Campana reliefs

They were produced in unknown quantities of copies from moulds and served as decoration for temples as well as public and private buildings, as cheaper imitations of carved stone friezes.

A wide variety of motifs from mythology and religion featured on the reliefs as well as images of everyday Roman life, landscapes and ornamental themes.

With intensified excavation in the Mediterranean in the nineteenth century, terracotta reliefs increasingly came to light in and around Rome, from which original architectural contexts were determined.

Metal and marble objects had previously been the most sought by excavators, scholars and collectors, but at this time artefacts in other materials received wider interest, beginning with the late-18th century appreciation of Greek vases which when they first appeared were thought to represent Etruscan pottery.

His influence and contemporary reputation in archaeology was so great that he was named an honorary member of the Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica.

He published his collection in 1842 in Antiche opere in plastica ("Ancient works in plastic arts"), in which his findings on the reliefs were first laid out in a scholarly fashion.

Afterwards Campana was sentenced to imprisonment for embezzlement: in 1858 he lost his honorary membership in the Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica and his collection was pawned and sold.

The idea that they should be treated as important sources for the craftwork of the period, for decorative fashions, and for their iconography only achieved prominence in the early years of the twentieth century.

In 1911 Hermann von Rohden and Hermann Winnefeld published Architektonische Römische Tonreliefs der Kaiserzeit ("Roman Architectural Clay Reliefs of the Imperial Period") with a volume of images in Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz's series Die antiken Terrakotten.

Typologische und Stilkritische Untersuchungen ("Campana Reliefs: Typological and Stylistic Investigations") brought these archaeological finds to wider attention.

In 1999 Marion Rauch produced an iconographic study Bacchische Themen und Nilbilder auf Campanareliefs ("Bacchic Themes and Nile Images in Campana Reliefs") and in 2006 Kristine Bøggild Johannsen described the usage contexts of the tiles in Roman villas on the basis of recent archaeological finds.

Particular importance attached to the tempering, when the clay (of uniform consistency) had various additives mixed in: sand, chopped straw, crushed brick, or even volcanic pozzolan.

At Hannover, violet-brown, reddy brown, purple, red, yellow, yellow-brown, turquoise-green, dark bown, pink, blue, black, and white can all be identified.

[7] An example from the Akademisches Kunstmuseum in Bonn, showing a Nike killing a bull was allegedly found in Agia Triada in Greece.

[8] Some stuccoed examples derive from the western part of the Roman empire, the ancient regions of Hispania and Gaul (modern Spain and France).

Iconographic research is unhelpful for this purpose because the motifs derive from a traditional repertoire, which was used largely without variation over a long period of time.

For the motif depicting the Curetes performing a weapon dance around the baby Zeus, the moulds can be traced over a period of 170 years.

Scholars largely agree that the tiles served decorative and practical functions, although it is uncertain exactly which part of the building they were placed on.

Whereas their Etruscan and Italiote precursors served to cover wooden temple roofs and protect them from weathering, the Campana reliefs seem to have been used far more in secular contexts.

These terracotta tiles had parallels in their development with the marble decorative reliefs of the "neo-Attic form" of the Late Republic and Early Empire, though their dissimilar shapes were not necessarily mutually dependent.