Musing on the Restoration of the Arch of Titus, Given Its 200^th Anniversary: Comments on Some Outstanding Drawings

Abstract

The restoration of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum—begun by Raffaele Stern and completed by Giuseppe Valadier, exactly two centuries ago—is a milestone in heritage preservation culture. The criterion followed—a distinguishable intervention not renouncing an appropriate formal homogeneity—was a clear starting point. Camillo Boito and, henceforth, the international charters and recommendations that came later in the 20th century, affirmed the postulate ‘no added parts should lead to confusion vis à vis the original’. However, contemporary theory and practice have not always upheld this principle. This study, adding to the existing literature on that historic restoration, focuses on the analysis of some remarkable and highly indicative drawings of the Arch of Titus. It covers Valadier’s original project and up to the graphic irony—reductio ad absurdum—that, in our own days, Paolo Marconi has proposed in order to question Valadier’s very intervention criterion. The fact that we find corresponding references, in this series of drawings, confers a significant role to graphic argumentation in the debate on the conservation of historic monuments. This becomes relevant to the purpose of this book, by bringing together different uses of architectural drawing.