Chapter 02 of Storaro's Rome: the story behind each image of La Civiltà Romana, told from the book by Vittorio Storaro.
Three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro spent five years following the Roman world with a camera. On Piazza Venezia, in the middle of Rome's traffic, he found an emperor where no emperor should be.
Stand in the square and look up. The Vittoriano fills the sky: a white marble wall of columns, built to honour Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of united Italy. It is a modern monument, begun in 1885 and inaugurated in 1911, but it speaks the language of ancient Rome. Sixteen columns, each fifteen metres high. Above each one, a statue for a region of Italy.
In Storaro's photograph, a face rises through those columns. The curls, the beard, the calm eyes of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome seventeen centuries before the monument was built.
"Every portrait is born from darkness."
Vittorio Storaro, from his narration of Visions of Marcus Aurelius
AT A GLANCE
Place: Il Vittoriano, Piazza Venezia, Rome, beside the Capitoline Hill
The emperor: Marcus Aurelius, ruled 161 to 180 AD, Stoic, author of the Meditations
The monument: Built 1885 to 1911 for Victor Emmanuel II: sixteen columns, each fifteen metres high
Storaro's image: Visions of Marcus Aurelius, 1993, La Civiltà Romana, chapter V, The Emperors (The Unconscious)
How it was made: A double exposure on film, in a single frame: the Vittoriano's columns and the emperor's face
A colour for every emperor
In La Civiltà Romana, the emperors have their own chapter, and Storaro gave it a second title: the Unconscious. Every portrait in it begins in darkness. A first ray of white light cuts into the dark like a blade and carves a face, and the faces appear slowly, in the pale blue light of the moon. For Storaro, moonlight is the light of what is hidden: passions, fears, the inner life of the men who ruled the world.
He gave every emperor a colour. Marcus Aurelius is indigo, the deep blue at the edge of night. In indigo he stands with Septimius Severus and Aurelian, the emperors who held the borders. After so much conquering, Rome had to protect itself from the conquerors.
The emperor who looked within
Marcus Aurelius ruled from 161 to 180 AD. He spent much of his reign on campaign along the northern frontiers, and a plague reached Rome in his time. Through all of it he kept a private notebook, written to himself in Greek. He never meant it to be read. We know it today as the Meditations.
He was a Stoic. He trained himself to meet pain, loss and death with a calm mind, and he is remembered as the last of the "five good emperors". His bronze statue on horseback is one of the very few to survive from ancient Rome, and it lasted through the Middle Ages for a simple reason: people believed it showed Constantine, the first Christian emperor.
"The statue of Marcus Aurelius, symbol of authority and of justice."
Vittorio Storaro, La Civiltà Romana, Chapter V
Two images, one frame
Storaro made this photograph in 1993. Look closely and you see two images on one frame: the white colonnade of the Vittoriano, cool and blue, and through it the emperor's face, gold inside the blue. At the foot of the columns, carved in stone, are the words of Italy's victory in 1918. A monument to a war, and through it the emperor who spent his reign at war and wrote about peace of mind.
Created with a film camera. A double exposure made directly on the same negative, in a single frame. No Photoshop.
Storaro calls these images visions. He has explained why he worked this way: a photograph is one image, like a painting, while cinema is made of many.
"To express myself in photography with a cinematic sense, that is, by joining more than one image."
Vittorio Storaro, Artribune, 2020 (translated from Italian)
When you visit
- Where: the Vittoriano stands on Piazza Venezia, in the centre of Rome. The Capitoline Hill is right beside it, a few minutes on foot.
- See the statue: a copy of the bronze Marcus Aurelius stands in Michelangelo's square on the Capitoline Hill, Piazza del Campidoglio. The original is indoors, in the glass hall of the Capitoline Museums.
- Read the stone: at the Vittoriano, look for the 1918 victory inscription below the colonnade, the same words that appear in Storaro's frame.
- Look up: count the sixteen columns and the sixteen statues of Italy's regions above them.
- Then do what Storaro did: come back as the light fades, when the white marble turns blue, and look for the face of the emperor who looked within.
LISTEN
Hear the story of this image in Vittorio Storaro's words. A few minutes.
The artwork
Visions of Marcus Aurelius by Vittorio Storaro, from La Civiltà Romana, is available as a photo print on fine art paper, an acrylic print and a canvas print: a calm face for loud days.
Questions about Marcus Aurelius and this image
Where is Marcus Aurelius in this photograph?
His face appears through the columns of the Vittoriano on Piazza Venezia, Rome, in a double exposure Vittorio Storaro made on film in 1993.
Why did Storaro choose indigo for Marcus Aurelius?
In La Civiltà Romana he gave every emperor a colour. Indigo, the deep blue at the edge of night, belongs to the emperors who held the borders: Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus and Aurelian.
Was the image edited in Photoshop?
No. It was created with a film camera: a double exposure made directly on the same negative, in a single frame.
Where is the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome?
The original bronze is inside the Capitoline Museums; a copy stands in Piazza del Campidoglio on the Capitoline Hill.
Storaro's Rome follows the images of La Civiltà Romana one by one, each with its place, its story from Storaro's book and his narration. See all the stories or listen to every story told so far.