Temple of Vesta, Tivoli
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The "Temple of Vesta" is a Roman temple in Tivoli, Italy, dating to the early 1st century BC. Its ruins sit on the acropolis of the city, overlooking the falls of the Aniene that are now included in the Villa Gregoriana.
It is not known for certain to whom the temple was dedicated, whether to Hercules, the protecting god of Tibur, or to Albunea, the Tiburtine Sibyl, or to Tiburnus, the eponymous hero of the city, or to Vesta herself, whose more familiar circular peripteral Temple of Vesta is to be seen in the Roman Forum. A rectangular temple stands nearby, equally difficult to attribute, often called the Temple of the Sibyl".
The name of the builder or restorer of the "Temple of Vesta" is Lucius Gellius, memorialized in the inscription on the architrave. The peripteral temple in a variant of the Corinthian order surrounds its circular cella, which is raised on a high brick podium clad in blocks of travertine: the cella has a door and two windows. The ambulacrum that surrounds the cella had eighteen Corinthian columns (ten remain standing).
The temple's capitals has two rows of Acanthus (ornament) and its abacus is decorated with oversize fleuron (architectural) in the form of hibiscus flowers with pronounced spiral pistils. The column flutes have flat tops. The frieze exhibits fruit swag (motif) suspended between bucrania. Above each swag is a rosette (design). The cornice does not have modillions.
The comparatively good condition of the temple is owing to its Christianization as a church, "Santa Maria della Rotonda". The Christian accretions have already disappeared in the 16th century.
Careful measured drawings of the 'Temple of Vesta" were published by Antoine Desgodetz (1682) who gave elevation and plan as well as carefully rendered details of the carved capitals and the frieze. in the following century both Giuseppe Vasi and Giovanni Battista Piranesi made etchings and engravings of the "Temple of Vesta".
Examples of Tivoli Order in other buildings
1783, Darnley Mausoleum, Cobham, Kent - interior
1794-98, Bank of England, John Soane, London - exterior
