Spolia from Spoleto

Spolia: the cosmati floor of San Crisogono, Rome

San Crisogono in Trastevere (which is the oldest public place of christian worship in Rome) posseses, in addition to two fine porphyry columns flanking the apse, this splendid example of a floor created from the fragments of antique coloured marble columns and facings.

Architectural Figures

Venetian architecture has many examples of the exploitation of figurative sculpture as ornament, from the spoliastic use of the sculptures of 'moors' ...


and the tetrarchs attached to the basilica of San Marco ...

to the sculptural programme of biblical scenes integral to the Doges' Palace.