Martin Lešák is a postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome. His research focuses on Rome across different historical periods—especially the Middle Ages—and on the interplay between art and liturgy. At the Institute, he moreover contributes to the project “Digitalizing Archival Collections: A Roman Chapter of HF’s History”.
What is the story behind a poster above the library door at the Norwegian Institute in Rome announcing a public lecture that Hans Peter L‘Orange delivered on the Tempietto Longobardo in Cividale del Friuli in 1952? What connected Norwegian scholars to the small Friulian town of Cividale, once the capital of the Lombard Kingdom? Curious to find out, I boarded an overnight train from Rome to Cividale and spent a week exploring the archives of the city as well as nearby Udine.
L’Orange, Torp, and the Tempietto Longobardo
The Norwegian Institute in Rome was founded in 1959 by the eminent art historian and archaeologist Hans Peter L’Orange, with the assistance of his student – later his colleague and close friend – Hjalmar Torp. By then, L’Orange was already an internationally recognized scholar. His 1939 monograph on the Arch of Constantine had established his reputation, and he had cultivated an extensive scholarly network across Europe, particularly in Italy. After the Second World War, these connections proved invaluable in a collaborative research project with a Danish scholar Ejnar Dyggve and Hjalmar Torp on the history, architecture, and visual culture of the so-called Tempietto Longobardo in Cividale del Friuli, a town in northeastern Italy near the Austrian and Slovenian borders that had once served as the capital of the Lombard Kingdom.
Over the following decades, L’Orange devoted a large portion of his scholarly career to this monument. In recognition of his contributions, the mayor of Cividale even named him an honorary citizen on 15 May 1954. The enduring bond between L’Orange and Cividale is in fact still evident today. Upon entering the Institute's library, visitors are greeted by a poster above the doorway announcing a public lecture that L’Orange delivered on the Tempietto Longobardo in Cividale on 17 September 1952.
Opening the Institute’s Archives
The poster is just one item in the Institute’s rich archival collection, much of which remains to be systematically organized and digitized. A pilot project launched this year aims to start that work. The collection includes hundreds of photographs taken in Cividale, technical drawings prepared for the multivolume study of the Tempietto Longobardo – published only in the 1970s – as well as personal materials that document the relationships between the Norwegian scholars and the local community.
One particularly evocative example is a postcard of Cividale covered in snow, sent by the local artist Pio Morandini, who collaborated closely with the researchers and appears to have become L’Orange’s friend.
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A Week in Cividale and Udine
Curious to trace these connections and to better understand the Nordic scholars’ place in the local (not only) scholarly community, I traveled by overnight train from Rome to Cividale in June. Over the course of a week, I immersed myself in the archives and libraries of Cividale and Udine.
As I stepped off the train in Cividale on a Monday morning – greeted by station signs in five languages – I had three goals in mind. First, I wanted to see whether the local newspapers, such as Il Gazzettino and Messaggero Veneto, had reported on L’Orange’s visits in 1952, when he delivered his lecture on the Tempietto Longobardo, and in 1954, when he was awarded honorary citizenship by the city’s mayor. Second, I hoped to uncover letters exchanged between L’Orange, Dyggve, and Torp and the Italian scholars and residents with whom they collaborated. Finally, I was looking for any other traces of the Norwegians’ presence in the archival record.
Letters, Anecdotes, and Missing Pages
The search quickly proved worthwhile. Thanks to the generosity and expertise of the archivists, I uncovered three letters by L’Orange, four by Torp, and five more written by Italian scholars discussing their Nordic colleagues. One letter, written by L’Orange to the historian Carlo Guido Mor in 1958, even mentions the founding of the Norwegian Institute in Rome. Frustratingly, however, the sentence continues onto a second page that is no longer preserved in the archive, leaving his reflections on the Institute teasingly incomplete. Other discoveries were more lighthearted. In a 1981 letter to Mor, Torp writing from Rome (!) describes what L’Orange was up to with a remark that anyone familiar with Norwegian winters will likely appreciate: “L’Orange spent the winter in Oslo – poor fellow!” (L’Orange ha passato l’inverno a Oslo [Poverino!]).
Newspapers and a “Quasi-Revolutionary Discovery”
The local newspapers turned out to be a particularly rich source. They revealed that L’Orange’s public lecture in September 1952 was organized in connection with the second international congress on early medieval studies (2° Congresso Internazionale di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo), held in Grado, Aquileia, Gorizia, Cividale, and Udine from 7 to 11 September, 1952. L’Orange, Dyggve, and Torp all presented in the same session, and their papers were later published in the conference proceedings. Although Pier Silverio Leicht initially worried that the contributions of these scholars would be too long, they were ultimately received with great enthusiasm. So enthusiastic, in fact, that a local scholar who later became the director of the museum, Carlo Mutinelli, described their work in Messaggero Veneto as a “quasi-revolutionary discovery” (una scoperta quasi rivoluzionaria). Their conclusion that the Tempietto was from the eighth century resonated strongly with local scholars and the wider public.
Honorary Citizens of Cividale
Seen in this light, it is perhaps no surprise that only two years later L’Orange and Dyggve were awarded honorary citizenship of Cividale alongside the Italian art historian Carlo Cecchelli. One of the most exciting discoveries of my week in the archives was a newspaper photograph from the ceremony, published in Messaggero Veneto. It shows the mayor standing together with the three newly honored scholars seated around him – an unexpected visual record of a historical moment. Torp, still at the beginning of his career, was not among the recipients. He would have to wait until 2006 to receive the same distinction.
Tracking Down a Plaster Model
One archival entry proved especially intriguing. Among the records of Museo Nazionale Archeologico in Cividale was a reference to a small plaster architectural model of the Tempietto Longobardo donated jointly by L’Orange and Dyggve on 11 September 1952. Finding the model was not an easy task, as it took a couple of days to locate it in depository of the archive. But eventually it was found! The newspapers helped explain its story: the object had been built to illustrate the scholarly hypothesis during the 1952 conference and was donated to the museum on the last day of the event. Holding the model in my hands, I realized that it is much more than a simple research tool. It is a tangible witness to the methods, collaborations, and intellectual ambitions of scholars that were so influential for the history of Norwegian Institute in Rome – and, in many ways, therefore, to the prehistory of the Institute itself.
From Archival Discoveries to Digital Exhibition
This model, together with many of the letters, photographs, and other discoveries from the archives, will feature in a digital exhibition we are preparing as part of the Institute’s archival project. Through these objects, we hope to tell the story of the Norwegian scholars in Cividale and to shed new light on an important chapter in the history of the Institute.
