The Arch of Constantine in Rome and the genealogy of the Western tradition: from Giorgio Vasari to Alois Riegl

Abstract

The present paper examines the origin of the term “late antiquity” which appears systematically in the historical studies during the last decades of the 20th century. An earlier genealogy suggests that the term originates in the context of art history in Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the shaping of this genealogy the figure of Alois Riegl is instrumental as, on the occasion of the Arch of Constantine in Rome, he reorganized the schema of decline in the history of art that had prevailed since Vasari. The author’s argument is that the emergence of the term “late antiquity” at that time in Vienna was possible because it was inextricably linked to the very search for the ideological identity of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire.