Curule seat
A curule seat is a design of a (usually) foldable and transportable chair noted for its uses in Ancient Rome and Europe through to the 20th century. Its status in early Rome as a symbol of political or military power carried over to other civilizations, as it was also used in this regard by kings in Europe, Napoleon, and others.
History
Ancient Rome
In the
The curule seat was carried by public slaves when being transported from place to place. This custom further symbolized the authority of the magistrate/owner of the sella curulis. Imagery of a slave carrying a curule seat can be seen in archaic Etruscan art (see in Gallery "Tomb of the Augurs" 530 BCE).[6] As seen on the Tomb of Augurs, a small slave is seen to be bearing a sella curulis on his shoulders in the lower left corner. In the Tomb of the Jugglers from 520 BCE (see in Gallery "Tomb of the Jugglers"), the magistrate for whom the tomb is dedicated to is also seen to be seated on his sella curulis on the far right which indicates that he is the owner and magistrate.
The curule chairs themselves indicated the authority of the magistrate as he conducted business while sitting in the chair. Therefore, the seats themselves have been symbolically viewed as political pawns for power over Rome itself.[7] However, this powerful symbolism appears to be limited due to incidents where the sella curulis was purposely destroyed. The destruction of the chair as a means to disrupt or attack a magistrate’s rule did not actually prevent the owner of the curule seat from exercising his power. In Cassius Dio’s Roman History, Dio recounts the event where Glabrio destroyed Lucius Lucullus’ curule seat out of anger towards Lucullus. However, Lucullus and his attending officials still proceeded with business although the sella curulis was destroyed.[8]
According to
The curule seat was also used in funeral processions. Several pieces of Etruscan art, urns, and tomb reliefs from the 4th century BCE portray a magistrate's funerary procession. The curule seat was one of the many symbols displayed during the procession which indicated his status and prestige, along with the fasces, lituus-bearers, and other emblems of his office.[15] The custom of bearing the curule chair of the magistrate at his funeral was present in Rome as well. The funerary monument from via Labicana itself is shaped like a sella curulis (see in Gallery below). Additionally, on the top beam of the monument, the frieze prominently features a sella curulis beside the presumed magistrate and his attendants. For example, Dio recounts that Caesar’s golden curule seat was displayed in his funeral procession along with his golden crown and a golden image of him.[8] Polybus detailed that the representatives of the family would sit in the curule seats of the deceased during public ceremonies.[7] Additionally, the curule seat of a magistrate was also ceremonially paraded while he was living. An example of this appears when the golden sella curules of Tiberius and Sejanus were displayed at the ludi scaenici in 30 CE.[16]
In Rome, the curule chair was traditionally made of or veneered with ivory, with curved legs forming a wide X; it had no back, and low arms. Although often of luxurious construction, this chair was meant to be uncomfortable to sit on for long periods of time, the double symbolism being that the official was expected to carry out his public function in an efficient and timely manner, and that his office, being an office of the republic, was temporary, not perennial. The chair could be folded, and thus was easily transportable; this accords with its original function for magisterial and promagisterial commanders in the field. It developed a hieratic significance, expressed in fictive curule seats on funerary monuments, a symbol of power which was never entirely lost in post-Roman European tradition.[17] 6th-century consular ivory diptychs of Orestes and of Constantinus each depict the consul seated on an elaborate curule seat with crossed animal legs.[18]
As a form of
Other uses
Folding chairs of foreign origin were mentioned in China by the 2nd century AD, possibly related to the curule seat. These chairs were called hu chuang ("barbarian bed"), and
, written about 552 AD, reads:By the name handed down you are from a foreign region
coming into [China] and being used in the capital
With legs leaning your frame adjusts by itself
With limbs slanting your body levels by itself...[21]
In Gaul the
In the 15th century, a characteristic
The 15th or early 16th-century curule seat that survives at York Minster, originally entirely covered with textiles, has rear members extended upwards to form a back, between which a rich textile was stretched.
The cross-framed armchair, no longer actually a folding chair, continued to have regal connotations.
The photo of actor Edwin Booth as Hamlet poses him in a regal cross-framed chair, considered suitably medieval in 1870.
The form found its way into stylish but non-royal decoration in the archaeological second phase of
With the decline of archaeological neoclassicism, the curule chair disappeared; it is not found among Biedermeier and other Late Classical furnishing schemes.
Gallery
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Magistrate on his sella curulis (lower right corner), Etruscan wall painting, Tomb of the Jugglers (520 BCE)
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Sella curulis on a funerary monument from the Via Labicana, Rome
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Drawing of a seal of Peter II of Aragon, ca. 1196—1213[27]
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manuscript illumination, Bibliothèque nationale)
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French folding stool in the curule style, by Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené, 1786 (Metropolitan Museum of Art )
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Napoleon on a curule seat with the goddess Tutela, 1804 medal by André Galle and Romain-Vincent Jeuffroy (Musée Carnavalet)
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The American actor Edwin Booth as Hamlet, seated in a curule chair, c. 1870
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Thegovernor-general of Canada, photographed by William James Topleyc. 1900.
See also
- Barcelona chair
- Daensen folding chair (Bronze Age)
- Faldstool
- Glastonbury chair
- List of chairs
- Magistratus Curulis
- Porter's chair
- Seat of honor
- X-chair
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-814661-2.
- ^ Ab urbe condita 1:20
- .
- JSTOR 1513107.
- ^ Wanscher, Ole (1980). Sella Curulis: The Folding Stool : an Ancient Symbol of Dignity. Denmark: Rosenkilde and Bagger. pp. 121–190.
- JSTOR 42622237.
- ^ hdl:10138/344429.
- ^ a b Dio Cassius (1914). Roman History, Volume III: Books 36-40. Translated by Cary, Earnest; Foster, Herbert B. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- ^ Livy, Ab urbe condita, I.8: Me haud paenitet illis auctoribus assentiri, quibus et apparitores hoc genus ab Etruscis finitimis, unde sella curulis, unde toga praetexta sumpta est...
- ^ Thomas Schäfer, Imperii insignia: Sella Curulis und Fasces. Zur Repräsentation römischer Magistrate, (Mainz) 1989, fully discusses the representations of curule seats and their evolving significance.
- Ab urbe condita, 2:31
- ^ Peter Michael Swan, The Augustan Succession: An historical Commentary on Cassius Dio's Roman History Books 55-56 (9 B.C.-A.D. 14), "Commentary on Book 56", (Oxford 2004) p. 298, noting T. Schäfer 1989, pp 114-22.
- ^ Museo Borbonico, vol. vi. tav. 28)
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London: John Murray.
- JSTOR 505526.
- ^ JSTOR 42661468.
- ^ Schäfer 1989.
- ^ Discussed and illustrated in Nancy Netzer, "Redating the Consular Ivory of Orestes" The Burlington Magazine 125 No. 962 (May 1983): 265-271 p. 267, figs. 11-13.
- ^ Stefan Weinstock, "The Image and the Chair of Germanicus," Journal of Roman Studies 47 (1957), p. 148 and note 38.
- Persia employed the cushioned divan instead (Frances Wood, The Silk Road: two thousand years in the heart of Asia, 2002:85-87).
- ^ Quoted in Wood 2002:86.
- ^ Sir W. Martin Conway, The Treasures of Saint Denis, 1915
- ^ Some are illustrated in John Gloag, A Short Dictionary of Furniture, rev. ed. 1969: s.v. "X-chairs".
- ^ The contemporary term "cross-framed" came to be employed in the later 17th century to describe chairs with rigid horizontal cross-framed x-stretchers, possibly causing confusion for a modern reader; see Adam Bowett, "The English 'Cross-Frame' Chair, 1694-1715" The Burlington Magazine 142 No. 1167 (June 2000:344-352).
- ^ Pierre Verlet, French Royal Furniture p. 75f; F.J.B. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 1966:vol. I, cat. no. 51ab, pp76-78.
- Fontainebleau (fig. 31), and a walnut curule seat in Empire style, from Romagna(fig. 6).
- ^ From Louis Blancard, Iconographie des sceaux et bulles, 1860.