The Arch of the Philaeni: Between Antiquity, Modernity, and Modernism (20 min)

Presenters

Francesco de Angelis, Columbia University

Abstract

The so-called Arch of the Philaeni was erected in Libya in 1937 to celebrate the completion of the coastal highway commissioned by fascist governor Italo Balbo. It was the last in a series of monumental arches erected in Italy’s African colonies in the 1920s and 1930s that conspicuously embodied Italian claims to a special relationship with the glories of the Roman Empire. However, despite the arch’s ostensible nod to the classical past, its architectural and sculptural language expressed its makers’ engagement with the challenges of modernity no less intensely.

This paper will examine the arch’s formal features, which have not been subject to any systematic analysis to date. It will argue that its nonclassicizing style is best understood in the context of the role that artistic and architectural modernism played in Italy’s colonial endeavors. In particular, it will connect the monument’s architectural shape to the conditions of twentieth-century mobility made possible by technological innovation. These conditions were inextricably linked to several key aspects of the colonial environment, such as the military and administrative control of the territory, the official visits of Italian monarchs and politicians, the rise of tourism, and, more generally, the demarcation of spatial, cultural, and racial boundaries.

In this context, the arch’s relationship to the Roman past was not erased, but reinterpreted in light of the specific aims that antiquity and its remains were called to serve. In fact, one of the most impressive components of the arch’s sculptural decoration, the colossal bronze statues of the Philaeni brothers, can be understood as a direct commentary on the archaeological practices that brought Italy’s—and Libya’s—ancient past back to light.