DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61894#0115
Ch. HL THROUGH ITALY. 97
S. Lorenzo in Miranda. The name of this
church, placed as it is in the Forum, and situated
amidst a most wonderful display of Roman gran-
deur, is ,alone a sufficient recommendation to the
attention of the traveller ; but this recommend-
ation acquires double weight when we learn that
it stands on the ruins of the temple of Antoninus
and Faustina. The portico of the temple, ex-
cepting the pediment and part of the walls, re-
mains. The order is Corinthian; and the whole
might have been restored without difficulty to its
original form. But instead of following this pro-
cess which the state of the ruin almost forced
upon the architect, he has erected a frontispiece
behind the pillars, of proportions, size, and order
totally different; of two stories so contrived, that
the cornice of the first does not reach even the
capitals of the pillars before it, while the second
rises far above them, and exhibits on high, as if
in triumph over good taste, its barbarous twisted
pediment.
Such instances of ignorance or stupidity, such
preposterous and misshapen edifices, would sur-
prize us even at Constantinople where almost
every monument of ancient mao;nificence has Ion sc
since perished, and every recollection of ancient
taste is obliterated ; but in Rome, where so many
superb models still present themselves to our con-
VOL. II. H
S. Lorenzo in Miranda. The name of this
church, placed as it is in the Forum, and situated
amidst a most wonderful display of Roman gran-
deur, is ,alone a sufficient recommendation to the
attention of the traveller ; but this recommend-
ation acquires double weight when we learn that
it stands on the ruins of the temple of Antoninus
and Faustina. The portico of the temple, ex-
cepting the pediment and part of the walls, re-
mains. The order is Corinthian; and the whole
might have been restored without difficulty to its
original form. But instead of following this pro-
cess which the state of the ruin almost forced
upon the architect, he has erected a frontispiece
behind the pillars, of proportions, size, and order
totally different; of two stories so contrived, that
the cornice of the first does not reach even the
capitals of the pillars before it, while the second
rises far above them, and exhibits on high, as if
in triumph over good taste, its barbarous twisted
pediment.
Such instances of ignorance or stupidity, such
preposterous and misshapen edifices, would sur-
prize us even at Constantinople where almost
every monument of ancient mao;nificence has Ion sc
since perished, and every recollection of ancient
taste is obliterated ; but in Rome, where so many
superb models still present themselves to our con-
VOL. II. H