Summary

For the specialist or the general reader, Wayne Andersen's newest book is a fascinating adventure in forensic art history–an examination of minutia that tells a big story.

The Ara Pacis, or Alter of Augustus Peace, is one of the most cherished monuments surviving from ancient Italy. Rome's first emperor, Augustus, wanted his legacy to be a renewal of Roman values and an era of peace. As the ancient historian Tacitus tells us, "Yes, there was peace in those days, but a bloody one."

Mussolini identified with Augustus when waging war to restore the boundaries of the ancient Roman Empire. On the occasion of the bi-millennial of Augustus' birth in 1937, he commissioned a restoration of the alter to Augustan Peace. Its unveiling that year was cause for great national celebration. Nine years later, in 1946, following as bloody an era as Augustus' reign, the Italian Fascist Government collapsed. The Ara Pacis, by then identified with fascism, lost significance.

With the approach of the year 2000 and the new millennium, the Italian government looked again to the symbolism of the altar as representing Rome's glorious past. The American architect Richard Meier, known for his design of the Getty Museum in Malibu, was engaged to redesign the area around the alter and create a new building to house it.

Andersen challenges the widely held belief that the Ara Pacis that now stands in Rome was completed and dedicated in 9 B.C. during the late years of Augustus' life. With evidence rigorously argued and supported by original drawings, Andersen sets out to prove that the reconstructed Ara Pacis is not the Ara Pacis Augustae that everyone takes it to be but is rather a memorial build during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius some years after Augustus' death. Along with this revelation, Andersen brings many fresh ideas to the history and lore of this remarkable monument.

Author Bio

Wayne Andersen, Emeritus Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of ten books, the most recently published are Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Vulture's Tail (2001) and Picasso's Brothel (2002), both published by Karnac Books, London, and Other Press, New York. His autobiography, The Dirtfarmer's Son, will be released soon by Editions Fabriart, and his latest writing, Ce'zanne and the Eternal Feminine, is in press with Cambridge University Press.