View of the Roman Colosseum

Date1551

Credit LineMuseum purchase

Dimensions15 1/4 x 12 in. (38.7 x 30.5 cm)

Object number2003.071.001

Label TextCock is thought to have visited Rome in the late 1540s and made the preparatory drawings for his series Views of Roman Ruins that he published in his native Antwerp in 1551. The popularity of prints of the monuments of the city by local Roman artists must have inspired him in this enterprise. His depiction of the Colosseum has been described as more quaint than archaeologically precise. The abbreviated Latin inscription on this etching can be translated as, "View I of the Roman Colosseum, Destroyed by the Barbarians". It was not the barbarians, however, who destroyed it, but rather Rome's inhabitants who had treated the Colosseum as a quarry, carrying off its materials for re-use in churches and palazzos, especially after the southern outer wall fell in an earthquake in the fourteenth century.
Exhibition HistoryInvention and Revival: Northern European Prints, Michael C. Carlos Museum, February 12 - May 15, 2005
Discovering Rome: Maps and Monuments of the Eternal City, Michael C. Carlos Museum, September 16, 2006 - January 14, 2007
Antichità, Teatro, Magnificenza: Renaissance and Baroque Images of Rome, Michael C. Carlos Museum, August 24 - November 17, 2013
Published ReferencesMCCM Newsletter, March - May, 2004.
Sarah McPhee, et al., Antichita, Teatro, Magnificenza: Renaissance and Baroque Images of Rome (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2013), 56 (checklist only).

ProvenancePurchased by MCCM from C. & J. Goodfriend Drawings and Prints, New York, New York.

MarkingsWritten in pencil on inside of mat, "Hieronimus Cock (1510-1570) Collassaei Ru a Barbaris Diruti, Prospectus I, Riggs 2, Wurzback 5, Hollstein 23. One of ten (illegible) from "Views of Rome."

Catalogue raisonnéRiggs 2, Wurzback 5, Hollstein 23

Status

Not on view

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