The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories by Edward Hollis Read Free Book Online Page A

antiquity had been built by giants, and that the bronze images of gods and emperors that adorned them were the habitation of demons. They believed that the fragments they stole would lend the creations to which they affixed them something of the authority of a lost past.
    So while the barbarians vandalized a great many antique buildings, they also created wonderful creatures out of their transfigured remains. Of nowhere is this truer than Venice, which, floating on water, had no architecture to call its own. In order to acquire one, the Venetians stole the architecture of others, in particular that of Constantinople.
    Venice is a transfigured Constantinople; but Constantinople was a transfigured Rome once upon a time, and Rome was a transfigured Greece before that. The cycle of theft and the chain of borrowed authority go back to a time of myth, from which, perhaps, all civilizations seek their ultimate source of authority.

 
     
     
     
     
    I N THE SEVENTH YEAR of the revolution, there was a triumph in the capital of the republic. The procession wound its way through the streets from the city gate to the Field of Mars, where the spoils of victory were dedicated in the Temple of the Fatherland.
    This was no ordinary triumph. There were no slaves, no barbarian chieftains, no cartloads of bronze armor or weaponry. Instead, the crowd was treated to the spectacle of camels, lions, and giraffes in cages, palm trees and other exotic plants in pots, and a collection of strangely shaped packing cases shrouded in dust sheets. There were few soldiers in evidence, and no laureled general led the procession standing in his chariot. Instead, his place was taken by a magnificent group of four horses.
    Their manes and their tails were stiffly combed, their legs were raised in the posture of a dignified walk, and their heads were turned toward one another as if they were engaged in noble equine discourse. But their attitudes were fixed, and their skin flashed gold and green in the sun; they were not living horses but statues cast in bronze. After their dedication, the bronze horses, the lions, the camels, the giraffes, the potted palms, and the packing cases shrouded in dust sheets were taken to the treasure house of the republic.
    As the procession passed them by, the mob shouted out the paean they had been taught to cry: “Rome is no longer in Rome. It is all in Paris!” For in 1798 Rome was no longer the seat of triumph, nor had it been for very many centuries; the treasure house to which the spoils of triumph were taken was the national museum of the republic, the Louvre. The spoils of triumph rolled into the courtyard; the packing crates were carried up the grand stairs and deposited in the Grande Galerie, where they were unwrapped in front of the impatient deputies of the people. From one crate, a clawing marble hand emerged, then an arm, and then a bearded face contorted with pain. As the boards fell away, Laocöon burst into view, knotted together with his sons in the fatal embrace of a serpent. The rough timbers of another crate were cracked open to reveal the smooth arrogance of the ApolloBelvedere. A dust sheet withdrawn unveiled the simple modesty of Raphael’s
Sistine Madonna
, whose bored attendant cherubs gazed dispassionately at their new owners. A vast cloth fell to the floor at the foot of a sumptuous banqueting table at which, painted by the hand of Paolo Veronese, Christ attended
The Marriage at Cana
. One chest concealed the golden hoard of Bellini’s Madonna di San Zaccaria, attended by solemn saints in her niche of gilded mosaic, while another was smashed open to reveal an enormous winged lion of bronze, holding a book in his outstretched paw.
    Gathered in the grand gallery of the Louvre were the treasures of Roman and Venetian art. The bronze lion was the lion of Saint Mark, the paintings the finest ornaments of the monasteries, the churches, and even the main council chamber of Venice. The
Sistine Madonna
had