ABSTRACT
An interest in architectural ruins must be very old, older than cities and temples. In broken towns and monuments, in barely legible foundation stones and mossy walls, we read the past and, so the thoughtful can imagine, also read our future. Some of the most compelling Renaissance poetry and painting treats images of ruination, from Shakespeare’s sonnets to the damaged masonry in the backgrounds of Nativity scenes, from Joachim du Bellay ’s Antiquitez de Rome (1558) to the eroded stones framing title pages like that in Arthur Golding’s 1571 translation of Calvin’s psalm commentaries. 1 Unsurprisingly, a fascination with ruined walls and 224Time’s curious mineral appetite (as though Kronos had actually enjoyed the stone his wife fed him in place of Zeus) was often tied to thoughts on the pride of ancient and modern Rome: translatio imperii served as a tragic or hopeful warning against earthly arrogance.
