[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Unfinished buildings have a prominent position in the study of ancient architecture because they peel back the veil concealing the construction process, in much the same way that shipwrecks, earthquakes, and volcanoes have preserved clues about life in the ancient world that survive in no other archaeological contexts. The bankrupt building project is an epistemic tentpole of architectural history. The analytical eye of the scholar, however, is not the first to fixate on the visual charm of roughly worked blocks. Ancient designers as well as early modern architects seized on unfinished stonework as the inspiration for their own expressive, rough-hewn styles of rusticated masonry. Unfinishedness—at once informative, but not always what it seems—has drawn a flurry of recent interest, including two German-language edited volumes. One already has been reviewed, the other is reviewed here.[1]
This volume, translated into English as Unfinishedness in Ancient Architecture: Definitions and Causes, assembles seven papers with an introduction, edited by Frank Rumscheid and Natalia Toma, in a cloth-bound volume also published open access online. Rumscheid presents a broad overview of the subject, highlighting the history of scholarship, drawing connections between unfinished architecture and sculpture, and gesturing toward the reception of rusticated masonry in Renaissance and Baroque architecture. The subsequent papers focus more narrowly on marble columnar architecture in the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods, primarily in Asia Minor. None of the main buildings considered are “unfinished” in the Tower of Babel sense. All had roofs and were used. The subject of discussion is unfinished stonework, particularly zones of ornament and moldings, as well as residual bosses and other stages in the slow subtractive process of stone carving.
Readers should not miss Matthias Grahwer’s survey of the humble boss. This exemplary chapter reaches back to Egypt and Mycenae and extends to artificial masonry bosses used as ornament in Hellenistic and Roman painting, stuccowork, sculpture, and molded terracottas. These ubiquitous knobs were multifunctional grips primarily used for shifting blocks with iron levers without chipping finished surfaces. Grawehr makes a strong case that bosses were not looped with rope for lifting with cranes—an interpretation often pictured in manuals that is Grawehr’s bête noire. The chapter’s sheer originality emerges as the author roves beyond the construction site to sarcophagi with bosses for lowering lids into their final resting places and knobby statue bases. The latter appearance of bosses is commonly overlooked, but Grawehr neatly illustrates their profusion with a half-page appendix of thirty-one bossed basses at seven major sites. This expansive examination of bosses inclusive of stonework outside the realm of architecture illustrates the way that categorization itself can preordain certain conclusions. If the feature that seems most characteristic of unfinished architecture is not architecture-specific at all but appears in many types of stone artefacts, then visible bosses must be regarded first as products of widespread stoneworking habits rather than primary evidence for an interrupted history of an individual building project. This chapter, one of a series of papers that Grahwer has published based on his 2019 habilitation “Akzidentelle Unfertigkeiten und intentioneller Bossenstil in der Architektur des Hellenismus und der Kaiserzeit,” makes plain that a monograph is in order and in fact, needed.
Therese Emanuelsson-Paulson addresses Doric columns with twenty straight-sided facets rather than canonical concave flutes, a scheme that Vitruvius (4.3.9) described as a valid Doric alternative. Although genuine unfinished carving is evident in a few rare cases, the author argues that faceted Doric columns in Hellenistic Asia Minor are a coherent type, partly born of a compromise in carving igneous rock, and probably propagated by Pergamon. In defining an autonomous typology, Emanuelsson-Paulson argues that these “polygonal columns” are not related to half-fluted Doric columns, which have the exact same faceted treatment on the bottom half and are fluted as usual on top (e.g the Stoa of Attalos, Athens). Nevertheless, this paper could be read in dialogue with Deltev Wannagat’s monograph on half-fluted columns, which sketched a similar story of a Hellenistic fad fueled by aesthetic interest rather than utilitarianism and accelerated by Attalid architects.[2] Here, the siloing effect of typology somewhat obscures the intertwined regional histories of parallel phenomena.
The Belevi Mausoleum rightly has a prominent position in this volume. Reinhard Heinz presents an exhaustive, steps-to-gutter survey in a bid to change the impression that the mausoleum is a model structure arrested in medias res by the death of its diadoch patron. (Heinz reserves judgment on whether the tomb was intended for Lysimachos or Antigonos I Monophthalmos.) Typically, final carving progressed from the top down so that falling stone chips would not damage the lower elements. Intentional rustication also favored vertical hierarchy, with a rugged base communicating stability. Belevi, however, is “completely incomplete,” as Hienz sees it, with the total vertical distribution of unfinished carving suggesting a staggered retreat of carvers abandoning one half-done part to start and eventually give up on another part. Most interesting is the proposal that a last-ditch reprioritization led to the partial completion of the monument’s Parthenon-like curving steps. Although the large Corinthian colonnade is a bold foray into the new forms of the Hellenistic period, Heinz envisions an architect committed to the Classical aesthetic ideal of stylobate curvature to the bitter end. This paper uses close technical analysis to draw a vivid picture of a building project that was not flash-frozen but spiraled toward an abbreviated ending.
Georg Plattner and Ursula Quatember each offer papers on the unfinished architecture of Roman Imperial Asia Minor with a spotlight on Ephesos. Platner examines a range of material evidence and is particularly successful in illustrating the uneasy balance between fabricating ornament in ground-level workshops and finishing off carving on scaffolding. The Serapeion at Ephesus shows this tradeoff in action as the rush to put blocks into position outpaced what carvers could complete in the workshop. Quatember tackles some of the same cases but focuses on epigraphic evidence for financing. She draws attention to the subtle push-and-pull between cities and wealthy donors just beneath the surface of privately sponsored public buildings. The temple of Zeus at Euromos is famous for the inscriptions on its columns that attest their individual donation by local officials, but several of the columns are unfinished and un-inscribed. Quatember suggests that the city stepped in to complete the project when the scheme for private financing evaporated. Cities may have even put the screws to donors who sought to wriggle out of promised gifts. That threat may loom in a curious clause in the dedicatory inscription of the Library of Celsus at Ephesus. That building project dragged on after the deaths of its patrons—first outlasting Celsus, then his son Aquilla. The dedication declared that the next generation of heirs could no longer be held financially liable for any further work on the building. The simplicity of Quatember’s point belies its importance: many Roman building projects were public-private partnerships, but mixed financing could lead to mixed results.
The final pair of papers offer specific case studies, with attention to the practicalities of construction that led to different patterns of unfinishedness. Fulvia Bianchi and Matthias Bruno examine unfinished carving on the Severan complex at Leptis Magna. Septimius Severus began the project as an aggrandizement of his hometown, but Caracalla wrapped it up in a rush to focus on building in Rome. Bianchi and Bruno highlight a striking correlation: the column capitals and bases of Pentelic marble are all complete, but the Proconnesian pieces are substantially unfinished. It seems that the two white marble quarries and their associated workshops had two different approaches to the production of the same types of architectural elements. The Mt. Pentele quarry exported to Libya almost completely prefabricated elements, while Proconnesus sent roughed-out pieces that required finishing on site. Meanwhile, Natalia Toma sets her sights on the East Gate of the Stadium of Miletus to empirically assess how much the details left unfinished might have factored into the total costs of construction. That is: exactly how much work was left undone on a typical “unfinished” building in Asia Minor under the Roman Empire? Through an appendix estimating the workdays it took to execute each carving task, Toma illustrates that unfinished ornament represents a fraction of the total work on each stone—usually less than twenty percent. The chapter offers a useful reframing of the issue of unfinishedness through the balance sheet of a building project, and the paper should be on the radar of scholars interested in the methodology of architectural energetics analysis. Toma offers a cautionary assessment (pp. 123-126) of the reliability of nineteenth-century work rates reported by Giovanni Pegoretti that have featured in energetics studies beginning with the groundbreaking work of Janet DeLaine.[3]
The two dominant issues that emerge in this volume are the “definitions” and “causes” mentioned in the subtitle. The burst of scholarship on this topic in the 1980s and 1990s put a strong emphasis on defining typologies of intentional rustication that developed from specific unfinished features. Hans Lauter studied “bossed columns;” Thanassis Kalpaxis treated the “bossed style” of ashlar masonry; Deltev Wannagat the half-fluted column shaft.[4] In this volume, typology is alive and well (Grawehr; Emanuelsson-Paulson). The accident-turned-affectation paradigm is effective, but it has a shortcoming. The typological approach seeks out concrete confirmation that ancient viewers found beauty in unfinished masonry through definite cases of artificial rustication. This due scholarly caution, however, can slip into the habit of only recognizing aesthetic value in imitative works of standardized types (Bianchi and Bruno say exactly this on p. 146: “Tale percezione [del valore estetico] cambia solo quando una forma, lasciata volutamente incompiuta, diventa tipologia.”). Compartmentalizing artistic intention to conventionalized forms conveniently links definition and cause, but it also excludes many interesting works.
A counterpoint to this approach emerges as many of the contributions in this volume call attention to a paper by Felix Pirson, which proposed that Hadrianic-period relief panels on the front column bases of the temple of Apollo at Didyma were left in a sequence of work stages as eye-level display pieces of the skills of stone carvers.[5] Some contributors to the present volume (particularly Quatember, pp. 88-89) recognize in this interpretation of the Didyma bases an incitement to bridge architectural studies, which typically treat the technical and economic aspects of unfinishedness, with art historical studies, which emphasize artistic identity in non finito works following the high estimation Pliny and Vasari placed on unfinished painting and sculpture. Other contributors are not convinced. Platner (pp. 76-78) swats down Pirson’s idea as fanciful, wryly noting that the Didyma bases would be showpieces of “rather unspectacular stages of work” (ehre unspektakuläre Arbeitsschritte). Heinz (pp. 55-56) shows that the interpretation cannot be applied to other similar monuments like Belevi. The prevalent but ambivalent engagement with Pirson suggests that reading artistic expression beyond standardized types is the most provocative and certainly the most polarizing idea discussed in this volume. Other possible examples exist (e.g. Grawehr elsewhere has argued that architects could use progressions of surface treatment to direct attention toward the façade of a building with multiple similar elevations[6]), but readers will not find new evidence supporting this idea here.
The primary significance of this volume lies in its robust, multivocal advocacy of forensic approaches that detect aspects of architectural patronage, labor, and economics in unfinished marble elements. These approaches include comprehensive stone-by-stone study of individual monuments (Heinz), multi-site surveys (Grawehr), correlating materials and carving practices (Bianchi and Bruno; Emanuelsson-Paulson), numerical quantification (Toma), and the integration of archaeological evidence and epigraphic sources (Quatember). As always, some unfinished projects are revealing about their patrons and financing—whether a single patron died (Heinz) or a succession of patrons had different goals (Quatember). More importantly, this volume clearly articulates that some features are distinctly the working process of stone carvers irrespective of scale, context, and client (Grawehr), especially as contractors of the Roman Imperial period sought new strategies of economizing (Platner; Toma), strategies that may even have been specific to different quarries supplying stone for the same project (Bianchi and Bruno).
Authors and titles
- Unfertigkeiten am Bau: Folgen finanzieller Engpasse, organisatorischer Zwänge oder ästhetischer Ignoranz? Frank Rumscheid
- Buckelbossen in der antiken Architektur: Matthias Grawehr
- Polygonal Columns: Unfinished Construction or Inexpensive Fashion in Hellenistic Times? Therese Emanuelsson-Paulson
- Das vollendet unvollendete Mausoleum von Belevi: Reinhard Heinz
- Intentionelle Unfertigkeit in der römisch-kaiserzeitlichen Architektur in Ephesos und Kleinasien: Georg Plattner
- Geldmangel und gebrochene Versprechen? Die Finanzierung öffentlicher Bauten und Phänomene der Unfertigkeit im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien: Ursula Quatember
- Das Stadion-Osttor in Milet: Unfertigkeit und Effizienzstrategien im kaiserzeitlichen Marmorbau: Natalia Toma
- Il Complesso Severiano di Leptis Magna: Il cantiere e la decorazione architettonica tra finito e non finito: Fulvia Bianchi und Matthias Bruno
Notes
[1] The other: Birte Geißler and Ulrike Wulf-Rheidt, eds. Aspekte von Unfertigkeit in der kaiserzeitlichen Architektur. Ergebnisse eines Workshops am Architekturreferat des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, 26. und 27. September 2016. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2021. Review: Monica Hellström, “’Unfinished’ Buildings,” The Classical Review 73.1 (2023): 292-294.
[2] Deltev Wannagat, Säule und Kontext: Piedestale und Teilkannelierung in der griechischen Architektur. Munich: Biering und Brinkmann, 1995.
[3] Janet DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla: A study in the design, construction, and economics of large-scale building projects in imperial Rome. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1997.
[4] Hans Lauter, “Kunstliche Unfertigkeit: Hellenistische Bossensaulen.” Jdl 98 (1983): 287-310. Thanasis Kalpaxis, Hemiteles. Akzidentelle Unfertigkeit und »Bossen-Stil« in der griechischen Baukunst. Mainz: von Zabern, 1986.
[5] Felix Pirson, “Akzidentelle Unfertigkeit oder Bossen-Stil? Überlegungen zur siebten Basis der Ostfront des Apollontempels von Didyma,” in Euergetes: Festschrift für Prof. Dr. Haluk Abbasoğlu zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by İnci Delemen, Sedef Çokay-Kepçe, Aşkım Özdizbay, and Özgür Turak: pp. 989–999. Ankara: Suna & İnan Kıraç Research Institute on Mediterranean Civilizations, 2008.
[6] Matthias Grawehr, “Looking at the Unfinished: Roughed-Out Ornamentation in Greek Architecture” in New Directions and Paradigms for the Study of Greek Architecture: Interdisciplinary Dialogues in the Field, edited by Philip Sapirstein and David Scahill: pp. 229-239. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020.