The Building of Rome with Two Trumpeters

Author: Klazina Botke

The story of the foundation of Rome begins with the birth of the twins Romulus and Remus, sons of Rhea and Mars, the god of war. Amulius, Rhea’s uncle, fearing that they threatened his power, ordered that both babies were to be drowned in the Tiber. They were saved however by the river god and were cared for by a she-wolf until they were discovered by the shepherd Faustulus. They later founded a city together, but after arguing who would rule the new settlement, Romulus killed his brother. He thus became the first ruler of Rome, to which he gave his name.^[1]

This legend was probably first recorded at the end of the third century BC, but the best-known source is Ab urbe condita (27-9 BC) by Titus Livius (Livy).^[2] In the sixteenth century Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (1531) made it even better known.

The drawing, which was started with black chalk before being worked up with pen and brown ink, depicts three episodes from the story. The verso shows a man carrying the twins in swaddling clothes to the banks of the Tiber. On the far side of the river the she-wolf is feeding the boys with her milk (her head was lost when the sheet was trimmed on the right). At the top there is a reclining figure (the river god, possibly) that was later deleted with black chalk. On the recto there are men building the walls of Rome under the watchful eyes of two figures on the left. The bottom half of the sheet is occupied by two youths, one nude, the other clothed, blowing trumpets.

The famous bronze statue of the she-wolf nourishing the twins, which has been in Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Campidoglio in Rome since 1471, is the symbol of the city.^[3] The remainder of the foundation myth is not often depicted. The exceptions are the frescoes of c.1407 by an unknown painter in Palazzo Trinci in Foligno, and the fresco cycle (1595-1640) jointly painted by Cavaliere d’Arpino (1568-1640), in the Sala degli Orazi e Curiazi of Palazzo dei Conservatori.^[4] Several print series of the story were also published in the sixteenth century.^[5] Our drawing appears to be earlier than the print series, and the pencilled inscriptions state that it was once attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) and Pinturicchio (c.1454-1513).^[6] The style, though, is not quite a match for theirs. The pen strokes are shorter and looser, and the anatomies and proportions of the bodies are less precise. The date around the end of the fifteenth proposed by Lütjens does seem to be correct.^[7] It is possible that the drawing is an illustration of the version of Livy’s text that was published at the end of the fifteenth century, making it more widely available to the public.^[8]