The Arch of Titus, in color

When Steven Fine, a professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, was a high-school student in San Diego, his Catholic art history teacher asked to do write a term paper on a “Jewish subject.” “At first, I wanted to write about Puritan tombstones in Massachusetts, but at my teacher's insistence, I ended up writing about the menorah,” said Fine, who was the only kippa-wearing student in his high school course. At the time, Fine never imagined that the subject of his high school paper would become a central part of his life's work as a cultural historian specializing in Jewish history under Greece and Rome. Fine, 59, recently delivered a keynote address about the original colorization of the Roman Arch of Titus at the City of David's 18th annual archeology conference, this year titled “Titus in Jerusalem.” It is the largest archeological conference of its kind in Israel, and hundreds of people gathered to hear Prof. Fine speak about the Arch of Titus in color and polychromy (the coloring of sculptures and architecture in the Greco- Roman world) as well as the spoils of Jerusalem that were taken to Rome. Trained in talmudic and Jewish history as well as art history, Fine directs the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies' Arch of Titus Project. In 2012, the multifaceted project discovered, together with a team of Italian, American and German conservators and scholars, that there were flakes of the original yellow polychromy on the menorah on the historical first-century Roman arch. “It's interesting to think how, centuries ago, people saw this arch completely differently from the white marble we see today,” said Fine in an interview with In Jerusalem. “Back then, our ancestors saw the images on the arch in an array of colors.” Fine recalled climbing up the scaffolding on the arch to the level of the menorah, which stood less than 60 cm. away from him. “It was pretty amazing to see the historical 'Spoils of Jerusalem Panel' that close.” The Arch of Titus project aims to discover and reconstruct the original colors of the arch, which famously depicts 10 Roman soldiers parading a seven-branched menorah and other Temple treasures like the trumpets and the Table of Showbread, which were taken from the Second Temple in Jerusalem following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Emperor Titus in 70 CE. Thanks to noninvasive spectrometry readings conducted on the arch's menorah, Fine and the team were able to uncover yellow ochre flakes on the menorah, which had faded away over time. The Yeshiva University professor noted that the study of color on ancient art is still a relatively new discipline. However, thanks to modern computer scanning techniques, it is possible to find flakes of ancient color today. With the discovery of the original yellow ochre pigments on the menorah, and using literary sources, evidence of Roman wall paintings, traces of color detected on other Roman sculptures, archeological evidence, and scholarly intuition, Fine and his team have worked on “colorizing” the rest of the Spoils Panel on the Roman Arch of Titus. Color is a subject that has always come naturally to Fine. “I am very visual person and I often take my students at Yeshiva University and have them look at a pond. I ask them to tell me all the colors they can see,” he stated. Fine has visited Italy at least 10 times to see the Arch of Titus. “You get to a point that you know a piece of work so well that you start to visually play with it. Through playing, you can see new things,” he explained. “For example, I once visited the Arch of Titus at dusk and the way the strobe of light hit the arch, it looked like the people carved onto the arch were moving. That was the Roman way of utilizing light to create this sense of motion,” he elaborated. He also pointed out that the Romans were fairly mechanical. “If you look closely, you can see that the same male model was used several times on the panel.” Before uncovering the original golden yellow color of the menorah, Fine's first polychromy project had been of a small statue of Caligula at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. “I thought if we could do this for this Roman sculpture, why not for one of the most important Roman structures to Jewish history?” Fine points out that for centuries, Jews avoided the Arch of Titus and refused to walk under it, in order not to attribute any honor to Titus. However, from the 19th century onward, Jewish people began to see the arch's menorah in a much more positive light, as a symbol for Judaism, and began to pay the arch more attention. He cites a postcard that Sigmund Freud wrote after a visit to Rome in 1913, on which he regards the Arch of Titus with the words, “The Jew survives it.” After much deliberation, it was decided that the emblem for the new State of Israel in 1949 would be based on the depiction of the menorah on the Arch of Titus. One of the things that Fine enjoys most is sharing his knowledge of Jewish history and the Greco-Roman world with students. In addition to teaching at Yeshiva University, he has lectured at the Getty Institute, Duke University, Oxford University, Yale University, the Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University and many other educational institutions. Fine also teaches a Coursera course on the Arch of Titus and has had thousands of students from around the world studying the subject through the online course. “It's amazing to see how many people are interested in this subject,” he commented. For Fine, the menorah has a deep personal significance as well. “For me, the menorah represents everything that is good – light, family, Eretz Yisrael and godliness,” he said. “Jews don't have icons to pray to, but the significance of the menorah remains the same to me as it did for my ancestors who prayed on the Temple Mount where the First and Second Temples were located. It's all the things I value rolled up in a lamp. “I only recently realized that there is a menorah on the cover of almost every one of my books,” added Fine. His most recent book, The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel, was published by the Harvard University Press in 2016. One can never know where a high-school assignment might lead.

The Arch of Titus, in color

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The Arch of Titus, in color

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