Professor Peter Wiseman delivering his lecture ‘Images of a City: Turner, Ashby and Rome’ in the Sainsbury Lecture Theatre during Princess Alexandra’s visit to the British School in October. Professor Wiseman steps down as Chairman of the School’s Council at the end of 2007, and will be replaced by Sir Ivor Roberts, former British Ambassador in Rome and currently President of Trinity College, Oxford. The School is enormously grateful to Peter for all his hard work. He has had a long and happy association with the School, and new scholars were charmed by the reminiscences in his lecture of his time as a Rome Scholar in 1961-2.

Award-holders at BSR this summer

Humanities

Viccy Coltman (Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellow), Robert Coates-Stephens (Cary Fellow), Penelope Davies (Hugh Last Fellow), Helen Patterson (Molly Cotton Fellow), Lucy Davis (Rome Fellow), Sarah Morgan (Rome Fellow), Annelies Cazemier (Rome Scholar), Rachel King (Rome Scholar), Paul Johnson (Ralegh Radford Rome Scholar), Sarah Burnett (Rome Awardee), Matthew Dal Santo (Rome Awardee), Frances Parton (Rome Awardee), Benjamin Russell (Rome Awardee), Victoria Leitch (Tim Potter Memorial Awardee), Jaye Pont (Macquarie University Gale Scholar), Katrina Grant (Melbourne Rome Scholar), Stefan Cassomenos (Youth Music Foundation of Australia Scholar).

Fine Arts

Spartacus Chetwynd (Abbey Fellow in Painting), Anthony Faroux (Abbey Scholar in Painting), Jonathan Allen (ACE Helen Chadwick Fellow), Cian Donnelly (Arts Council of Northern Ireland Fellow), Jennifer Marshall (Australia Council Resident Artist), Leslie Matthews (Australia Council Resident Artist), Nadia Hebson (Derek Hill Foundation Scholar in Portraiture), Harriet Harriss (Rome Fellow in Landscape Architecture), Prisca Thielmann (Rome Scholar in Architecture), Aisling Hedgecock (Sainsbury Scholar in Painting and Sculpture), John Walter (Sainsbury Scholar in Painting and Sculpture), Gordon Burn (Sargant Fellow in Curatorial and Critical Studies), Lindsay Seers (Wingate Rome Scholar in the Fine Arts).

Princess Alexandra’s visit to BSR

Autumn term at the British School at Rome began in great style with the visit of our President, HRH Princess Alexandra. She was welcomed to the school on the evening of Friday 12th October to a ceremony at which she presented Honorary Fellowships to Peter Brown, Professor Silvio Panciera and Michael Stillwell. An Honorary Fellowship was also presented to Avv. Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, President of Confindustria, on her behalf the previous evening by Sir Ivor Roberts, Chairman-elect of BSR, at a dinner at the Villa Wolkonsky, which HRH unfortunately missed owing to minor indisposition. After the presentation of the scrolls in the Sainsbury Lecture Theatre, the Chairman, whose own journey to Rome had been delayed by adverse weather conditions, delivered a beautifully judged talk on ‘Images of a City:  Turner, Ashby and Rome’. Afterwards, Valerie Scott accompanied the Princess around an exhibition of Ashby’s acqueduct photographs in the gallery, entitled I giganti dell’acqua. This was followed by a sumptuous buffet supper, funded by a kind legacy from Sir Stephen Egerton, at which she chatted informally with groups of award-holders and residents. The following day, in beautiful weather, the Royal party was shown the work of BSR at the site of Portus by Professor Simon Keay, where Camerone staff were working at the excavations. The group was further entertained by Duke Ascanio Sforza Cesarini, on whose land Portus is situated, to a visit round the Roman harbour-basin in horse-drawn carriages, followed by a magnificent lunch in his lake-side villa.

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Recent BSR lectures, activities and trips

It has been a busy Autumn, with a very sociable, independent and well-integrated group of scholars who, apart from working hard on their own research, have organised numerous activities and visits as well as regularly attending BSR public events. Apart from the introductory presentation of the Humanities’ scholars projects in October, an informal, impromptu presentation of research projects was held in Lindsay Seers’ studio in September, with those few lonely scholars who arrive before the academic year officially begins. This was an eclectic evening – magic tricks from Jonathan Allen (ACE Helen Chadwick Fellow), the saucier aspects of collecting classical sculpture from Viccy Coltman (Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellow), the biographical mysteries of video art by Lindsay Seers (Wingate Rome Scholar), the revelation of Rome and Bernini from Colin Langridge (Australia Council Resident) and a collage of images assembled by the Assistant Director to highlight her own art-historical interests.  Extra-curricular activities include the formation of a choir by Cian Donnelly (Arts Council of Northern Ireland Fellow), which has united scholars from all disciplines, as well as visiting residents, in singing Cian’s original songs, part of his artistic practice.

All the Art History lectures in the Autumn drew good audiences and inspired stimulating question times, first of all from James Hamilton on ‘Turner in Rome’, a glimpse of the research he is conducting for the exhibition ‘Turner in Italy’, scheduled for Ferrara in 2008. Ann Sutherland Harris was in Rome for the Bernini Pittore exhibition at the Palazzo Barberini, and shared her connoisseurship with ‘Bernini as Painter’, which resulted in several of our scholars attending the exhibition with fresh insights. Cordelia Warr  spoke on ‘Marking the body, performing the body: visualising stigmata in the 15th and 16th centuries’, which prompted many questions on the practicalities and peculiarities of the phenomenon in life and art. As usual, the Approdo Romano offered excellent site visits (and delicious lunches), beginning with a visit to two Castles in the Viterbo area, Castello Ruspoli at Vignanello, with its lovely garden, and Castello Orsini at Valanello, with its sinister prison and interesting ceramics workshop. The first official BSR site visit was to Palazzo Chigi at Ariccia, where scenes from Visconti’s The Leopard were filmed, and where scholars were introduced to the gastronomic delights of porchetta at a local festival celebrating the region’s speciality. In the afternoon there was a visit to the Museo delle Navi at Lake Nemi where, despite the absence of Caligula’s ships (which were destroyed by fire at the end of World War II), the building itself, the material on display, and the Roman road exposed under the museum’s floor were impressive. A large group took advantage of an afternoon visit to the Palazzo Farnese, which was followed a week later by a trip to Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola on a glorious autumn day, where the patient custode kindly activated the water surprises.

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The Herculaneum Conservation Project

The Director and his team continue with work on the Herculaneum Conservation Project. The principal new research activity has been the visit of Professor Mark Robinson, together with a team from Oxford, to analyse samples of the 744 bags of human waste excavated in the sewer beneath the Insula Orientalis II. The results promise to cast an exceptional light on ancient diet and household practices. Conservation work was temporarily suspended for the last three months of the year, while attention has shifted to the planning of major new excavation work in the area of the Basilica, at the north-west corner of the site. Demolition work, undertaken by the Comune, acting in consort with the Soprintendenza and the Project, has cleared a large area of structurally unsound modern buildings on the western and northern edges of the site. The Editor of BBC Timewatch visited the site in November, and expressed strong enthusiasm for a new programme dedicated to Herculaneum. The Herculaneum International Study Centre, long planned by BSR in consort with the Comune and Soprintendenza, started formal activity in September with the assumption of the role of Centre Manager by Christian Biggi (an archaeology graduate of Reading University); more recently, Bianca Capasso, a graduate of the Università Federico II di Napoli, and local to the area, has been appointed Assistant Manager, and two internships, designed to promote relations with local schools and to collect the oral history of memories of the area in relation to the site, are planned. A workshop was held in September in the Villa Campolieto, the magnificent 18th-century villa designed by Vanvitelli where the Centre holds its temporary seat, for young archaeologists working on excavation projects in Pompeii and Herculaneum, on the relation of conservation to excavation.

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RECENT B.S.R.PUBLICATIONS

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION OR TO ORDER, CONTACT: The Publications Manager, The British School at Rome, at The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH; E bsr@britac.ac.uk