looking at each other awkwardly, unsure about where to go and what to do, I suggested we take a quick walk to the Quirinal neighborhood to see the Moses Fountain (figure one) and particularly, its waterspouts.
More than a year earlier, I chose to write my art history master’s thesis on this fountain, site unseen. The COVID-19 pandemic, like so many others, confined me to a make-shift desk in my mother’s living room. Instead of travelling to Rome to see the monument, I studied digitized images on a thirteen-inch monitor, and I read every scholarly (and not-so-scholarly) article I could find either online or on a professor’s personal bookshelf. The paper may have turned out great, but nothing prepared me for seeing this spectacular monument in real life.
First of all, it’s enormous; by width and height alone it easily overcomes a three-story townhouse. Second, it’s blinding white, made entirely of recycled marble and travertine. And at the center of everything, a towering and terrifying figure of Moses stares down at you, ordering the fountain to produce that oh-so precious (and may I add delicious) drinking water.
The three of us stood in pregnant silence staring up at this edifice, struck dumb by the monumentality of a public amenity, not sure what to say about it. My friends knew that I was more or less an expert on this fountain, but I was too afraid of sounding like a hollow tour guide to start lecturing to them about it. So, I simply stated “This is it.” Giovanni then asked me “What did you write about in your thesis?” I told him that I wrote about the two lion waterspouts at the very center of the fountain, which are today replaced by copies; the originals are in the Vatican Museums. “They look Egyptian—are those hieroglyphs at the bottom?” He was correct. “So, we probably stole them, eh?”
Figure one: Domenico Fontana, et al., Moses Fountain, 1587-90. Piazza di San Bernardo, Rome. Author’s photograph.
I couldn’t help but laugh at his blithe tone. As an Italian and a Roman, was he just accustomed to being surrounded by spoils of ancient wars and imperialism? Or was I just overly sensitive to the same artifacts, as an American and an historian trained to notice these things with an analytical eye?
Nevertheless, our laughter broke the tension and true to form, I launched into an impassioned explanation of the waterspouts, two repurposed Egyptian antiquities known as the Nectanebo Lions. I recounted their long history, from their spoliation from Egypt by the ancient Romans to their various placements throughout the city of Rome. At the time of their penultimate relocation to the Moses Fountain, around the year 1590, they were the most recognizable Egyptian antiquities in Rome, having stood at the entrance of the Pantheon for many years. And this, I explained to my friends, was what brought me to my thesis: why did the men responsible for this fountain (namely, Pope Sixtus V) remove two iconic Egyptian antiquities from their prominent location, drill a hole through them, and plant them on a glorified drinking fountain? After half a year of research and a brief on-site conversation with two Italians, I realized that this choice had as much to do with the spectacle of the thing as the thing itself.
Renaissance Rome was a city constantly on display. Processions, parades, and performances were a daily occurrence and the governing body of the city, the Catholic Church, was its most compelling stage manager. Although not much is recorded about the actual process of removing the Nectanebo lions from in front of the Pantheon, when I look at their copies on the Moses Fountain today, I can imagine crowds of people gathered to witness men and machines lift and lower the granite sculptures. I see them being secured and moved two kilometers across town, past the Trevi Fountain and the Palazzo Barberini. And finally, I can imagine the finished product: two dark grey lions, evidence of ancient Rome’s world domination, set against that stark white facade, spouting water for the benefit of sixteenth-century Romans.
This very idea of making so much spectacle for something so quotidian fascinates me still. Did the sixteenth-century Roman experience that same overwhelming feeling that two twenty-first century Romans and one American did upon seeing the fountain for the first time? If so, did they experience that every time they came to take a drink? Or was the monument just another in a series of imposing edifices in Rome? And were they as intrigued by the Egyptian lions as I am or did they maintain Giovanni’s indifference? Is it possible to get used to spectacle?
Perhaps spectacle is actually all around us and it takes being removed from our own environment and supplanted into a foreign one to notice it. When grand displays are part of our daily lived experience, as they are both in Renaissance and modern Rome, they run the risk of becoming ordinary. Time dilutes statements of imperial prowess, like the appropriation of the Nectanebo lions, and the spectacle of the thing easily evaporates into the fabric of daily life.
Giovanni, Enrico, and I admired the fountain for a few more moments, took a drink from it, and decided it was time for a gelato. Our time as spectators had ended.