The late antique ‘domus’ on the Clivus Suburanus, the early history of Santa Lucia in Selci, and the Cerroni altarpiece in Grenoble

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The Late Antique 'Domus' on the Clivus Suburanus, the Early History of Santa Lucia in Selci, andthe Cerroni Altarpiece in Grenoble Author(s): Fabio Barry Source: Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 71 (2003), pp. 111-139Published by: British School at RomeStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40311063Accessed: 11-03-2015 15:09 UTC

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THE LATE ANTIQUE 'DOMUS' ON THE CLIVUS SUBURANUS, THE EARLY HISTORY OF SANTA LUCIA

IN SELCI, AND THE CERRONI ALTARPIECE IN GRENOBLE*

in memoriam, Peter Barry Austin Abbey Minor Scholar, BSR (1947) Austin Abbey Major Scholar, BSR (1948)

Secretary and Treasurer, Society of Rome Scholars (1970-6)

Whoever wanders off Rome's busy Via Giovanni Lanza into the Via in Selci could hardly imagine that in antiquity this winding lane was one of the city's main arteries. It may have originated as a shepherd's trail from the marshy valley (the future Forum Romanum) to the dry highlands of the Esquiline, but by the Imperial age it had become the metalled Clivus Suburanus. This street reached out from the city's civic heart to cut a course through the tenements, workshops, and also mansions of the Subura, up to the old Porta Esquilina in the Servian walls, outward along the Via Prenestina, all the way to Praeneste. As Horace and Martial complained, wagons would clatter up and down the street, creaking under the stone they carried to the rising Fora.1 The modern street still maintains its ancient course, now weaving through nineteenth- century boulevards, but this sinuous trail can only be apprehended from old maps or from the air. The torrential onslaught of the Via Lanza upon the neighbourhood (1887-91) eventually left this stretch of the Via in Selci a stranded fragment like an oxbow lake.

This much is well known, but the church that took its name from this street, Santa Lucia in Selci, has been very reluctant to deliver up its secrets. The original church was largely eradicated when the present baroque structure was constructed in 1603-4, and the convent's archive is maddeningly silent about crucial areas of its history. Most accounts of the church's history are wishful fictions and, even where documentation does survive, 6St. Lucy has suffered a second martyrdom', as one historian lamented, at the hands of writers 'who have quoted documents without citing sources and given information

* I am particfularly indebted to Robert Coates-Stephens and Caroline Goodson for unstinting support in writing this article.

Abbreviations: ASV = Archivio Segreto Vaticano; BAV = Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. 1 Hor. Epist. 2.2.72-3; Mart. Ep. 5.22.5-8. The literary sources are summarized in Cr. Lugli,

Fontes ad Topographiam Veteris Urbis Romae Pertinentes (Rome, 1952-69), III, 242-9; C. Panella, in E.M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, 6 vols (Rome, 1993-2000), IV, 127-9.

Ill



112 BARRY

(sometimes even correctly) that could be checked only by doing the work over again'.2

This article attempts to filter out fact from figment, elucidating the history of the church from its origins until the Cinquecento. In the process, it will return an artefact of extraordinary rarity to its proper home: the (Trecento) altarpiece of Santa Lucia now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble.

ORIGINS

By the Republican period, the Clivus Suburanus was bordered by the estate of Publius Vedius Pollio, which stretched all the way up the slopes of the Oppian Hill, away from the future site of Santa Lucia up to the future Baths of Trajan. When this wealthy freedman willed the property to Augustus, the emperor cancelled out the lavish villa suburbana by raising a man-made platform, on vaulted substructures, over the whole terrain and installing a public pleasure garden

2 H. Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture 1580-1630 (London, 1971), 136-7. Other treatments of Santa Lucia in Selci include: G.A. Bruzio, Theatrum Romanae Urbis sive Romanorum Sacrae Aedes: chiese, conservatori e monasteri di monache della città di Roma, Tom. XV, BAV, Vat. Lat. 11884, tol. 220, fols 213v-19v (modern numeration); G. Vasi, Delle magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna Vili (Rome, 1757), XI and pl. 143; G. Parati, 'Chiesa di S. Lucia in Selci', Album 14 (1847), 94-5; M. Armellini, Le chiese di Roma dal secolo IV al XIX (Vatican City, 1891), 432; C. Hülsen, Le chiese di Roma nel medio evo, cataloghi ed appunti (Florence, 1927), 48, 306; O. Montenovesi, 'Santa Lucia in Selci', Archivi 10 (1943), 89-120 (generally reliable but devoid of any archival citations whatsoever); F.J. Niederer, The Roman Diaconiae. A Study of the Use of Ancient Buildings by the Christian Church prior to 806 A.D. (Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 1951), 68-71, 333-7 (unaccountably ignored by all subsequent historians); P. Portoghesi, 'Saggi sul Borromini: un'opera ignota di Borromini, la decorazione della chiesa di S. Lucia in Selci; Borromini nella cultura europea', Quaderni dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Architettura 27-9 (1958), 13-56 (without citations and with many errors), republished in P. Portoghesi, Borromini nella cultura europea (Rome, 1964), 205-20, 401-6 (version cited here); R. Krautheimer, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae (Vatican City, 1962), II, 188-92; M. Maroni Lumbroso, 'II monastero agostiniano di S. Lucia in Selci', Fede ed Arte 14 (4) (1966), 498-503 (repetitious summary of Montenovesi); R. Krautheimer, Rome. Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton, 1980), 72, 87, 314; M. Serlorenzi, 'S. Lucia in Selci', in M. Cecchelli (ed.), Materiali e tecniche dell'edilizia paleocristiana a Roma (Rome, 2001), sched. 24, 291-2.

Just before this article was submitted Robert Coates-Stephens kindly alerted me to the existence of an unpublished Ph.D. on the late antique phases at Santa Lucia in Selci by Mirella Serlorenzi (// complesso di S. Lucia in Selci, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Architettura e Topografia Medievale, relatore L. Pani Ermini, correlatore C. Panella, anno académico 1987-8). Dr Serlorenzi 's survey drawings are published, at uncomfortably reduced scale, in A. Carandini, Storie dalla terra: manuale di scavo archeologico (Turin, 1991), 114-15, but the bulk of her research will appear in a forthcoming article. For the seventeenth-century history of Santa Lucia see F. Barry, Borromini, the Cavaliere d' Arpiño and Others at S. Lucia in Selci, Rome (forthcoming).



LATE ANTIQUE 'DOMUS' ON THE CLIVUS SUBURANUS 113

above it, the Porticus Liviae, (15-7 bc). The Porticus still bordered the busy Clivus, but was segregated from it by the new shop-filled podium. Only a broad flight of steps linked the two levels, at about the point where the modern convent entrance now stands.3 The entire complex of the Porticus has vanished, but 30-odd years ago Emilio Rodriguez-Almeida literally pieced together the topography of its environs (apart from the corner occupied by Santa Lucia) with fragments from the Severan Forma Urbis Romae (ad 215-17) (Figs 1 and 2).4 A shrine to Concordia, fountains, pavilions and parterres were all enclosed by a double, orbital colonnade, and the walks were famously shaded by one gargantuan vine stock, so that the Porticus came to constitute a 'green lung' in an increasingly populated area.5 Once Trajan had built his vast baths (ad 104-9), which sprawled over the whole Oppian from here all the way to the Colosseum, the citizen could leisurely promenade via the terracing connecting one structure to the other without meeting the street at all.

The other landmark of this area, in its Imperial heyday, was a monumental Fountain of Orpheus (the Lacus Orphei) further up the Clivus Suburanus. This antique precursor of the Trevi Fountain occupied the saddle of the hill, where the road forked, within an ancient piazza (the Platea Orphei) of more or less the same dimensions as the piazza built in the nineteenth century around the medieval Torre dei Capocci. Off this square stood the town houses of Pliny the Younger and the poet Albinovanus Pedo (a friend of Ovid and Martial), and the whole neighbourhood was, in fact, quite a literary quarter.6 Propertius lived somewhere in the vicinity and Horace, whose home became a 'poet's corner' after his death, apparently dwelled close by the Lacus too.7

The only visible remnant of all this building activity is now the sheer, brick wall that towers over the summit of the Via in Selci and has been absorbed into

3 C. Panella, 'L'organizzazione degli spazi sulle pendici settentrionali del colle Oppio tra Augusto e i Severi', in L'Urbs. Espace urbain et histoire (Ier siede av. J.-C.-IIIe siede ap. J.-C). Actes du colloque international organise par le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et l'École Franfaise de Rome (Rome, 8-12 mai 1985) (Rome, 1987), 611-51, esp. figs 8 and 10; Panella, in Steinby, Lexicon Topographicum (above, n. 1), IV, 127-9 with complete bibliography.

E. Rodriguez-Almeida, 'Forma Urbis marmorea: nuove integrazioni', Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 82 (1970-1 (1975)), 105-35, esp. pp. 105-9 and 124-7; E. Rodríguez- Almeida, 'Aggiornamento topografico dei colli Oppio, Cispio e Viminale secondo la Forma Urbis marmorea', Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia di Archeologia 48 (1975-6), 263ff. but summarized in E. Rodríguez- Almeida, Forma Urbis marmorea. Aggiorna- mento generale 1980 (Rome, 1980), 77-92. 5 Pliny, HN 14.2.11. The vine produced twelve amphorae of grape-juice per annum.

6 The Lacus Orphei is mentioned in Mart. Ep. 10.19. Its site was finally established by Rodriguez-Almeida, Forma Urbis marmorea (above, n. 4), 82-92. For the correct location of Pedo's house, see also E. Rodriguez- Almeida, in Steinby, Lexicon Topographicum (above, n. 1), II, 29-30; for Pliny's house, E. Rodriguez-Almeida, in Steinby, Lexicon Topographicum (above, n. 1), II, 158-9.

E. Rodriguez-Almeida, 'Qualche osservazione sulle Esquiliae patrizie e il Lacus Orphei', in L'Urbs. Espace urbain et histoire (above, n. 3), 415-28. Still another house belonged to Martial's friend, the lawyer Paulus.



114 BARRY

Fig. 1. The Clivus Suburanus on the Forma Urbis Romae, hypothetical reintegration: 1) Clivus Suburanus; 2) Lacus Orphei; 3) house of Pliny the Younger?; 4) 'domus'; 5) site of

the future Santa Lucia in Selci; 6) Baths of Trajan. (Compiled by the author.)

the fabric of the modern convent (Figs 3 and 4). What lay (or still lies) behind it remains something of a mystery. The last published observations of the convent interior were based on hasty notes made in 1937, and the convent still rigorously maintains its strict clausura* My own attempts to enter were not

8 Krautheimer {Corpus (above, n. 2), II, 190) reported that Wolfgang Frankl entered the substructures of the convent in 1937, though only very briefly. Dr Mirella Serlorenzi's equally brief 1987 inspection remains unpublished and she could only survey the structure at those points where the plaster had blown. Apollonj Ghetti published surveyed plans, sections and elevations as endpapers to his article but omitted any mention of their authorship and the circumstances of their production; B.M. Apollonj Ghetti, 'Le chiese titolari di S. Silvestro e S. Martino ai Monti',




Fig. 2. The same area as it appears in G.B. Nolli, Pianta nuova di Roma (1748). Numerals are in approximately the same positions. (Compiled by the author.)

greeted with enthusiasm. To make matters worse, archaeological investigation of the entire area between the Oppian and the Via in Selci has been negligible, with only a tiny patch in the heart of the Porticus Liviae quickly excavated in 1984-5. The enigmatically monumental wall fragment on the Via in Selci has consequently attracted more than one explanation. Its scale prompted Apollonj Ghetti to claim that it must be the basilica originally dedicated to Saint Martin

Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 37 (3-4) (1961), 271-302. Their dimensions diverge considerably from Frankl's partial elevation, but Dr Serlorenzi's surveyed elevation is proportionately closer to Frankl's, which is therefore the basis for the amended elevation shown here (Fig. 4). Apollonj Ghetti's plans, which are evidently based on survey, have been preferred over Frankl's, which were probably drawn from memory.



116 BARRY

Fig. 3. Santa Lucia in Selci, view from Piazza San Martino ai Monti. (Photo: author.)

of Tours that Pope Symmachus (498-514) had built near the Titulus Equitii, somewhere between the present sites of Santa Lucia in Selci and San Martino ai Monti. But this hypothesis has been refuted convincingly, and now most scholars accept the view, proposed by Krautheimer and seconded by Guidobaldi, that our wall constitutes the shell of a 'basilical hall' from a grand third- or fourth-century domus (into which Santa Lucia would later be inserted).9 This domestic hypothesis, as it happens, had already been

9 Two domus can be located roughly in the zone of Santa Lucia: that of Bruttius Praesens, probably the consul of that name in ad 180, and the domus of M. Servili Fabiani, consul in




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propounded as early as the 1570s when Pompeo Ugonio optimistically identified the remains with the mansion of Albinovanus Pedo (Fig. 5).10 Even before the Empire, the upper slopes of the Subura had housed the higher echelon of society and, as the Severan map demonstrates, the aristocracy continued to colonize properties in this area, by gradually conglomerating houses and even entire insulae into ever-grander mansions. An archaeological means test of the neighbourhood at the beginning of the fifth century is provided by the exquisite 'Esquiline Treasure', a trove of patrician silver including the famous Troiecta casket' that was found further down the street in 1793, and by a coin hoard uncovered immediately opposite Santa Lucia in 1890, both probably hidden during Alaric's sack of 410. n

Whether the standing range once belonged to a domus or not, it has gone unnoticed that until the seventeenth century it still continued several bays further to the left. Giovannoli's engraving of 1615 captures two or three of these bays continuing the march up the hill past the medieval buttress and, whatever the print's naivete, there is no reason to discount its testimony (Figs 6 and 7).12

ad 150; Serlorenzi, 'S. Lucia in Selci' (above, n. 2), 291. Apollonj Ghetti, 'Le chiese titolari' (above, n. 8), esp. pp. 286-95. Apollonj Ghetti's proposal has been systematically refuted by E. Coccia ('II 'titolo' di Equizio e la basilica dei SS. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti', Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 39 (1-2) (1963), 235-46) and Krautheimer {Corpus (above, n. 2), III, 122- 5). Filippo Coarelli regarded the structure as 'assai simile alla Biblioteca di Agapito . . . una sorta di basilica civile, della fine del III o dell'inizio del IV secolo d.C {Roma {Guide archeologiche Later za) (Rome, 1980; revised edition published 1995), 217) and the building has been identified as a domus also in F. Guidobaldi, 'L'edilizia abitativa unifamiliare nella Roma tardoantica', in A. Giardina (ed.), Società romana e impero tardoantico II (Bari, 1986), 165-237, at pp. 188-92. Krautheimer {Corpus (above, n. 2), II, 191) reckoned that the brickwork cannot be later than the third or fourth centurv.

10 P. Ugonio, Compendium Rerum Memorabilium Urbis Romae / Monumenta Sacra et Profana Romanae Urbis / Antiquitates Urbis. Theatrum Urbis Romae, MS, BAV, Barb. Lat. 1994, fols 204-5 and Barb. Lat. 2160, fol. 122v. On his sketch of Santa Lucia, Ugonio followed the words 'in orphea' with 'Illic parva tui domus Pedonis' ('there the small house of your Pedo'), that is Mart. Ep. 10.20.10. The bulk of Ugonio's notes on Santa Lucia in Selci, which are on fol. 205 (not cited by Krautheimer doubtless because they are scarcely legible), go on to expound the identification of the remains with Pedo's house. Most topographers now consider the comparatively modest house of Pedo to have been the backdrop to the Fountain of Orpheus, further up the slope and across the square. 11 For the debate that has surrounded the find-site of the Esquiline Treasure (British Museum) and the identity of its owners, see most conveniently K.S. Painter, 'II tesoro dell'esquilino', in S. Ensoli and E. La Rocca (eds), Aurea Roma. Dalla città pagana alla città cristiana (Rome, 2000), 140-6, with bibliography. For the hoard of 5,650 bronze coins, see G. Gatti, 'Trovamenti di oggetti d'arte e di antichità figurata', Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 18 (2-3) (February-March 1890), 76-8, at p. 76 (kind reference of Robert Coates-Stephens). 12 A. Giovannoli, Roma antica di Alò Gio\ annoii da Cività Castellana, libro secondo (Rome, 1615), no. 36. The legend reads: 'Templum positum ab Augusto pro victoria ex M. Ant.° et Cleopatra. Vergit ad orientem: Hodie S. Lucia ad Sílices. S. Carolus Borromeus Xpi Columnam petit inter preces ibi se verberaturus, in tinere pauperum inopia sublevati. /Tempio fatto da Cesare per la vittoria contro M. Ant.° e Cleopatra. Oggi S. Lucia in Selci à Levante. S. Carlo




Fig. 5. Pompeo Ugonio, sketch of the facade (BAV, Cod. Barb. Lat. 1994, fol. 204). © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. (Reproduced courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.)

In fact, it would seem that these same bays reappear on a fragment of the Forma Urbis, where the wall plainly turns to rise towards the present San Martino ai Monti. This range was also drastically remodelled in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, only to be completely demolished in 1895-6. Fortu- nately, a detailed plan was made a decade before its final demise (Fig. 8), from

Borromeo va alla Colonna del Sigre a fare oratione e disciplina per via da elemosina à poveri'. Only Niederer has mentioned this engraving, and argued that Giovannoli knew a lost inscription that led him to believe that the remains were those of a temple dedicated by Augustus; Niederer, The Roman Diaconiae (above, n. 2). Saint Charles Borromeo appears at the lower left as he dispenses alms on his way to venerate the column of the flagellation at Santa Prassede.



120 BARRY

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which it is possible to reconstruct the whole complex (Fig. 9).13 These plans make it obvious that originally a major wall once veered off from the roadside buttress, in the direction of San Martino ai Monti. Its lowest courses still survive in the basement of the modern convent, and it is highly likely that this was an antique wall or at least a medieval wall built on antique foundations.

Similarly, the tacit assumption that the entire wall still facing on to the Via in Selci is all of coeval construction is hardly likely; the tabernae and the large

13 The report (30 November 1886) is in Archivio Storico Capitolino, Fondo Contratti, 1886, Atti Pubblici, parte IV, fols 643-53. The plan is at fols 647/648. For the later remodellings, see Barry, Borromini (above, n. 2).



122 BARRY

Fig. 8. Survey plan of Santa Lucia in Selci, with the proposed demolitions (underlying and in light grey) and additions (in dark grey); 30 November 1886 (Archivio Storico Capitolino,

Fondo Contratti, 1886, Atti Pubblici, parte IV, fols 647/648). The arrow marks the 'veering wall' and the Torre dei Capocci appears in solid black.

( Reproduced courtesy of Archivio Capitolino, Rome.)




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clerestory windows high above them only loosely correspond. There are no common inter-axial widths, resulting in the eccentric silhouette of the relieving arches; furthermore, the brickwork of the wall is not flush with the travertine tabernae piers, but instead lies behind it. All of this goes to suggest that the piers pre-date their superstructure. I would hypothesize that they either belonged to some salient of the Porticus Liviae or, more probably, a vanished insula that once abutted it.14 What clinches an early date for the erection, long before any Christian reuse, is the barely-discernible effigy of a jovial Priapus later chiselled out by scandalized zealots (Fig. 10).15

As for the later building in which the travertine piers were incorporated as footings, we are still none the wiser. One must assume that it was an open hall because of the scale of the clerestory windows and the absence of any other fenestration. Its scale and location suggest a public basilica or library, accessible from one corner of the peristyle garden of the Porticus Liviae, but there are no literary or epigraphic references to support such a hypothesis. If, instead, this hall belonged to a private domus, then the entrance must have been from the high Platea Orphei or a lane parallel to the Clivus Suburanus rather than from the public gardens. None the less, it remains unproven that it could have been the sort of late antique apsidal hall with which it is often compared (most commonly the so-called 'Library of Agapitus', which is not actually a library, on the Caelian Hill). As it now stands, the tower-like bay, which book-ends the tabernae (Fig. 4), presents two further clerestory windows that are at a slightly lower level than their companions on the main block. And, although in Giovannoli's engraving the now-vanished tabernae maintain the horizon of those surviving, the large windows above them are shown at a markedly lower level (Figs 6 and 7). The engraving also suggests that the roofline of this section kept step too, plunging to the level of the clerestory arch springings on the main range. To sum up, if this building originally was a civic basilica, it had an eccentric plan (wedge-shaped at one end), erratic fenestration, and probably no

14 There is no evidence to support Apollonj Ghetti's assertion that the travertine piers were spolia; 'Le chiese titolari' (above, n. 8). Nor are they roughly built (as often said), but have just received rough treatment over the centuries. In fact, close tolerances mark their fitting. The joint between the masonry of the substructures of the Porticus Liviae and the 'domus' may be represented by the pier (now hidden under masonry from 1 606) that Ugonio indicates as 'C (Fig. 5), labelled lapides quadrati politi' ('polished and draughted stone blocks') and distinguished from the adjoining 'columnae seu perticae e tiburtino' ('columns or piers in Travertine'). Serlorenzi also supported a pre-Severan date for the travertine piers, 'S. Lucia in Selci' (above, n. 2). 15 Only Coarelli has previously noticed the Priapus, Roma (above, n. 9), 217. Apollonj Ghetti diplomatically stated 'che vedi una figura che, un po' per la natura del materiale (il travertino), un po' per le ingiurie del tempo e degli uomini, è irriconoscibile' ('Le chiese titolari' (above, n. 8), 287). Priapus effigies have four predominant locations: in house vestibules, on shop fronts, near gardens and near crossroads or traffic forks. This one fits the latter three categories.




Fig. 10. Travertine pier, with an effaced figure of Priapus. (Photo: author.)

apse. In fact, the annex where we would expect to find the apse may have been a quite distinct building.16

At all events, the Porticus gardens continued to prosper into the fifth century, although by the mid-sixth they had fallen into ruin and a necropolis had infiltrated their perimeter.17 A century later, Pope Honorius I (625-38) founded a church next to them, doubtless within the antique building over the

16 Serlorenzi (pers. comm.) contends that an apse did originally exist, continuous with the basilical side walls. If so, no trace of its foundation walls has ever come to light and the putative apse would have been uncomfortably tangential with the veering wall and its very large fenestration.

17 M. Marcelli, 'Su alcune tombe tardo-antiche di Roma: nota preliminare', Archeologia Medievale 16 (1989), 525-40.



126 BARRY

tabernae; he may have built a diaconia too (originally a sort of social assistance centre generally including a granary or food stores), for one is mentioned as functioning here during the reign of Leo III (795-8 1 6). 18 The apparent paucity of donations made to the church by Leo and his successor Gregory IV (827-44) led Krautheimer to argue that Santa Lucia had 'obviously' shrunk to the size of a small oratory.19 But the Liber Pontificalis only records papal donations, not private ones. Leo III is recorded as re-roofing (just possibly rebuilding) the church in the Liber Pontificalis, Flavio Biondo still called Santa Lucia an 'insignis ecclesia' in 1448, and Francesco Albertini enthused about its rich opus sedile decorations and motley spolia in 1510.20 Albertini even mentioned the church in the same breath as Sant' Andrea in Catabarbara (the Basilica of

18 For the social function of diaconiae, now see U. Falesiedi, Le diaconie: i servizi assistenziali nella Chiesa antica (Rome, 1995) and R. Hermes, 'Die stadtròmischen Diakonien', Rómische Quartalschrift für Christliche Alter tumskunde und Kirchengeschichte 91 (1996), 1-120, esp. pp. 61-2. (My thanks to Judson Emerick for the latter reference.) 19 Krautheimer, Corpus (above, n. 2), II, 192. 20 'simili modo et sarta tecta Luciae martyris quae poni tur in Orphea a novo refecit' {Liber Pontificalis I, 324). In classical texts 'tecta' was frequently a metonym for 'building'. Biondo is wrong in asserting that Leo IV (847-55) subsequently remodelled the church too; he simply confused this pontiff with Leo III (Flavio Biondo, Roma instaurata, XXXVI, in C. D'Onofrio, Visitiamo Roma nel Quattrocento. La città degli umanisti (Rome, 1989), 177) and Ugonio repeated the remark, without comment (BAV, Barb. Lat. 2160, fol. 122v).

Areas of 'Servian masonry' (walls built with large tufa blocks supposedly robbed from the Servian walls) have been identified in the substructures of the late antique building and are thought to belong to Leo Ill's intervention (Apollonj Ghetti, 'Le chiese titolari' (above, n. 8); Serlorenzi, 'S. Lucia in Selci' (above, n. 2)). However, I presume that Nolli is not describing these but rather the street frontage when he noted 'nel monistero di s. Lucia in Selci si osserva un muro con cortina di tufotti, e mattoni, e più avanti con gran massoni di tufi, e travertini, e segue poi avanti parimente con cortina di tufi, e mattoni'; G.B. De Rossi and G. Gatti, 'Note di ruderi e monumenti antichi di Roma, prese da G.B. Nolli nel delineare la pianta di Roma conservate nell' Archivio Vaticano' (Part II), Studi e Documenti di Storia del Diritto 5 (1884), 109-58, at p. 151, n. 3507; Liber Pontificalis II, 11, 17.

Flavio Biondo, Roma instaurata, in R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti (eds), Codice topografico della città di Roma (Rome, 1953), II, 296. Francesco Albertini, Opusculum de Mirabilibus Novae et Veteris Urbis Romae (Rome, (1510)), in Valentini and Zucchetti (above), IV, 491: 'That is not to mention, furthermore, the marbles and porphyretic stones of various colours, and walls fashioned (in the manner of painters) into effigies, as appears in the portico of Saint Peter's and Santa Maria in Trastevere and in the church of Sant' Andrea encrusted with wondrous artifice (as I said in the Stationibus Urbis), and in the church of Santa Lucia in Selci, in which churches pictures of animals and birds are depicted as if they were made of mosaic and painting, [and] the spoils of Roman temples and baths are to be seen' ('Obmitto praeterea marmora et lapides porphireticos diversorum colorum septaque in statuis pictorum more reducta, ut apparet in porticu Sancti Petri et Sanctae Mariae Transtyberinae et in ecclesia Sancti Andreae miro artificio incrustata ut dixi in Sationibus Urbis, et in ecclesia Sanctae Luciae in Silice, in quibus ecclesiis picturae animalium aviumque ac si musivo et pictura essent depictae, visuntur spolia templorum et thermarum Romanarum'). The text is first cited in Niederer, The Roman Diaconiae (above, n. 2), 335, no. 16. Albertini's original text reads 'septaque' not 'sectaque' (as in Valentini and Zucchetti, and all later writers). Charles Rohault de Fleury's claim, in 1890, to have detected lancet windows in the upper storey of the late antique structure is just another case of bad eyesight at Santa Lucia {Les saints de la messe et leurs monuments (Paris, 1894), II, pl. 147).




Junius Bassus), Santa Maria in Trastevere and Saint Peter's itself, all of which were rather exalted company for a degraded oratory.

Through the medieval period the parish itself must have remained populous and poor, if a diaconia was necessary. But one does gain a fleeting impression of the menacing abandon and noxious vapours that permeated the Porticus from the fable that Leo IV (847-55) exorcized a homicidal, fire- breathing basilisk from caverns next to the church (that is, the substructures of the Porticus Liviae) in 847. 21 Leo not only threw the Good Book at the demon and deployed the massed choirs of Santa Maria Maggiore, but also pressed into service the Acheiropoieton of the Saviour that was being processed from the Lateran up to Santa Maria Maggiore to greet the Madonna Salus Populi. The occasion was the vigil of the Assumption (14 August) and, from now on, Santa Lucia would be an annual station on the living map of Roman ceremonial. For, whenever the Acheiropoieton passed her door on each succeeding anniversary, a Madonna Advocata would emerge from Santa Lucia to implore His intercession and the Saviour's feet would even be cleaned with basil to recall the defeat of the basil(isk), or so it was thought.22 In 1566, the annual procession was discontinued, but in 1613, when Paul V definitively translated the Madonna Salus Populi into the new Borghese Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore, the icon was still halted outside Santa Lucia.23

At the outset, the church had gone under the title of Santa Lucia in Orphea, a toponym that lingered on in officiai documents until the end of the seventeenth century. But both the Orphic fountain and its square must have vanished long before the twelfth century, when Santa Lucia stooped to adopt the more humble suffix 'in selcis', from the volcanic slabs that paved the Clivus Suburanus (now rechristened the Via in Selci).24 Every text that mentions Santa Lucia since the

21 Liber Pontificate II, 1 10. Raymond Davis hypothesized that 'the escape of methane from the mounds of rubbish which underlay many of the habitations of 9th-century Rome might have caused the phenomena mentioned' (The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificate ). The Ancient Biographies of Ten Popes from A.D. 817-891 (Liverpool, 1995), 118).

R. Coates-Stephens ('Housing in early medieval Rome, ad 500-1000', Papers of the British School at Rome 64 (1996), 239-59) argues that areas like this one continued to be inhabited almost as densely as they were in Imperial times. In particular, he cites G. Gatti, Trovamenti risguardanti la topografia e la epigrafia urbana', Bulle ttino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 17 (1) (January 1889), 35-49, at p. 41 for an otherwise unspecified 'muro dei bassi tempi' opposite the church.

G. Wolf, Salus Populi Romani. Die Geschichte Romischer Kultbilder im Mittelalter (Weinheim, 1990), 39, 42, 45, 51, 72, 145; E. Parlato, 'Le icone in processione', in M. Andaloro and S. Romano (eds), Arte e iconografia a Roma da Costantino a Cola di Rienzo (Milan, 2000), 69-92: Wolf, on the basis of Pseudo-Apuleius, connected basil with basilisk (p. 55). 23 S. Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter- Reformation Rome. The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore (Cambridge, 1996), 119. 24 For the title of in Orthea or in Orphea, see Montenovesi, 'Santa Lucia in Selci' (above, n. 2), 89 and Krautheimer, Corpus (above, n. 2), II, 188. Bruzio said that some contemporaries held the church was built on the site of a temple of Orpheus, but he knew that the toponym was actually derived from the nearby fountain, Theatrum Romanae Urbis (above, n. 2), fol. 21 3v.



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nineteenth century recounts with complete serenity that the church soon housed a Benedictine monastery, founded sometime between the eighth and twelfth centuries. As the earliest monastic foundations are more often than not Benedictine, this assertion would be plausible enough, were it not for the fact there is not a scrap of evidence to attest that Santa Lucia was ever monastic in this period, let alone Benedictine, or actually that there was any room for a community there.25 All that can be said with any certainty is that by the turn of the thirteenth century the celebrated Cencio Savelli (Cencius Camerarius) had served as Santa Lucia's Cardinal Deacon (1192-1200).26 Again, there is no evidence to support the much later claim that on Cencio's accession to the papacy, in 1216, as Honorius III (1216-27), he had his old charge restored.27 If this were true, then Honorius, who rebuilt San Lorenzo fuori le mura, left no such distinguished mark on Santa Lucia. But patronage patterns at such a date are still nebulous. It is equally possible that the church was restored by one of

Ugonius had already made the same observation (BAV, Barb. Lat. 1994, fol. 205). The appellation 'in orfeo' continued to be mentioned in Visite Apostoliche until the end of the seventeenth century.

Liber Pontificalis II, 313 ('sancta Lucia de silice'). ' . . . detta in Silice, per una selciata antica,

della quale anco se ne vedono vestigij . . . ' (P.M. Felini, Trattato nuovo delle cose meravigliose

dell'alma città di Roma (Rome, 1610), 179). Cf. F. Del Sodo, Compendio delle chiese con le loro fondanone consegratione e titoli de cardinali delle parocchie co il battesimo e senza dell Inospitali reliquie et indulgentie e di tutte li luoghi pij di Roma . . . , MS [1575], BAV, Vat. Lat. 11911, fols 162-3.

25 The first reference to a Benedictine community is made, without sources, by Parati, 'Chiesa di S. Lucia' (above, n. 2), 94. He is followed by P. Adinolfi {Roma nell'età di mezzo (Rome, 1881), II, 116-19, at p. 119) and texts as authoritative as P. Fridolin Kehr, Italia Pontificia sive Repertorium Privilegiorum et Litterarum a Romanis Pontificibus ante Annum MCLXXXXXVIII Italiae Ecclesiis, Monasteriis, Civitatibus Singulisque Personis Concessorum (Berlin, 1906), 46. However, there is no mention of any monastic foundation at Santa Lucia between the fifth and tenth centuries; cf. G. Ferrari, Early Roman Monasteries. Notes for the History of the Monasteries and Convents at Rome from the V through the X Century {Studi di antichità cristiana, Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana 23) (Rome, 1957). I have uncovered none for the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

26 P. Gauchat, Hierarchia Catholica, Medii et Recentioris Aevi . . . (Regensburg, 1935), I, 3, n. 1, no. 23. Cf. ASV, Scheda Garampi, 112, fols 77r/v. Cencio simultaneously held the office of camerarius to Celestine III (1191-8). His Liber Censuum lists Santa Lucia without particular comment; Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico (above, n. 20), III, 232. 27

Anonymous Memorandum, Tondatione del Ven.e Monast/0 di S. Lucia in Selce di Roma', on fol. Ir of Archivio di Stato di Roma, Congregazioni Religiose Feminili, Agostiniane in S. Lucia in Selci, voi. 5527 (Libro Mastro 1697-1721):

4 ... dell'anno 1216 fu restaurato da Honorio 3.°, essendo il Monas.ro habitato da Monaci, che vi dimorono sino all'anno 1370, che poi furno trasferiti à S.Croce in Gerusalemme, e da quel tempo fu concesso il Mon.ro alle Monache dell'Ordine di S. Agostino, che di presente lo ritengono, come apparisce per Bolla di Urbano quinto'. No such bull is published in L. Cherubini, Bullarium sive Nova Collectio Plurimarum Const itutionum Apostolicarum Diversorum Romanorum Pont. A Beato Leone Primo usque as S.D.N. Paulum Quintum . . . (Rome, 1621), I, 219-20. The same information is repeated in Bruzio, who alleged that Honorius ordered the restoration to be undertaken by 'un certo Cardinale Stefano', Theatrum Romanae Urbis (above, n. 2), fols 112v-113r.




the neighbouring families that transformed the plateau above the church, the old Platea Orphei, into a feudal fortress in the thirteenth century, with the two immense towers (the so-called Torre dei Capocci, built by families whose names remain unknown) that tower over the zone to this day.28 The sheer labour involved in scavenging lime and bricks, and then in building these towers, would have provided an excellent opportunity for interested parties to make repairs to Santa Lucia. Whoever did pay for the works, appears to have shored up the antique building after ruin or earthquake, since the scars of a gaping hole are still plainly visible at the east end of the wall. This was also probably the occasion when the powerful buttress was built out into the street, at the bend in the road.

At some undetermined point, the supposed Benedictine foundation at Santa Lucia was purportedly supplanted by a Carthusian one that itself moved out in 1370, when Urban V moved the Carthusians to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. At this point the complex was reputedly given to Augustinian nuns. At least this is the version that has been repeated since the seventeenth century, although the scanty contemporary references to Santa Lucia's occupants in the medieval period never mention any monks.29 Indeed, a document of 1348 strongly suggests that nuns were in occupation of at least part of the convent already by the mid-fourteenth century. It cites 'S. Maria in Selce' and her community of nuns.30 Since no church by this name is otherwise recorded in the area or anywhere else in Rome, and since Santa Lucia was reputed to have enjoyed a

28 See L. Bianchi, Case e torri medioevali a Roma. Documentazione, storia e sopravvivenza di ediñci medioevali nel tessuto urbano di Roma (Rome, 1998), I, 3-97 with vast bibliography. 29 Fioravante Martinelli was the first to assert that the church was Carthusian {Roma ex Ethnica Sacra Sanctorum Petri, et Pauli . . . (Rome, 1653), 164). Francesco Del Sodo confused everything by saying that they were Cistercians (Compendio delle Chiese . . . , MS, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, G 33, fol. 103r; kind reference of Caroline Goodson). There are two unpublished (but uninformative) references to a certain 'Bartholomeus clericus ecc.ae set. Luciae in montibus' in 1248 (ASV, Registri Vaticani, torn. 21, nos. 884, 893) and the church is fleetingly mentioned in 1303 (ASV, Registri Vaticani, torn. 51, ep. 884), again without reference to a monastic order. The Turin catalogue of c. 1320, although it is otherwise very specific about orders, simply says 'Ecclesia sánete Lucie in Silice dyaconi cardinalis habet clericos V; Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico (above, n. 20), III, 301.

30 R. Mosti (ed.), I protocolli di Johannes Nicolai Pauli, un notaio romano del '300 (1348- 1379) (Collection de l'École Frangaise de Rome 63) (Rome, 1982), 34, no. 51, 19 August 1348: venerabilis domina Francisca domini Roberti abbatissa monasterii Sánete Marie in Selce, domina Angela de Urbe et domina Iohanna de castro Vallis Montonis moniales dicti monasterii pro se ipsis et aliarum monialium absentium pro quibus promiserunt de rato et vice et nomine dicti monasterii et pro eo earum bonis voluntatibus locaverunt et locationis titulo dederunt assignaverunt et concesserunt Petro Cerronis de regione Montium presenti et recipienti idest unum casale ipsius monasterii quod vocatur Sancta Elena positum extra portam Maiorem Cf. Mosti, I protocolli (above), 34, no. 52.

'Santa Maria in Selce' should not be confused with 'Santa Maria ad Suburram', founded in 1228 on the site of the present Madonna dei Monti, for which see L. Temperini, 'Fenomeni di vita communitaria tra i penitenti Francescani in Roma e dintorni', in R. Pazzelli and L. Temperini (eds), Prime manifestazioni di vita comunitaria e femminile nel movimento francescano della penitenza (1215-1447). Atti del convegno di studi francescani, Assisi, 30 giugno-21 luglio 1981 (Rome, 1982), 615-17.



130 BARRY

double dedication to both Mary and Lucy, this would seem to be our convent or, possibly, an oratory attached to it.31

Late quattrocento and early cinquecento antiquarians passingly mentioned the church's marbles, spolia and inscriptions and sometimes they even drew them (Figs 11 and 12). 32 But otherwise, Santa Lucia again slips from the reliable historical record until 1534, when Paul III conceded the buildings to a community of Benedictine nuns. The convent and tower in this period are just visible in a view by Antonie van den Wyngaerde (Fig. 13).33 The brief revival that the convent enjoyed under the tenure of the Benedictines was stymied when Sixtus V demoted it from a Cardinal Deaconry in 1587, but by the dawn of the new century the influx of a new order, Augustinian nuns, would decisively ameliorate the convent's fortunes. This revival would eventually result in the church's complete reconstruction in 1603-4, then the decorative campaigns of Borromini, Lanfranco, the Cavaliere d' Arpiño in the 1630s and, by the same token, the demise of almost all medieval remains.

A strangely overlooked testimony - Antonio Tempesta's 1593 map of Rome - does, however, portray the medieval church at the moment right before it was obliterated in these baroque interventions (Fig. 14). There we see

31 Two isti -omenti cited by Garampi in the eighteenth century, but now lost, record sizeable property bequests made by Stefano dei Normanni (1400) and Lorenzo Santi (1414) to the 'Cappellani S. Mariae in ipsa Ecclesia' (ASV, Scheda Garampi, vol. 113, fol. 39v, citing these lost manuscripts: Registri Lateranenses, Bonifatius IX, XII, 12, fol. 165; Registri Lateranenses, Martinus V, III, 13, fol. 254). Bruzio and some Visite Apostoliche also cite the dedication to Mary, as does the painted dedicatory inscription in the church (of 1604):

' . . . TEMPLUM MARIAE AUGUSTAE GENETRICI DEI ET LUCIAE VIRGINI MARTYRI INVICTAE DICATUM . . . '; V. Forcella, Inscrizioni delle chiese e d'altri edifici dal secolo XI fino ai nostri ziorni (Rome, 1869-84), X, 360, no. 593.

32 For the inscriptions, see Petrus Sabinus, Epitaphia Varia Antiqua Romae et Alibi Reperta, MS (c. 1488), BAV, Ottob. lat. 2015, fol. 139v ('In ecclesia sánete luciae in regione montium: PERIBLEPTUS AUG. LIB ULPIAE ARETE CONIUGI CARISSIMAE FECIT'); this inscription (CIL 23928) is repeated in Jacopo Mazocchi, Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis (Rome, 1521), 39 (Fig. 1 1). Mazocchi also mentioned two others: 'In sancta Lucia in Silice . . . VESBINO AUGI [actually AUG L] PATRI SAN[C]TISSIMO ET FLAVIAE AMPLIATAE MATRI PIISSIMAE. ITEM SIBI POSTERISQUE SUIS T. FLAVIUS AQUILA FECIT' (CIL 28615) and 'D. M. ASCONIAE DORIDI ET ERASMO [actually ERASiNO] CONIUGI EIUS Q ASCONIUS ERASMUS [actually ERASINUS] PARENTIBUS DULCISSIMIS' (CIL 12507). By 1666, when Francesco Tolomei made his own sylloge (Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena, K Vili, 2.3, torn. I, fols 31, 79) the first two inscriptions had entered the gardens of the Villa Giustiniani, while the third was apparently lost. See also Anonymous, Harvard, Houghton Library, MS typ. 152H, fol. 48: 'In sancta Lucia in Silice Rom. Hie situs est quondam coeli pars maxima plebs/adfectus omnis possidet iste lapis/vix consumavit septem quinquendendia lustri/ oscula ferventem nee tonuere animam/quod si mutari patuissent fila sororum/gauderet condi maximus hoc tumulo/cellius maximus pheb lib dulciss'. I am indebted to Kathleen Christian for these references.

See also Albertini, Opusculum de Mirabilibus (above, n. 20). The capital base (Fig. 12) is in the Delorme sketchbook, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Codex Q5b, Fi 23/29. The annotation reads 'in canpo lasubburra [i.e. 'in capite suburae'l a Santa Lucia'. 33 Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Sutherland collection, Large vol. IV, fol. 96a-b. For the post- 1534 history of the church, see Barry, Borromini (above, n. 2).




Fig. 1 1 . Inscription formerly in Santa Lucia in Selci. (Jacopo Mazocchi, Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis Romae (Rome, 1520); BAV, Cod. Barb. Lat. 8492). Annotated by Lelio Podagro. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. ( Reproduced courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.)

that the old church was accessible through a portal in a wall facing down the slope, and a long ramp - which reappears, albeit rather inaccurately, in a thumbnail sketch by Ugonio (Fig. 5; 'A')34 - led up to it from a landing with a

34 BAV, Barb. Lat. 1994, fol. 204. Krautheimer (Corpus (above, n. 2), II, 188-9) was perplexed by the ramp in Ugonio's sketch and could arrive at no adequate explanation for it, given that Ugonio seemed to omit the tower structure that adjoins the tabernae (Krautheimer's 'Structure IF; see my Fig. 4). But Ugonio's tiny sketch must have been scrawled from memory.

For Tempestai map, see A.P. Frutaz (ed.), Le piante di Roma (Rome, 1962), II, pianta CXXXIV, 3, tav. 265; it is copied almost exactly in Gotfried van Schayck's plan of 1630



132 BARRY

Fig. 12. Column base formerly in Santa Lucia in Selci. (Delorme sketchbook, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Codex Q5b, Fi 23/29). ( Reproduced courtesy of the Victoria and Albert

Museum, London.)

perpendicular flight down to street level (possibly the remains of the entrance stair to the Porticus Liviae).

THE CERRONI ALTARPIECE

The most intriguing vestige of the medieval occupancy of Santa Lucia, however, is the panel painting of Saint Lucy and Donor, which entered the collection of the Musée des Beaux- Arts at Grenoble in 1901 (Fig. 15).35 This panel is of extraordinary historical value as it is the only full-scale, devotional panel of a saint to have resurfaced so far from medieval Rome. Because of its rarity, the painting has been included in several overviews of Roman duecento and trecento painting, but it has only been accorded detailed study by Gertrude Coor-Achenbach and Paul Hetherington, who independently affirmed the painting's stylistic origins in a Roman workshop of around 1300.36

(II, pianta CXLVIII, 3, tav. 326). Leonardo Bufalini's earlier 1551 map is absolutely unusable for this exercise, as his fictional plan of Santa Lucia is even located on the wrong side of the street (II, pianta CIX, 9, tav. 198). Equally unreliable is Du Pérac's aerial plan of 1577, where Santa Lucia (labelled) appears as a detached church surrounded by green space and roughly on the site of Santa Maria della Purificazione (see F. Ehrle, Roma prima di Sisto V. La pianta di Roma Du Pérac-Lafréry del 1577, riprodotta dall'esemplare esistente nel Museo Britannico (Vatican City, 1908)). One detail of Tempestai representation is momentarily misleading, namely the apparent apse backing on to the street at roughly the point of the present choir. On-site observation shows this to imitate the slight, and still extant, curvature of the wall at this point. Every other map between Bufalini and Tempesta omits the church.

Ville de Grenoble: catalogue des tableaux . . . exposes dans les galeries du Musée . . . (Grenoble, 1911), 155, no. 543. The painting was purchased in Rome before 1901. My thanks to Pascal Boissin for his courtesy and speed in supplying a photograph of the altarpiece. 36 G. Coor-Achenbach, 'Notes on two unknown early Italian panel paintings', Gazette des Beaux- Arts 42 (1953), 247-57; P. Hetherington, 'A Cavallinesque panel painting in Grenoble', Gazette des Beaux-Arts 103 (March 1984), 94-8.




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134 BARRY

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Fig. 15. Unknown painter: Saint Lucy with Donor (Angila Cerroni) (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble).

(Reproduced courtesy of the Musée de Grenoble.)



136 BARRY

The saint, poised between diminutive angels swinging thuribles, brandishes a flaming lamp while at the lower left the donor, a certain 'Angela wife of Odo Cerroni' (ANGILA UXOR ODONIS CER/RO/NIS), prays to the saint or offers thanks for a favour received, possibly recovery from an eye ailment.

Although the panel is not mentioned in any description of Santa Lucia in Selci, an early nineteenth-century label pasted on its back gives its provenance as this church, and the convent's sheer obscurity leads one to believe this ascription.37 It would be difficult to say anything more on the subject were it not that the Cerroni happen to be one of the three or four best recorded families of Rome at the close of the Middle Ages. They were rich bovattieri who reinvested the wealth they derived from selling the grain and pork produced on their extra- urban estates, in gradually wresting inner-city properties away from the baronial families that had controlled the abitato for centuries.38 The Cerroni were the 'new men' of their era and rapidly became a political force as well. In 1351, a few years after the fall of Cola di Rienzo, one family member, Giovanni Cerroni, was even elected 'Rettore Capo del Popolo di Roma' by popular acclaim in Santa Maria Maggiore and then carried shoulder-high to the Campidoglio.39

More germane is the fact that their landholdings occupied a triangle between the Baths of Trajan, San Pietro in Vincoli and Santa Lucia in Selci, and were so numerous that they even amounted to a Cerroni 'quarter', the Contrada de Cerronibus.40 As the century progressed, the Cerroni, in fact, gradually displaced the former grip of the baronial Annibaldi on this area of the city. The Cerroni vineyards overlooked Santa Lucia and a conurbation of several

37 Coor-Achenbach, 'Notes' (above, n. 36), was aware of the label, but suggested that the altarpiece might have been transferred to Santa Lucia in Selci at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Hetherington, 'A Cavallinesque panel painting' (above, n. 36), strangely, was unaware of her article, and hence the label, and therefore regarded the painting's original home as 'a tantalising obscurity'. 3 For detailed information on the Cerroni family, see Giovanni Pietro Caffarelli, Spoglio di notizie storico-genealogiche riguardanti famiglie romane . . . , BAV, Ferraioli 282, fols 259-62 (anno 1597); Domenico Mita, genis Ceroniae in Aemilia de vetusta aliquot monimenta (Rome ex typ. Filippo and Nicolo de Romanis 1826) (MS originally 1634, Italian edition: Sull'origine e sulle geste della famiglia Ceroni (Faenza, 1884), 17-22); Bianchi, Case e torri medioevali (above, n. 28), I, 49, n. 153. For the social and politicai status of the family, see C. Gennaro, 'Mercanti e bovattieri nella Roma della seconda metà del Trecento (Da una ricerca su registri notarili)', Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo e Archivio Muratoriano 78 (1967), 155-203, esp. pp. 181-3; J.-C. Maire Vigeur, 'Classe dominante et classes dirigeantes à Rome à la fin du Moven-àge', Storia della Città 1 (1976), 4-26. 39 See P. Supino Martini in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani XXIV (Rome, 1980), 29-30 with bibiliography, but largely based on Matteo Villani, Historia ab Anno MCCCXLVIII ad Annum MCCCLXIV, cap. XLVII (Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XIV, cois 136-7).

40 H. Boise and J.-C. Maire Vigeur, 'Strutture famigliari, spazio domestico e architettura', in Storia dell'arte italiana V {Momenti di architettura) (Turin, 1983), 99-160, at pp. 118-22 and 136-8; plans and tables at pp. 119 and 137. See also the amendments made in Bianchi, Case e torri medioevali (above, n. 28), I, 45-50.




houses - whose name (the 'Accasamenta Cerronum') suggests that it was their original homestead - stood right by it.41 There is no conclusive evidence for or against the hypothesis, but the Accasamenta Cerronum may even have belonged to the stronghold surrounding the so-called Torre dei Capocci.42 All these details, in short, put beyond any real doubt the painting's provenance from Santa Lucia in Selci.

Since the panel is unrecorded, so is its original function. The image is reminiscent of early duecento panels, of Saint Francis and other saints, which seem to have functioned more as memorie than true altarpieces; often these figures are flanked by scenes from the saint's life depicted on the same panel.43 But Saint Lucy's monumental frontality, and the scars of paired hinges on both sides of the frame, demonstrate that this panel originally formed the centre of a

41 Giovanni di Pietro de Cerronibus (Odo's cousin) owned a 'palatium cum puteo et orto . . . in loco qui dicitur selciata Sánete Lucie' in 1377. Notarial act, copy of 1446 in Archivio di Stato di Roma, Ospedale del SS. Salvatore ad Sancta Sanctorum, b. 504, n. 7; published in Bianchi, Case e torri medioevali (above, n. 28), I, 45-50, and 77-83, doc. 2.

Moreover, Pietro Cerroni rented property from (probably) Santa Lucia (see document of 19 August 1348; above, n. 30) and the Cerroni continued to bury their dead in nearby Santa Maria Maggiore until the Quattrocento. For the family vault in Santa Maria Maggiore, see D. Jacovacci, Repertori delle famiglie, BAV, Ottob. Lat. 2549, parte II, fols 919-20: 'In Catasto S.mi Salvatoris, 1419. Petrus de Cerronibus de regione montium sepultus est in ecclesia S.tae Mariae Maioris, qui reliquit d.° hospitali 50.ta florenos, pro quorum solutione d.a societas habuit unam vineam in Catasto possessionum contentam' (fol. 917); 'In d.° Catasto S.mi Salvatoris, 1451. Lellus de Cerronibus sepultus est in ecclesia Sanctae Mariae Maioris, pro quo sunt assignati floreni 5O.ta de fructibus Varchae, ut patet per acta Thomase Serentini' (fol. 918); 'In d.° Catasto S.mi Salvatoris, 1451. Dna Camilla uxor Pauli de Cerronibus sepulta est in ecclesia S.tae Mariae Maioris, pro qua dictus Paulus dedit per manus Petri Pauli Stephani quantitatem vini valentis L. flor, quo fuit portatum ad hospitale' (fol. 918); 'In S.ta Maria Maiore lapide sepulcrale HOC EST SEPULCHRUM DE CERRONIBUS. Hie iacet Dna Laurentia Fadanni, obijt anno Dominj MCCCCLXXXiiij'. Lorenzo di Pietro Cerroni (Odo's cousin) was also presumably buried there as he endowed the chapel of the Magdalene; J. Coste, 'II fondo medievale dell'Archivio di S. Maria Maggiore', Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 96 (1973), 5-77, at p. 42 and n. 182.

42 There is no record whatsoever of who owned the Torre dei Capocci prior to the seventeenth century. Moreover, the Cerroni landholdings listed in the surviving trecento notarial acts are partial; they only record Cerroni properties that were held in common by Odo and his cousin Francesco, whilst Odo's other properties are only mentioned when they adjoin these. As a clan, the Cerroni may have strategically acquired properties along the artery of the Via in Selci in the same way that the Orsini did in the Campo Marzio in the same century: F. Bosman, 'Incastellamento urbano a Roma: il caso degli Orsini', in N. Christie (ed.), Settlement and Economy in Italy 1500 bc-ad 1500. Papers of the Fifth Conference of Italian Archaeology (Oxbow Monograph 41) (Oxford, 1995), 499-507 (kind reference of Claudia Bolgia).

3 K. Kriiger, Der Frühe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien. Gestalt- und Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1992). Cf. the crypt painting of Saint Lucy, with scenes from her life, at Melfi, published in S. Ortolani, 'Inediti meridionali del Duecento', Bollettino d'Arte 33 (1948), 295-319, at p. 302; A. Rizzi, 'Ancora sulle criptevolturine', Napoli Nobilissima 12 (1973), 71-84, at p. 73 and n. 30 (for the correction of the dating to 1292); G. Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in Central and Southern Italian Schools of Painting (Florence, 1965), figs 831-4.



138 BARRY

'tabernacle' altarpiece.44 This fact, and the figure's almost life-size scale (1.70 x 0.65 m), make it possible that she was the high altarpiece of Santa Lucia.

Altogether more controversial is the painting's dating. Coor-Achenbach and Hetherington placed its execution in Rome about 1300, conclusions that have been widely accepted, though a slightly earlier dating has also been advanced.45 Hitherto the evidence has been primarily stylistic: the iconological attributes of the crown, jewelled robe, lamp and angelic thurifers are, as previous commentators have pointed out, Byzantinizing vestiges and, like the uncial script, all seem to point to an early date. By contrast, the figure's relative plasticity would suggest an artist influenced by Pietro Cavallini, while details like the serpentine curve of her pendant drapery would reflect the influence of Gothic works. The panel has therefore been attributed to Jacopo Torriti, or a follower,46 and is sometimes labelled as being by a 'follower of Cavallini'. The temptation to regard our panel as an artefact from Cavallini's circle has been fed further by that artist's supposed kinship with the panel's donor, Angela Cerroni, a relation based on the record of a certain Tetrus dictus Cavallinus de Cerronibus' as witness to a sale of 1273.47 Boskovits, however, has rightly discredited the equation of this Petrus with the painter Pietro Cavallini.48

While no more is known about the Grenoble altarpiece's donor, Angela Cerroni, by an incredible stroke of good fortune it is possible to pinpoint the Odo mentioned with some confidence, and this identification has disconcerting implications for the panel's dating. He must be the only Odo Cerroni in this well-documented family in this period - Odo di Paolo di Cerro Cerroni mentioned in documents between 1348 and 1387.49 Odo (or Oddo) was still a

44 Before restoration, a seam of surface abrasion extended from the central jewel of the saint's crown all the way down to the feet, corresponding with the meeting line of the lateral shutters; Coor-Achenbach, 'Notes' (above, n. 36), 248, figs 1 and 2.

45 M. Petersen, Jacopo Torriti: Critical Study and Catalogue Raisonné (Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, 1989), 449-51, cat. no. 3L, with further bibliography, who wisely made no attribution but dated it to c. 1280-5. The most thorough stylistic analysis of the Grenoble panel is still that in Coor-Achenbach. 'Notes' (above, n. 36). 251-7.

46 L. Bellosi, La pecora di Giotto (Turin, 1985), 113-14. 47 G. Ferri, 'Le carte dell'archivio Liberiano dal secolo X al XV, Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 30 (1907), 127-8. This identification was still pursued by Hetherington, 'A Cavallinesque panel painting' (above, n. 36). 98.

M. Boskovits, 'Proposte (e conferme) per Pietro Cavallini', in A.M. Romanini (ed.), Roma anno 1300: atti della IV settimana di studi di storia dell'arte medievale dell'Università di Roma "La Sapienza' (19-24 maggio 1980) (Rome, 1983), 297-8. Boskovits also cited a marginal note in a manuscript (originally published in P. Fedele, 'Per la biografia di Pietro Cavallini', Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 43 (1920), 157-9), dating to c. 1350-60, wherein the papal scriptor Iohannis de Cerronibus recorded the death of his father Petrus de Cerronibus at the age of 100. This 'Iohannis' is almost certainly the person mentioned in the document cited in the next footnote.

49 Mosti, I protocolli (above, n. 30), 59, 63, 196, nos. 1 15, 1 16, 452: 20 November 1348 (' ... domina Margarita filia Johannis Cerronis de regione Montium que iuravit etc. cum consensu dicti Iohannis patris sui sponte donavit inter vivos Petro Cerronis, Ceccho et Oddoni germanis fratibus [sic] filiis quondam Pauli Cerronibus ...'); 20 November 1348 (' . . . supradicta domina




reasonably common name in duecento and trecento Rome, but not in the Cerroni family. Odo's father was Paolo, his grandfather Cerro, and none of his various uncles, great-uncles, or cousins were called Odo. Therefore, unless his great-grandfather was also called Odo, we must shift the panel's conventional dating by at least half a century, and it actually may have been painted at any point between c. 1348 and c. 1387. By the same token, the fact that Angela is not referred to as 'uxor quondam Oddonis' (my emphasis) would preclude dating it any later.

Our knowledge of trecento Roman painting is as scanty as the actual remains, which are almost entirely murals.50 Our artefact, then, belongs in a category of such rarity that one cannot exclude the possibility that its style was anachronistic, or that it was painted by an ageing artist of reticent abilities, or that it was deliberately archaizing (especially as regards the perhaps 'saintly' schematism of Lucy's face). It is even possible that the artist copied an earlier, highly cherished, image that has not survived. This is, incidentally, the case for the mosaic figures of female saints on the facade frieze of Santa Maria in Trastevere, with which Coor-Achenbach and Hetherington independently compared our Saint Lucy.51

The Grenoble altarpiece may, in short, be a hapax legomenon. For the moment we have established its provenance, and documented remains argue for a much later dating than would be considered normally. More evidence would have to be found to test the hypothesis any further. As was the case for the other Saint Lucy, the church, the truth is delivered up slowly and in small instalments.

Fabio Barry

Margarita . . . dicto Iohanne patre suo per sollennem stipulationem promisit restituere Petro Cerronis, Ceccho et Oddoni nepotibus dicti Petri quicquid ad earn perveniat et aubcessionem Iohannis Cerroni patris sui ... '); 10 December 1363 (' ... Oddonem Cerronis et Laurentium Cerronis ...')• I. Lori Sanfilippo (ed.), Il protocollo di Lorenzo Staglia, 1368 (Rome, 1986), 38-9, no. 34 (sale of wool, 7 February 1372); the last document is cited by Jacovacci, Repertori delle famiglie (above, n. 41), fol. 916, although he mistakenly gave the notary's name as Tannutius Joannis Tagliae notarius' (neither these documents nor those in the previous note were known to Boise, Maire Vigeur and Bianchi). The document of 26 April 1377 mentioning Odo (' . . . ab uno latere habet Oddo de Cerronibus . . . ') is cited above, n. 41. Contracts of 1385 and 1387 are cited in Gennaro, 'Mercanti e bovattieri' (above, n. 38), 181-2. 50 For an overview, see A. Tornei, 'Roma senza papi: artisti, botteghe, committenti tra Napoli e la Francia', in A. Tornei (ed.), Roma, Napoli, Avignone. Arte di curia, arte di corte 1300-1377 (Turin, 1996), 1 1-54; S. Romano, Eclissi di Roma. Pittura murale a Roma e nel Lazio da Bonifacio Vili a Martino V (1295-1431) (Rome, 1992).

51 The figures vary in date, from c. 1200, late thirteenth century, while those occupying the left half of the frieze seem to have been remade in the early fourteenth century; cf. Coor- Achenbach, 'Notes' (above, n. 36), 252-3 with bibliography at n. 15. It is one of the latter with which Hetherington unwittingly compared the Grenoble Saint Lucy, 'A Cavallinesque panel painting' (above, n. 36), 96 and fig. 2.



The late antique ‘domus’ on the Clivus Suburanus, the early history of Santa Lucia in Selci, and the Cerroni altarpiece in Grenoble

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