Drawings, Prints, and 20th C. Photographs

1902 Petersen


Petersen's 1902 publication consisted of a text volume with prints (pages 1-3 on this website) and an accompanying volume of photogravures (page 4 on this website). Together, they constituted the first books published on the Ara Pacis Augustae. Especially considering that it preceded the first excavation of the Ara Pacis (conducted partly by Petersen, in 1903), this was a remarkable, landmark publication, including comprehensive visual documentation of many facets of the monument. The text volume includes detailed drawings of the surviving fragments and the first drawing proposing the overall form of the monument.

The accompanying volume of photogravures (reproductions on this page 4) includes the first published photographs of portions of the 2 processional friezes and of 2 figurative panels.

This volume of photogravures was scanned from Eugen [Adolf Hermann] Petersen, Ara Pacis Augustae, VIII Tafeln in Lichtdruck. Sonderschriften des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien, Band II. Wien: Alfred Hölder, K. U. K. Hof- und Universitäts-Buchhändler, 1902. Scanned from a copy in the library of the American Academy in Rome. Reproduced courtesy of the American Academy in Rome. As far as I have been able to tell, this volume with photographs is not available elsewhere on the web (searched 1 Sept. 2012).. 

Captions are literal translations from the German. (This page 4 added to this website March 2012).