[Musealia : Fouilles sur le Palatin dans les jardins Farnèse]

Every month, Sorbonne University  invites you to discover an object from its heritage collections. This month, discover the album Fouilles sur le Palatin dans les jardins Farnèse.

The Serpente Library inherited several bequests from professors when it was created, including André Chastagnol, a specialist in late antiquity and Rome. In addition to numerous old works on archaeology, numismatics and epigraphy, an album of photographic plates dating from 1869 has entered the collections: Excavations on the Palatine in the Farnese gardens for H.M. Emperor Napoleon III - Plans and paintings of the paternal home of Tiberius Caesar.

This album documenting the frescoes of the Domus Tiberiana was probably commissioned by the Emperor from the English archaeology bookseller John Henry Parker. He had formed the project to photographically document the ruins of ancient Rome and built up a collection of about 3400 images. This small album of 15 plates is therefore an "extract" from this collection which gives a detailed account of the excavations of the 1860s and 1870s, such as the spectacular ones at the Colosseum and the Palatine, commissioned by Napoleon III, who was passionate about archaeology and who bought the Farnese Gardens from the King of Naples in 1861.

The Domus Tiberiana, excavated in 1869, has been the subject of numerous scientific hypotheses, the most widespread being that attributing the building to the father of the Emperor Tiberius, Tiberius Nero and which is based on literary sources since “Suetonius tells us that Tiberius' father's house was located on the Palatine”. However, the discovery of lead pipes led to the identification of the house as that of Augustus' widow, Livia.

The photographic album opens with a plan of the domus followed by a series of eleven images of the frescoes covering the entire wall. It seems that the photographer - who remained anonymous - did not work in situ but from Layraud's paintings: photography in an underground environment was still in its infancy. The album was published in several copies, which explains why it can be found - in addition to the Serpente Library, the only BU listed in the Sudoc - at the library of the Institute, the INHA and also at the Emory University in the USA, which has digitised it.

This testimony to French excavations during the Second Empire is a precious source for archaeology but also for the history of the 19th century, as shown by the French National Archeology Museum’s exhibition in 2020 on the Archaeological adventure of Napoleon III, for which this copy has been loaned.

By Hélène Broms, Head of the Serpente Library (BSU)

Data sheet

• Document type : photographic album of albumen prints
• Call number : 937.6 fou
• Dimensions : h.32; w.24.5 cm
• Date : 1869
• Place of storage : Serpente Library

Bibliography

• "Les peintures du Palatin. I – La Maison de Livie / Léon Renier" in Revue archéologique, vol. 21, 1870, p.328
• 36 albums de photographies de Rome et ses environs, 1864-1877 / John Henry Parker (dir.)
• Catalogue : D'Alésia à Rome : l'aventure archéologique de Napoléon III, 1861-1870 / Paris : RMN-Grand Palais, DL 2020

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