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I mentioned that although I was going to concentrate today
on Baroque architecture in the eastern part of the empire,
I would not, I would show you at least one
example from the west, and I show that to you here.
It takes us back to North Africa to a place called Sabratha, which
is located in-between Timgad and Leptis Magna that we looked at last time.
Here's the site of
Sabratha and you can see that it too is located on the sea.
An extraordinary theater was built there and it's another example of the way
in which these Baroque facades could be used for a whole host of buildings.
It could be used for theaters and for temples and for fountains and for
libraries and and so on and so forth and but
theater, theater architecture was particularly appropriate for because we've
seen from the beginning of Rome that these kind of ornate, [INAUDIBLE]
columnar schemes were used quite frequently in theatrical architecture.
We are looking at the exterior of the theater at Sabratha which
you can see from your monument list dates to around AD 200.
It has been re-erected. Much of it had fallen down.
But once again, there was quite a bit of
this stone was there and so they re-erected the facade.
You can see that it like, pretty much everything we've
looked at today has, was made out of local stone.
And you can also see two tiers.
And you can see that although it's made out of local stone, it is
very similar to the sort of thing we saw much earlier in Rome itself.
Think of the Theater of Marcellus. Think of the Colosseum,
the scheme of arches with with pilasters or columns in between
them engaged into the wall as you can see so well here.
If you look at the view on the left you will see
however that the stage building of the theater at Sabratha is particularly well
preserved and I want to show you two views, two spectacular views, this one
in particular which shows you what this structure looked like in antiquity and
what it looks like now.
And it is another one of these extraordinary baroque facades.
Again, so typical for theatrical architecture.
We see the three great niches as we often do, think
of the plan of the Augustan theater at Leptis Magna for example.
Three great niches.
These columnar elements on either side in three stories.
No straddling here.
Just on top, one another as you can see well.
But a series of four instead of the usual two.
But then within the niches they've also created ,these elements in this case
with two columns that project, their inside
the niche or contained inside the niche.
But they project in front of the
niche, adding even more enlivenment to the structure.
Look down below also, [INAUDIBLE] we rarely have
the bottom of the stage preserved but we have
it preserved here and preserved extremely well.
The bottom of the stage has been scalloped, it has projecting
elements with columns, and the whole thing is decorated with sculptures.
So many figures That those figures even seem to dematerialize the stone.
A crowd of, not just a few figures that you can read very well,
but a whole host, crowds of figures
that show again this interest in over decoration
in these baroque buildings.
Here's another view not quite as clear but I think a very good one that
also gives you a very good sense, not only of the stage decoration, but of
the scale of this structure because we've
got a few tourists standing here, which show
you that once again bigger is better is clearly the the rallying call of the day.
Here's a detail of, some of that decoration,
Gods and goddesses and alike.
We see the three graces here for example, but
you can see the way that they are crowded in
to give one a sense of a kind of
excess ornamentation which was obviously very popular during this period.
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
