Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali di Roma
Posted on 12/14/2013 6:09:45 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Deep under the streets and buildings of Rome is a maze of tunnels and quarries that dates back to the very beginning of this ancient city. Now, geologists are venturing beneath Rome to map these underground passageways, hoping to prevent modern structures from crumbling into the voids below.
In 2011, there were 44 incidents of streets or portions of structures collapsing into the quarries, a number that rose to 77 in 2012 and 83 to date in 2013. To predict and prevent such collapses, George Mason University geoscientists Giuseppina Kysar Mattietti and scientists from the Center for Speleoarchaeological Research (Sotterranei di Roma) are mapping high-risk areas of the quarry system.
The mapping is important, Kysar Mattietti told LiveScience, because through the years, Roman citizens have taken the patching of the quarry systems into their own hands.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali di Roma
Stuff like this fascinates me while giving me the willies at the same time.
One job I would never apply for...mapping ancient tunnels under Rome. Spooooky!
To the contrary, I’d pay them for such a job!!
IMO a great deal of renaissance art was based upon Roman examples. Just look art the art from Pompeii. They must have seen them in places like this.
Well, “renaissance” means “rebirth”...
Related, there’s this that appeared in the Librevox RSS feed earlier in the year.
http://librivox.org/visits-to-the-dead-in-the-catacombs-of-rome-by-george-washington-greene/ from Harper’s in 1855.
< 2 hours.
The Romans "eyeballed" it, as did a lot of medieval illuminators in the west as Safavid Persia.
Filippo Brunelleschi was the first artist (known) to use mathematical linear perspective using established vanishing points.
Agreed! What a fun project that must be.
As Joe 6-pack said, Brunelleschi — but his demo of the technique was of a six or eight-sided building that antedated him. :’) The Romans used trompe-l’oeil techniques in their mosaics (like these) and esp. in their frescoes, as seen in some of the surviving grand houses in the cities buried by Vesuvius.
http://ipsimages.photoshelter.com/image/I0000uNFuiL3_sD4
http://www.artoffresco.com/03-History/03.7-pompeii/03.7-history-pompeii.htm
And in statuary, there’s the Laocoon group, which inspired Michelangelo, even to the point that in recent years, it has been attributed to the big M working anonymously. That’s a ridiculous idea, btw. :’)
Trojan Treasure - 500th Anniversary Looms Over Laocoon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/1557078/posts
Well, there is a job for everyone I guess. Please keep me posted if you were able to be able to do this mapping.
It fascinates me but kinda makes me claustrophobic. Heck..I can’t even go into the attic of a house I’ve lived in for 30+ years without hyperventilating.
This is an example of what was known as “Byzantine” or “reverse” perspective. It mimics real perspective on a superficial level but is based on what the eye thinks it sees and not on the rules of perspective rendering that require either one or two vanishing points, a horizon line and depth of field emanating from the vanishing point(s).
True perspective drawing didn’t emerge until Brunelesci, Da Vinci and others began to apply the revolutionary method of scientific analysis using various tools such as the camera obscura or even running strings from points on an object, to a point in a wooden framework where the observer’s eyes would be.
It is a shame that among the lost folios of Da Vinci, was his treatise on optics. What emerged from the Renaissance study of perspective was the ability to create blueprint type drawings which were a foundation to the emerging machine tool industries of the day, and subsequently, the Industrial Revolution, which really should be called the Industrial Renaissance.
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