WELLHEAD, 800-825 CE. PALAZZO VENEZIA
This splendid Romanesque wellhead is of white Luni (Carrara) marble, almost certainly from the ruins of the early C4 Baths of Constantine, but the marble, whose profile is all that remains from an ancient capital, was already reused from an earlier building, as Constantine pillaged abandoned structures to decorate his Baths on the Quirinal hill. This wellhead is carved with a series of arches and columns covered in braided guilloches enclosing crosses, also decorated with guilloches, with Romanesque versions of acanthus leaves flanking each cross and a six-petalled flower in the upper quadrants. Scrolls and peaked pediments rise from the tops of the arches to the lip of the well, with palmettes in the spaces between the arches. The long use of this wellhead can be seen in the grooves inside, worn by centuries of rope for the water-bucket. This decoration shows how Lombard sculpture reinterpreted Roman forms.
Centuries of #spolia. This #Romanesque wellhead was carved during the #Carolingian #Renaissance in #Rome, from a huge marble column capital probably from the lost Baths of #Constantine on the #Quirinal. It was in the now-vanished S. Agata in Diaconia, today in #palazzoVenezia. #AncientBluesky 🏺
