"What a Task for a Lady!" Marion Blake at Work

MUSIVA&

SECTILIA

Direttore / EditorFederico Guidobaldi

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Anne-Marie Guimier-Sorbets, Christine Kondoleon,Henri Lavagne, Demetrios Michaelides,

Per Jonas Nordhagen, Carla Salvetti

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«Musiva & Sectilia» is an International Peer Reviewed Journal.The eContent are Archived with Clockss and Portico.

MUSIVA&

SECTILIAan international journal for the study

of ancient pavements and wall revetmentsin their decorative

and architectural context

7 · 2010

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Stampato in Italia · Printed in Italyissn 1724-9104

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SOMMARIO

Editoriale/Leading article 9Programma dell’Incontro internazionale 13Abbreviazioni 17

atti dell’incontro internazionale di studiin memoria di marion elizabeth blake (1892-1961)

proceedings of the international meetingin memory of marion elizabeth blake (1892-1961)

a cura di/edited byfederico guidobaldi · silvia pedone

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Federico Guidobaldi, Indirizzo di saluto e apertura dei lavori 23

Paula Debnar, Marion Blake’s Early Years: Student, Teacher, Scholar 27Bettina Bergmann, “What a task for a lady!” Marion Blake at Work 47Katherine Geffcken, Elizabeth Fentress, Anne Laidlaw, A

Blessing and a Curse: Esther Van Deman and Marion E. Blake 73Stefania Quilici Gigli, L’apporto di Marion Elisabeth Blake alla co-

noscenza delle più antiche tecniche costruttive 85Paola Ciancio Rossetto, Il contributo di Marion E. Blake allo studio

di alcuni grandi monumenti di Roma 95Marialetizia Buonfiglio, M. E. Blake e lo sviluppo dell’opus testa-

ceum a Roma: il ‘caso’ del teatro di Marcello 109Elisabetta Bianchi, Luca Antognoli, La Cloaca Maxima tra la

Subura e il Foro Romano: dalle prime osservazioni di M. E. Blake allenuove indagini archeologiche e speleologiche 123

Jean-Pierre Darmon, La mosaïque avant Blake: une esquisse 143Ida Baldassarre, Marion E. Blake e l’origine del mosaico tessellato 169Irene Bragantini, Blake e Pernice: due metodi a confronto 173Franca Taglietti, Marion Elizabeth Blake e lo studio degli emblemata

musivi 179

Federico Guidobaldi, La pionieristica classificazione tipologica deipavimenti antichi proposta dalla Blake e la prima valorizzazione deisectilia pavimenta 197

Massimiliano David, Marion Elizabeth Blake e il tardoantico 215Alessandro Lugari, Un primo tentativo di interpretazione della tecnica

esecutiva dei pavimenti antichi negli studi della Blake 229Federica Rinaldi, Marion E. Blake e i mosaici del Nord Italia (esclusa

Aquileia) 237Francesca Ghedini, Michele Bueno, Alessandra Didoné,

Marion Blake e i mosaici di Aquileia 259Claudia Angelelli, La prima raccolta dei mosaici di Roma nell’opera

di Marion E. Blake 289Valentina Vincenti, Marion E. Blake e Villa Adriana 305Maria Stella Pisapia, Marion E. Blake e Pompei, 80 anni dopo 323

8 sommario

“WHAT A TASK FOR A LADY!”MARION BLAKE AT WORK

Bettina Bergmann

This essay examines archival evidence for the life and career of Marion ElizabethBlake dating from her first visit to the American Academy in Rome in 1924 untilher death in 1961. Because of close collaboration among scholars, the individualMarion Blake remains largely unknown. Personal letters housed in the Archivesand Special Collections at Mount Holyoke College and working notes in the Fototeca of the American Academy in Rome offer insight into Blake’s attitudes,experiences, and research methods. They chronicle her many transatlantic trips,life in Rome, and help explain why Blake abandoned promising research on Ro-man mosaics to undertake decades of work on ancient building construction.

Keywords: Marion E. Blake, mosaic, masonry construction, archaeology, study andteaching, Mount Holyoke College, women’s colleges, American Academy in Rome.

arion Elizabeth Blake” is a name often cited yet a person littleknown. Unlike her legendary contemporaries, she finds no men-

tion in the major biographies of American female archaeologists.1 I amtherefore grateful to Federico Guidobaldi for encouraging us to discoverthe person Marion Blake, a scholar who devoted her life to the study of Ro-man surfaces. One particular puzzle posed to me by Professor Guidobaldiis why Blake abandoned her excellent work on mosaics for a laborious, andquickly superseded, undertaking on Roman wall construction. As shall be-come clear, Blake’s passion may have remained mosaics, but her feelingsabout them often were ambivalent and she was compelled to give themup for crucial, practical reasons.2

Three main resources hold records that help us understand Blake’s personality and working methods. First, the Mount Holyoke CollegeArchives contain important personal information in Blake’s letters and annual reports to college alumnae.3 Especially illuminating in the Blake

1 For example, Esther Van Deman and Lily Ross Taylor: Cohen, Joukowsky 2006.2 I am grateful to several individuals at Mount Holyoke College: my colleague in Classics

Paula Debnar; the Dean of Faculty Chris Benfey; the Alumnae Association; and Jennifer Kingand Patricia Albright in Archives and Special Collections. Lavinia Ciuffa’s help in the Fototecaof the American Academy proved to be indispensable. Kathy Geffcken was extremely gener-ous with information and advice.

3 Other research materials in the Marion E. Blake Papers include: two unpublished manu-scripts entitled The Pavements of Rome and its Vicinity of the Republican and Augustan Epochs

“M

48 bettina bergmann

Papers is her correspondence with Cora Eastman, a friend in Vermont.The letters span two main periods when Blake resided in Rome, 1937-1940and 1948-1961. By 1937, when the letters commence, Blake already hadspent more than a decade studying and traveling in Italy and around theMediterranean and had established herself as a ‘researcher’ at the Ameri-can Academy in Rome. Letters cease in 1940 when World War II droveBlake back to the United States, where she did “full time volunteer workfor the American Defense Committee of Harvard gathering materialwanted by the War Department” and lived in Washington, D.C. continu-ing research at the Library of Congress.1 The second series of letters waswritten from 1948 until her death in 1961, twelve years when Blake was con-sumed with preparing the final publications on Roman construction.

Cora Eastman clearly was a family friend, but one practical reason forthe steady correspondence during the later years was the maintenance ofBlake’s home in Bradford Vermont, which she inherited from her motherin 1946. The attachment to ‘Edgecoop’ was strong. Blake wrote fondly ofreturning there for summers and always intended to move back perma-nently. She frequently referred with longing to the “extremely well-builthen-house and enough land to make me an attractive summer home. Ihaven’t had much chance to enjoy it yet [1952], but it is nice to know thatit is waiting for me whenever I am ready to return.”2 During visits Blakespent long periods working in Bradford and after her death it was Corawho arranged to send personal effects and research materials from Ver-mont to the Mount Holyoke College archives or to the American Acade-my in Rome.

A second, informal resource of information about Blake are personalaccounts from memory of those who knew her, specifically Kathy Geffck-

(Rome, 1925) and Chronological Study of the Cement Pavements of Pompeii (handwritten, ca. 1929);a few of Blake’s sketches of ancient buildings, Greek vases, and of the Todi mosaic, all datedto 1920; a few handwritten research notes; original photos from Cora Eastman, some taken byBlake and others showing her at different moments between 1913 and 1961; and a collection ofmostly unlabeled photographs of buildings, people, and events in Italy and on a Scandinaviatrip of 1930.

1 Faculty and Staff Biographical Records, Marion E. Blake, June 1, 1944. Blake sent regularprogress reports to the Carnegie Institution. Between July 1, 1939 and May 15, 1940, she is saidto have finished her third volume on mosaics and also that “Dr Blake is more than ever con-vinced of the desirability of publication of the results of Dr. van Deman’s studies. Italian schol-ars will welcome such a comprehensive and up-to-date work on Roman construction, andAmerican scholars have been awaiting publication for over a quarter of a century.” Carnegie In-stitution of Washington Year Book No. 39, 1940, p. 287.

2 From a questionnaire for the MHC Alumnae Association in 1952. An earlier report of May1948 states: “Marion is doing research at Widener Library at Harvard but soon will be goingfor the summer to her newly remodeled home. Edgecoop, in Bradford, Vt., where she will welcome 1913-ers.” Faculty and Staff Biographical Records, Blake 1948, 1952.

“what a task for a lady!” marion blake at work 49

en and Anne Laidlaw, both of whom were fellows at the Academy in the1950s when Blake was in residence. Their portrait of Blake is consistent, ifblurry: she was a steady, quiet presence, hard of hearing, ever industrious,with some financial hardship. Compared with the fiery Van Deman, Blakemust have seemed retiring indeed and it appears that her reserve may haveimpeded career advancement.1

The third resource, and by far most important evidence for Blake’s schol-arship on mosaics, is located in the Fototeca of the American Academy inRome. Here are drafts, letters, and about 200 postcard-size index cards thatpreserve traces of Blake’s fastidious working method and keen eye for de-tail.2 On the small cards she recorded observations and made sketches ofmosaics that she had found on-site or in myriad sources, including books,journals, guidebooks, excavation reports, newspapers, and conversationswith other scholars. Within her drawings she inserted shorthand codes forcolor and types of ornament. Most of the cards are organized alphabetical-ly by site, but some follow thematic categories, such as ancient glass, cos-tume, gladiators, and animals. These subject categories will be familiar toanyone who has consulted the extensive indices of Blake’s mosaic and con-struction volumes, a feature for which she was lauded in reviews.3 In a let-ter of 1956 she wrote of finishing the second volume, Roman Constructionin Italy from Tiberius through the Flavians: “The index cards are all made out,but I keep very busy trying to juggle them into about six separated indices.It is quite a job but I think that it is worthwhile.”4

1 Kathy Geffcken found correspondence regarding Blake’s application to become a staffmember at the Academy that included comments noting her reticence: Geffcken and Fentressin this volume.

2 Kathy Geffcken began organizing the notecards in 1997, when Chris Huemer, Librarianof the Academy and Mount Holyoke College alumna (’69), began to assess the Blake materialsthere. Other materials consist of a big box containing Phi Beta Kappa Minutes; a manila enve-lope with loose photographs and an unpublished manuscript on the mosaics of Ostia; a secondenvelope labeled “MEB’s ms of Mosaics – unpublished” with typescripts and photos; a hand-written manuscript with discussions of mosaics at Desenzano, Florence, Pistoia, Arezzo, Fos-sobine, Sepino, Aquileia, Velleia, Ventimiglia, Faenza, Negrar Valpolicella (Roman villa disc.1887), Milan, Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Tarentum. There are newspaper clippings and notesrelating to mosaics of Anzio, to “Jewish and Roman Mosaics in the Brooklyn Museum of Artsand Sciences”, and to mosaics at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. There also is a boxwith “Appunti di Miss M. Blake spediti dal Prof. David Bishop al Prof. Frank Brown (4 Aprile1973)” (= “notes by M.B. sent by Prof. D. Bishop to Prof. F. Brown”), these are ca. 200 sheetstype written (A4 size).

3 Lucy Shoe Meritt, “Review of Roman Construction in Italy from Tiberius through the Flavians,by Marion Elizabeth Blake”, The Classical World 53, no. 4 (1960) 131: “The extensive bibliography,the full documentation of the notes and the five detailed Indexes are themselves invaluableworks of reference; with the text they make a volume which will remain fundamental for thestudy of Roman architecture and topography.”

4 Letter to Cora Eastman, January 2, 1956.

50 bettina bergmann

In sum, the letters in the Mount Holyoke College Archives tell us muchabout Blake’s personal circumstances and concerns while living abroad,while the trove of index cards in the Academy Fototeca, which served asBlake’s memory aides, show her mind at work, engaging with her material.We shall return to her intimate working relationship with Roman mosaics.

Blurred Identities

In the United States, the name “Marion Elizabeth Blake” automatically recalls her books on Roman construction, not on mosaics. Yet the work onconstruction was not initiated by Blake; it was a responsibility that she inherited and dutifully followed through from the age of 45 until her deathat 69. As a result, not only Blake’s publications, but many of her initial draftsand research notes and are today mixed up with the effects of others, specif-ically of Esther Van Deman and Doris Taylor Bishop. How can one identifythe individual contribution and voice of Marion Blake among all those others who influenced her and either initiated or completed her projects?

It is true that the ideas for all of Blake’s major endeavors were suggestedto her by her seniors. She inherited her dissertation on Attic inscriptionsat Cornell University from her professor. For the idea to study the mosaicpavements of Italy she thanked Esther Van Deman.1 And it is well-knownthat soon after Van Deman’s death in 1937, Blake stepped up to take overthat scholar’s ambitious project on Roman masonry. She spent the rest ofher life working on it, publishing two volumes in 1947 and 1959 and prepar-ing the third, which appeared twelve years after her death, in 1973. It wasalmost as if Blake took over Van Deman’s entire scholarly life, assumingthe same post as Research Associate that Van Deman had held at theCarnegie Institution in Washington. Not surprisingly, the materials of thetwo women are combined in the archives of both the Carnegie Institutionand the Fototeca of the American Academy in Rome. Sometimes one evenfinds their handwriting on the same piece of paper, like an ongoing con-versation over time.

Although Blake spent decades laboring on the construction volumes,for many years she hesitated to call herself an expert. Her speciality, shemaintained, was mosaics. In a report to Mount Holyoke College in 1941,Blake wrote: “My present task is completing the life work of the late Dr.Esther Van Deman on ancient Roman concrete construction. My own re-search is in the field of ancient Roman mosaics.”2 At the same time, Blake ex-

1 On her dissertation, see Debnar in this volume. Her acknowledgment to Van Deman:Blake 1930, p. 10.

2 Faculty and Staff Biographical Files, Marion E. Blake, January 6, 1941.


pressed frustration at not being taken seriously as a specialist on construc-tion. Two years after taking on the project, she wrote of the need to re-spond to new criticisms of Van Deman’s work and complained thatyounger scholars regarded her only as a mosaic expert. “I really am mak-ing good progress but I didn’t anticipate quite so many snags. Apparentlyduring her life-time Miss Van Deman dominated the field. Really greatscholars came to her for advice as to wall construction and took her dic-tum without question. Since her death, the small fry or at least ratheryoung and unproved scholars are seeking fame by questioning both hermethods and her results … what a burden they are placing on my shoul-ders to check every one of their statements. Meanwhile most of them haveassociated me only with mosaics and do not know that I am entrusted withMiss Van Deman’s knowledge or at least as much of it as I can assimilate.It is annoying to have all this coming up while I am … struggling with Cy-clopean Walls. What a task for a lady!”1

Working in Van Deman’s shadow was a constant challenge. It thuscomes as a surprise that despite Blake’s extraordinary commitment to hermentor and the intimacy of their working methods, Blake did not knowVan Deman well personally. This is made clear in a letter of 1955 when shewas asked to write a biography of Van Deman. Blake said that while she“knew more about Van Deman’s work than anybody else, she had not mether until she had passed sixty years of age and all I knew of her life waswhat she had let fall in casual conversation.”2 The two women had beenacquainted for 26 years. Blake first met Van Deman in 1911, when as a fresh-man at Mount Holyoke College, she heard Van Deman lecture. Thirteenyears later, upon arriving at the American Academy, Blake wrote that “Ifound Dr. Van Deman awaiting me, eager to bestow upon me as much ofher vast store of information as I could absorb.”3 No doubt about it: thiswas a professional, working relationship. Yet soon after Van Deman’sdeath, Blake wrote from Rome that she had been entrusted not just withthe renowned archaeologist’s scholarly work, but also with disposing ofher personal effects.4

1 Letter to Cora Eastman, January 20, 1939.2 Letter to Cora Eastman, June 20, 1955.3 Van Deman: Blake 1947, pp. 676-677. Blake did produce a measured characterization of

Van Deman and claimed that it was “quite fun to do”: Letter to Cora Eastman, August 16, 1955.Van Deman was a dominant presence at the Academy when Blake was there: “Dr. Esther VanDeman, the internationally famous archaeologist, guides such students in research as may beattracted to the study of Roman archaeology.” Hadzsits 1931, pp. 761-762. On Blake and VanDeman: Welch 2006, pp. 76-78, 97 and Geffcken and Fentress in this volume.

4 Letter to Cora Eastman, November 19, 1937: “Much of the task of disposing of Miss VanDeman’s things has fallen upon me also.”

52 bettina bergmann

The dynamics of a familial relationship seems to have been commonamong women scholars living in the American community in Rome.When, in turn, Marion Blake died in 1961, another female researcher wouldstep up to cement her legacy. Doris Taylor had met Blake at the Academyin 1948 and, two years after her death, took over the task of first locatingand then completing Blake’s unpublished work.1 She contacted Cora Eastman, who arranged to send “the material on mosaics” to WheatonCollege, from where Doris Taylor Bishop (by then married to David Bish-op) sent it on to the the American Academy, where she first sorted out theresearch on mosaics from that on construction and then began updatingthe manuscript of Volume Three, Roman Construction in Italy from Nervathrough the Antonines.2 In a letter of November 1963, Taylor Bishop wroteof the detective work needed to trace Blake’s trips into the Italian country-side so as to date the latest notes and reported an “aha” moment when sherealized that everything that Blake had typed on an Olivetti typewritermust have been done in the last year of her life, when she was concentrat-ing on Ostia and the Palatine.3 Taylor Bishop worked steadfastly on theproject for another six years until her death in 1969, after which her husbandDavid Bishop spent four more years finishing Volume Three. After com-pletion in 1973, he sent back to the Academy any materials that Doris hadhad, including Van Deman’s original notes and Blake’s later records.

The volume, then, took half a century to complete and required untoldhours of labor on the parts of four scholars. It originated with Van Deman,who had worked for thirty years before putting it aside for aqueducts in1925; was corroborated and enhanced by Marion Blake in the 1930s, 1940s,and 1950s; continued by Doris Bishop in the 1960s; and completed by David

1 Doris Taylor Bishop invited Blake to speak at Wheaton College in March 1948, whereBishop taught from 1955-1969 and saw Blake in summers in the late 1950s, when they drove to-gether to sites outside Rome.

2 Taylor Bishop’s four letters to Cora Eastman written two years after Blake’s death de-scribe the difficulties of sorting out Blake’s work process. October 9, 1963: “I now have pagesand pages of ms.which no one had discovered … I think that it probably is wise to put all hermaterial on mosaics together here at the Academy Library. Would you be willing to send meat my Boston address … the package on mosaics?” November 5, 1963: “Please send the mosaicmaterial whenever convenient … I can put it with the mosaic records here (AAR).” January 8,1964: “As soon as the package (of material on mosaics) arrives I shall go over that material againand make a sturdy box of it to send to Rome. Perhaps I can combine what I have here with itbut I’m afraid I’ll need two boxes. I still know very little about the mosaics but since I had togo through everything in Rome to sort out the notes on construction. I do know what is inRome and can make a list of the total on mosaics. The cabinet in the library in Rome is surelya safer and better place for the mosaics than my apartment or office … Now I am typing andretyping and checking footnotes and references…Among Marion’s papers in Rome I found alittle black suitcase which she must have used to carry manuscripts back and forth.”

3 Letter from Doris Taylor Bishop to Cora Eastman, January 8, 1964.


Taylor in 1973. Blake, of course, had done the lion’s share of work after VanDeman. But in the Introduction to Volume Three, David Bishop statedemphatically that his involvement was an act of devotion to his belovedwife and dwells on the immense effort it had been for both Doris and himself.1 Blake falls into the background.

The successive acts of pietas among Roman archaeologists partly ex-plain the paradox of Blake’s legacy. On the one hand, she is forever famousas author of major books on Roman construction. On the other hand, herscholarly status in the history of the discipline remains ambiguous. Due toher quiet nature and shared authorship with others, Blake is not recog-nized as a ‘pioneer’ as are other female archaeologists of her time. Wemust remember, too, that Blake needed to make ends meet. Money was aprimary factor in her life decisions, and to her credit, she successfully man-aged to continue working abroad as a researcher, if perhaps not on a topicof her first choice.2 It also should be said that there is something movingabout the loyalty and altruism that these women (and one man) demon-strated toward each other and toward their field of study. The personal stories behind the volumes on Roman construction indicate a degree ofself-sacrifice that might offer a contrast to modern attitudes about person-al ambition and the ownership of scholarly work.

Transatlantic Years

Having presented the problem of Blake’s identity and the nature of herlegacy, I now turn to her movements between the United States andRome. These began with the passage from a small, secluded women’s col-lege to an international outpost of dynamic cultural exchange in 1924.Blake was a recent Ph.D when she arrived as a student in the summer ses-sion of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome. Thanks to herpromising research on Roman mosaics, she won a fellowship to stay on asa fellow for the following year (1924-1925), an award that offered room andboard plus a $1000 stipend. Blake thus followed in the footsteps of sucheminent female archaeologists as Lily Ross Taylor in 1917-18 and LouiseAdams Holland in 1923-1924.

1 Blake 1973, p. viii. Where the title of the 1947 volume credits Van Deman (A ChronologicalStudy Based in Part upon the Material Accumulated by Esther Boise Van Deman), the 1973 title in-cludes Taylor Bishop (Roman Construction in Italy from Nerva through the Antonines, edited andcompleted by Doris Taylor Bishop).

2 Many of Blake’s letters mention her ongoing struggle with finances. In the last year ofher life she wrote, “the $2500 of the American Philosophical Society grant will certainly easethe financial burden of continuing research for another year.” Letter to Cora Eastman, June17, 1960. See Dyson 2006 on the difficulty women had gaining excavation experience and full-time employment in the early and mid-20th Century.

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It is significant that these scholars all were associated with womens’ col-leges. In 1913 A. W. Van Buren, then Librarian and Lecturer in Archaeology,had issued a statement noting the longstanding relationship between theAmerican School of Classical Studies and women’s colleges. Women hadbeen admitted as students to the American School of Classical Studiesfrom the beginning, in 1895. However, when the American Academy inRome was established in 1914, the two schools of Fine Arts and ClassicalStudies were combined. Van Buren was responding to concerns about thelack of women in the new School of Fine Arts and the plan to erect a build-ing only for men. In protest of this plan, for several years the women’s col-leges had refused to pay their annual dues. Their efforts had little effect,for women did not become fellows until after World War II.1 Van Buren’sremarks also addressed the segregation that Blake experienced as a womanliving separately in the guest quarters of the Villa Aurelia, next to thehome of the director.2 By 1948, when women finally were allowed to sit atthe Fellows Table, Blake wrote: “Much has been changed at the Academybut upon the whole the changes have been for the better. Men and womenshare the public rooms and I am considered a real member of the Acade-my group even though I live down here [De Daehn residence].”3

In the 1920s, as now, the American Academy was the scene of fancy,co-ed dinners and lively parties. One looks in vain for Blake among the revelers in photographs of such events. Instead, she appears to have pre-ferred day trips like the 1924 Summer School excursions to Horace’s Villa

1 In 1926-1927, 37 institutions contributed $250 per year to the American Academy, 31 men’sinstitutions and six women’s colleges. The first female fellow of the American School of Clas-sical Studies was Mabel Reid in 1900. Formally, the American Academy accepted AmericanSchool of Classical Studies fellows as ‘affiliated fellows’ but functionally the two schools wereseparate. In the Summer School sessions of the School of Classical Studies, which began theyear before Blake participated in 1923, women outnumbered men by about three to one. I amgrateful to Kathy Geffcken for providing this information. See also Yegul 1991.

2 “The following paragraph may serve to correct a misconception in the minds of somereaders: “One of the features of the Classical School in the past has been its co-operation withthe women’s colleges and the coeducational universities of America in the matter of admittingwomen to its privileges. There is no reason to suppose that this tradition will be modified in thefuture. Women play a large and important part in the educational and scholarly life of America,and the American Academy in Rome, as being virtually a national institution, recognizes thisfact and its own obligation to conform to it. The Academy is for the present obliged to limit itsdormitory accommodations to the men Fellows; but this is the only respect in which a womanwho would have been admitted on equal terms with men are more fortunate. And when theideal of the director of the Academy is realized, looking toward a dormitory for women, thenthat sole form of discrimination will cease.” van Buren 1913, pp. 77-8. On housing, GeorgeDepue Hadzsits, Annual Professor of the School of Classical Studies at the American Academyfor 1929-30, wrote: “The Villa Aurelia, the home of the director, with living quarters also for thewomen-fellows, is a superb building surrounded by lovely gardens.” Hadzsits 1931, p. 759.

3 Marion Blake Papers, Letter to Cora Eastman, October 17, 1948.


and Tusculum, the latter memorialized in a picture showing a young, smil-ing Blake sitting next to a fellow student at the theater.1 In another photoof a trip to Narce taken many years later in 1940, Blake stands between VanBuren on her right and the excavator of the site, R. Mengarelli, on her left(Fig. 1). These must have been happy days, as photographs of other outings attest, but no letters or personal anecdotes survive to fill in thebackground.

Blake worked extremely hard during her fellowship year at the Acade-my, producing a manuscript, partly typed and partly handwritten, enti-tled “The Pavements of Rome and its Vicinity of the Republican and Au-gustan Epochs”, now in the Mount Holyoke College Archives. Attachedto it is a typed, five-page letter from Van Buren dated September 9, 1926.Van Buren had learned of Blake’s application for a Guggenheim Founda-tion fellowship to stay in Rome the following year and continue workingon mosaics. He sent praise for her manuscript along with copious sug-

1 Blake chose this photograph to place in Madame De Daehn’s memory book, a ‘who’swho’ of visitors. Below the photograph, Blake quoted a poem and signed her name, giving heraffiliation as Converse College in South Carolina, where she taught between from 1922-1928.American Academy Rare Book Room: De Daehn Memory Book 1923-1957, Volume One. SeeGeffcken and Fentress in this volume.

Fig. 1. Academy field trip to Narce, May 11, 1940.Written on back: Miss Tannenbaum, Mr. Benton, Miss Blank, Mr. Boyce,Miss Friedman, Mr. Houck, Prof. Van Buren, Miss Blake, Prof. Mengarelli

(Fototeca Unione, American Academy).

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gestions for revisions and encouraged Blake to submit the final text forpublication as a monograph or long article in the Memoirs of AmericanAcademy in Rome, of which he was then editor. This she would do, pro-ducing three substantive articles on Roman mosaics in volumes of MAARin 1930, 1936, and 1941.

Thanks to Van Buren and others who saw the potential of Blake’s fu-ture work on mosaics, she won two successive grants from the Guggen-heim Foundation, first for 1927-1928 with a renewal for 1928-1929, an un-usual feat. In these two years Blake widened her scope to mosaicsthroughout Italy at large, a task that required negotiations with multipleauthorities in Ancona, Aquileia, Trieste, Bologna, Rome, and the Vatican,to mention a few.1 She especially made numerous, intensive research tripsto Pompeii, where she was photographed standing among the ruins,flanked by guards (Fig. 2). Her characteristic persistence, thoroughness,and overriding concern for precise documentation are evident in the Pref-ace to her first publication: “For Pompeii my material is complete. Everyroom of every house has been visited not once but many times. Inasmuchas every pavement, whether cement, marble, or mosaic, had to be datedeither from the direct evidence of its environment or from a comparisonwith others, the visits could not be casual. Of mosaics alone there weresomewhat over two hundred to be studied and classified. Although thisstudy is by no means a catalogue, every pavement in Pompeii was consid-ered for inclusion or rejection.”2 Despite the investment of time and en-ergy at the site, Pompeii proved to be discouraging, above all the build-ings recently uncovered by Amedeo Maiuri in the southeastern part of thecity: “I found little to interest me. The contemplation of the pavementsof that part of the city is depressing. Most are of cement, and are badlyworn. Occasionally a center of either mosaic or marble has been used inan attempt to attain greater elegance, but the workmanship is so poor thatit defeats its own end.”3

After returning to the States in Fall 1929 to teach at Mount Holyoke Col-lege, Blake produced a short, handwritten draft entitled Chronological Studyof the Cement Pavements of Pompeii illustrated with her own photographs,sections of which she incorporated into The Pavements of the Roman Build-ings of the Republic and Early Empire. She then launched into the next publication, Roman Mosaics of the Second Century in Italy, for which she had

1 Blake 1936, p. 70. 2 Blake 1930, p. 9.3 Blake 1930, pp. 9-10. Buildings discovered by Maiuri: House of Fabius Amandio (1924-1926);

House of the Priest Amandio (1924-1926); House of the Ephebe (1924-1926); House of the The-atrical Pictures (1927); House of Menander (1928-1934); House of the Lovers (1928-1934); Houseof the Four Styles (1937-1941); Large Gymnasium (1933-1935); Villa of the Mysteries (1929-1930).


accumulated an extraordinary amount of information during the two fel-lowship years and which she finished also at Mount Holyoke, in 1935.

For Blake, the 1920s and 1930s were an exciting period of travel. In con-secutive annual reports to Mount Holyoke College alumnae she recount-

Fig. 2. Marion E. Blake in Pompeii in the 1920s, undated photograph(Archives and Special Collections, Mount Holyoke College, Marion Blake Papers).

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ed going to Egypt (one month Feb. 1929), mainland Greece (10 weeks 1929,1935), the Greek Islands (one month 1929 w/ASCS), North Africa (Tunisiaand Algeria, 8 days), Syria (one month 1935), Istanbul (2 weeks 1935), Yu-goslavia (2 weeks), France (two months), England (one month), “not tomention a North Cape cruise which gave me a glimpse of Iceland, Nor-way, Sweden, and Denmark”.1 Somewhere among the many sites in theMediterranean a smiling Blake was photographed seated on a donkey(Fig. 3). It is curious that the trip for which we have the most detailed re-sponses from Blake had nothing to do with Roman mosaics or construc-tion, but was the group tour to Scandinavia in 1930. Blake left a travel diaryrecording her thoughts at each destination: Oslo, Norway; Stockholm,Visby, and Gotland, Sweden; Danzig, Poland. What is striking about theseentries is Blake’s fascination with the local people and her awe at Scandi-navian churches, the only glimmer of a spiritual association with religiousstructures and quite removed from the thoroughly rational approach toancient buildings that would become her later life’s work.

From 1931 until 1937 Blake’s life in Rome and continuing research on mo-saics were funded by more grants from the Carnegie Institution and theAmerican Council of Learned Societies. During these years she spent sev-eral months at a time in the States, teaching at Mount Holyoke (fromwhich she resigned in 1935), Sweet Briar College, and Winthrop College.Then, in May 1937, Esther Van Deman died, an event that marks the turn-ing point in Blake’s life. She quickly shifted gears.2 By the time her thirdpublication on mosaics appeared three years later, Blake had long beendeep into Roman construction bringing Van Deman’s notes of 1925 up-to-date. She negotiated with the Carnegie Institution for financial support,estimating that it would require a full decade to complete Van Deman’sproject. That meant, of course, that Blake would need to leave the mosaicsbehind. In November 1937 she wrote: “I got my report off September 15th

saying that I was confident that I could do the job but that I should needten years. Then I got to thinking that much which she [Van Deman] in-tended could be left out without essential loss and so I wrote again to that

1 Reported in a questionnaire to alumnae, Faculty and Staff Biographical Records, MarionE. Blake, 1952.

2 Already toward the end of that summer she wrote from the Villa Chiaraviglio: “I havemade quite a little headway with Miss Van Deman’s notes. She left a complete outline for twovolumes. Apparently the material for both text and plates is all collected up until 1925. I shallhave to read all the books and articles cited in order to make anything out of the notes and goover a tremendous body of literature which has come out since 1925 and examine all the build-ings which have been unearthed in the last decade. I am not ready yet to make an estimate ofthe time necessary but at least I know that it is a possible tast though rather a tedious one.”Letter to Cora Eastman, August 1, 1937.


effect. Yesterday, a letter came wishing for a new estimate of time on thatbasis which means that I must put mosaics away again and take out thebricks. Fortunately the mosaics are in a pretty good state to leave. Every-thing in Rome and vicinity is written up, and I’d just as soon have a littletime elapse between writing and checking.”1

The following February of 1938, Blake followed up: “The Carnegie In-stitution finally came across with what I think is a very fair proposition. Iam to have Miss Van Deman’s title of Research Associate of the Institutionwith what I think was her maximum salary before her retirement for twoyears to finish up the first part of the work; i.e. what she intended to bevolume I. They do not close the door to a further appointment to com-plete the whole thing later if it seems advisable. It will mean working un-der considerable pressure, but I believe that I can do it in the specifiedtime.”2 Blake’s projection of ten years was on the mark; a full decade later,in January 1949, she wrote that the first volume on construction was “final-ly being distributed in Italy” and the next spring reported that it had been

1 Letter to Cora Eastman, November 19, 1937.2 Letter to Cora Eastman, February 1, 1938.

Fig. 3. Marion E. Blake on travels in the 1920s(South Hadley, Massachusetts, Archives and Special Collections,

Mount Holyoke College, Marion Blake Papers).

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“accorded such an enthusiastic reception both at home and abroad thatthere seems to be nothing for it except to carry the study of ancient con-struction on from Augustus to Constantine.” She declared “I’ve no timefor mosaics now…”1

Blake spent the rest of her life in Rome living both outside and insidethe Academy. At some point, she moved in with the family of Peter DeDaehn, a white Russian émigré colonel who served as assistant librarianof the American Academy in 1924 and became chief librarian in 1948. Hiswife Madame De Daehn offered lodging and tutoring in Italian to a regularstream of visitors. Blake stayed in the De Daehn household off and on forthe rest of her time in Rome and her letters to Cora Eastman are full ofanecdotes about life there: the visitors, the health and fortunes of the DeDaehns and their servants, the wartime and postwar shortages of food,coal, cooking gas, water, and electricity. A recurring theme is her poor fi-nances, “my microscopic income”, but she made her way with a succes-sion of grants and editing manuscripts, one by Mason Hammond.2

In her letters Blake also often remarked on the changing social scene atthe Academy and whether she felt a part of that scene or not. From all ap-pearances, she was a steady presence. For 18 years, she served as the treas-urer and secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa Association of Italy, organizingthe annual dinner at the Academy for a notable roster of scholars: FrankBrown, Doris Taylor, Lily Ross Taylor, Mason Hammond, Herbert Bloch.3“So there is plenty of interesting companionship. Everybody is too busyfor much intimacy, but there is a friendly atmosphere.”4 She stayed currenton new excavations and publications, such as the American Academy ex-cavation at Cosa, the Belgian excavation at Alba Fucense, and RussellMeiggs’s tome on Ostia, which she reviewed.5 In more relaxed commentsabout life around the Academy, Blake the observer and wit comes to thefore. In an August 1939 report to alumnae, she offered her opinion aboutmodern young women overdressing to impress men: “In the Villa Sciarra[a popular spot park near the Academy where Blake took visitors andwalked with friends]”, she wrote that “the peacocks are gorgeous as they

1 Letter to Cora Eastman, January 27, 1949.2 Letter to Cora Eastman, February 4, 1951. Her ongoing support from powerful American

institutions: the American Academy in Rome (1924-6), the Guggenheim Foundation (1927-9),the American Council of Learned Societies (1931, 1933), the Carnegie Institution (1937-1938), theAmerican Philosophical Society (1948), and the United States Fulbright Program (1950).

3 Minutes of the Phi Beta Kappa Association of Italy Annual dinners 1926-1959 indicate thatBlake was treasurer and secretary from March 1926 until April 1939, after which there was nomeeting until 1949. Fototeca, American Academy in Rome. In letters Blake wrote about organ-izing the dinners in letters of 1956 and 1959.

4 Letters to Cora Eastman, September 15, 1954. 5 Blake 1960.


strut around with wide-spread tails, trying to make an impression on theirladies, who seem quite indifferent to the performance. Perhaps moderngirls could take a few lessons from the pea-hen!”1

This kind of observation, combined with a clever turn of phrase, mayin part explain why in her last decades in Rome so many visitors connectedwith Blake. Through years of extensive travel throughout Italy she trulyhad become an expert on ancient sites and their buildings. “The mosaicstudies took me all over Italy; the work on construction takes me intoevery ancient building in Rome and her immediate vicinity. With a tasklike mine, I have no need of hobbies. Every day is full of interesting en-counters of one kind and another.”2 She became an informal tour guidefor friends an acquaintances, often taking a week or two to show peoplethrough Rome, Tivoli, and Ostia. “You wouldn’t think that a subject as dullas mine would bring interesting contacts but it does.”3

In fact, from her letters, after the war Blake seems to have experienceda social blossoming, developing new interests and cementing friendships.In 1960, the year before her death, she wrote “Nearly every day somebodyunexpected, whom I have known here in other years, turns up and since Iam about the only one whom they know I am greeted with enthusiasmand I must say I enjoy even a specious popularity like that.”4 She busiedherself reading books given to her by authors she had met (MargaretScherer’s Marvels of Rome, Eleanor Clark’s Rome and a Villa).5 She devel-oped a passion for Piranesi after inheriting about 50 prints from Van De-man, some of which she tried to sell and some which she donated to theCarnegie Insitution and the American Academy.6 Where the tone of ear-lier letters had been polite, with reports about her work and the academicscene, the 1950s missives became more colorful and at times humorous,filled with anecdotes about renowned archaeologists, such as Ernest Nash,Inez Ryberg, William Bell Dinsmoor, Gisela Richter, Marion Lawrence,and Luisa Banti. One person she mentioned frequently in her final yearswas Russell Meiggs, with whom she took many trips to Ostia and to the

1 Faculty and Staff Biographical Records, Marion E. Blake, August 1939.2 Faculty and Staff Biographical Records, Marion E. Blake, 1952. In an earlier report to alum-

nae in Spring 1946: “I am back in Washington putting the final touches on the magnum opuswhich I was just starting when we were back at reunion in 1938. The volume should be out inthe fall. That project has certainly kept me traveling – Rome, Washington, Cambridge, Mass.,and Washington again, with long summers and autumns in Bradford, Vt., working with myown library. I shall feel rather lost when it is off my hands.”

3 Letter to Cora Eastman, December 14, 1957.4 Letter to Cora Eastman, October 15, 1960.5 On Scherer: Letter to Cora Eastman, January 2, 1956.6 Letter to Cora Eastman, April 22, 1957.

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Palatine (her two focal points of interest) in the late 1950s and whom shefound “very stimulating” if “strenuous”.1

Still, despite her active social life, work remained the focus of Blake’swaking hours. In January 1959 she wrote about the elaborate system of or-ganization that she had created to keep all of her construction projects go-ing at once. In the Academy library she had one desk for Volume Two(which would appear that year), another for Volume Three, and a table forher “Academy publications”.2 She struggled to keep her research up todate, eagerly reading Giuseppe Lugli’s new book on Roman constructionand becoming ever more concerned with checking walls and floors on thePalatine “to get the facts right.” The shadow of Van Deman was ever pres-ent. “I wish I had her eye for telling the age of a wall at a glance.”3

Marion Blake at Work

There is no question that Blake’s major accomplishment was bringing tofruition decades of research on Roman mosaics and masonry construc-tion. She was able to create an orderly typology and a chronology out ofan incoherent mass of floor mosaics.4 Her decisiveness and clarity ofthought are evident in the emphatic distinctions she made, separating thedecorative from the figural, the polychrome from black-and-white, and soon. Blake’s categories grouped the mosaics independently from theirphysical context, but paradoxically she claimed that mosaics were not anend in themselves: “Pavements are important not for art but for chronol-ogy. Apart from chronology mosaics are scarcely less important than wallpaintings in helping one reconstruct in imagination the ancient house.”5For construction, Blake employed a similar methodology, namely closeobservation, logical deduction, and continual testing of dates and cate-gories.

What can we detect as Blake’s subjective contribution in conveying thenature and importance of the material? Here her detailed notecards on mosaics are enlightening for they trace a particular mental process of see-

1 On Meiggs, “Unfortunately archaeological and economic arguments don’t always jibe,hence the discussions.” Letter to Cora Eastman, April 22, 1957.

2 Letter to Cora Eastman, January 5, 1959.3 Van Deman’s eye: Letter to Cora Eastman, November 1954. On the Palatine: Letter to

Cora Eastman, October 2, 1949. On Lugli’s book: Letter to Cora Eastman, February 13, 1957.4 Blake 1936, p. 69: “It is only by examining hundreds of examples together with all the

chronological data no matter how slight that the sympathetic student comes to recognize thecharacteristics of the second century as they are displayed in the mosaic art.”

5 Blake 1930, p. 11. In the preface Blake did state that in the photographs she tried to con-sider the larger environment of the mosaics. She also treated tomb mosaics separately accord-ing to their location in Chapter iv.


ing and recording, even inventing a specialized vocabulary for what shesaw, for example, by borrowing “the terminology of botany.”1 Clearly,Blake – quiet, retiring, deaf – possessed a vibrant visual memory. Many ofher meticulous observations never found their way into print. From theimmense amount of descriptive detail on the notecards, two main aspectscome to light: the inter-relationship between the visual (hand-drawnsketches) and the verbal (written descriptions), and the ways in whichBlake compensated for monochromatic recordings, both in her sketches,and in the reproductions in her publications, of elaborately multicoloredmosaics.

Blake, with her typical inquisitiveness, had to draw the pavements in or-der to understand how ancient mosaicists conceived and made them. Herrough, annotated sketches capture the intricacies of pavements and docu-ment a passionate personal engagement with the medium. But becauseBlake never was trained in technical design, she hired experts to drawsome of her book illustrations. These were few, though, because the ma-jority of illustrations were made in the state of the art of the day: black-and-white photographs.2 Blake acknowledged the poor state of the pho-tographs in her first publication: “To the architects who are interested … Iapologize for not including in the photographs the scale advocated by sev-eral. So many of the pictures were taken under pressure, that it becamedifficult to include that detail. The fact that all mosaics are covered fromthe first of November until the middle of April, and that the sun is un-bear-ably hot during the major part of July and August, accounts for the pres-sure.” Drawings, she admitted, would have been superior to photographs,but were too time-consuming: “The designs could have been more clearlyrepresented in drawings, but time was lacking for that.”3 For the fron-tispiece, however, Blake introduced a stunning splash of color into amonochrome book with a foldout watercolor of the Terano mosaic.4

Blake was able to translate her close visual experience of the mosaics in-to precise descriptions, thereby overcoming inadequate illustrations andallowing the reader to imagine the appearance and effects. This she didlargely from memory, thanks to the notecards. On them she noted withcare any missing features and colors. She made rubbings of tesserae to

1 Blake 1941, p. 122.2 Blake 1941, p. 81: “Stuart Metz, fellow in Landscape Architecture of the AAR, very kindly

made from my very rough sketches the drawing, which has become Plate 34.” In contrast toEsther Van Deman, Blake herself did not pursue the art of photography, even though costwould not have been a factor; already by the 1890s, Kodak had introduced the mail-ordermethod and the logic: “you press the shutter and we do the rest.”

3 Blake 1930, p. 10.4 Blake 1930, p. 11: “Reproduced with the kind permission of Count Francesco Savini.”

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record their shape and size. She was particularly sensitive to geometricaldesign, as can be seen in her pencil sketches of late mosaics from Aquileiaand Ravenna and from the short descriptions of their decorative patternsand optical illusions (Figg. 4-9).

Throughout her career, Blake’s driving goal was to produce as completea corpus as possible, whether of mosaics or masonry walls, and to get thefacts straight in an objective manner. But she also was eminently practical.When she encountered obstacles, as she did in Pompeii, Ostia, and Rome,she was quick to assess the situation, cut her losses, and move on. Thus, inspite of countless visits to Ostia, Blake never published her work on themosaics there because, as she explained in the preface, there was notenough space to treat them in the third volume, and the many new mo-saics being excavated would be published by Raiza Calza.1 As a result, herunpublished manuscript with photographs of the mosaics of Ostia sits inthe Fototeca of the American Academy in Rome. For similar reasons,Blake left out many mosaics in Rome that were rapidly emerging from theground during the Via Imperiali excavations. The Roman constructionvolumes, as well, required omissions of notable examples from the cor-pus. After years of trying to stay current on that topic, Blake knew howquickly publications fall out of date. And she had deadlines, especiallywith the Carnegie Institution.

In sum

Marion Elizabeth Blake has been largely invisible in the collective memoryof Roman scholars. This survey of the archival evidence helps paint a pic-ture of her life after finishing her Ph.D at Cornell University and beginninga new life in Rome in 1924. From the time she arrived in Italy, her welfaredepended upon institutions.2 She navigated quietly through changingtimes and a World War, never deviating from her goals. Between 1923and 1952 she crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than 21 times before finally

1 Blake 1941, p. 81 “Restriction of the space at my disposal has necessitated the exclusionof the chapter on Ostia. This has been attended with less regret than would otherwise havebeen the case if the new excavations were not constantly bringing fresh material to view. Itseems futile to publish a few, when all will soon be available for study in a corpus now in prepa-ration under the direction of Commendatore Guido Calza.” The manuscript on mosaics ofOstia, some of it typed but most handwritten, is organized according to types (e.g. Geometricmosaics, Silhouette mosaics), places (e.g. Piazzale delle Corporazioni) and subjects (e.g. mo-saic inscriptions, lighthouses, ships, vases, animals).

2 In 1952 she responded to the question: “Are you retired?” with “Probably, as much as I everwill be … I am working entirely on my own with occasional grants to keep me going financial-ly. One from the American Philosophical Society brought me over in 1948; another from theFulbright fund made further foreign residence possible.” Faculty and Staff BiographicalRecords, Marion E. Blake.


Fig. 4. Sketch on notecard of pavement from Palazzo di Teodorico, Ravenna(Fototeca Unione, American Academy).

Fig. 5. Sketch on notecard of east pavement, portico A, Ravenna(Fototeca Unione, American Academy).

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Fig. 6. Sketch on notecard of pavement near S. Severo, Ravenna(Fototeca Unione, American Academy).

Fig. 7. Sketch on notecard of pavement from Triclinium S, Ravenna(Fototeca Unione, American Academy).


Fig. 8. Sketch on notecard of ‘four-strand guilloche’ from Basilica di Marusinac,Salona, Dalmatia (Fototeca Unione, American Academy).

Fig. 9. Sketch on notecard of ‘four-strand guilloche’ from Basilica Teodoriana,Aquileia (Fototeca Unione, American Academy).

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boarding an airplane. The longer Blake lived in Rome, she grew into herrole as the expert on construction and her academic and social life beganto flourish. In her last decade, Blake won increasing recognition, in 1954 re-ceiving both an unsolicited and unrestricted grant from the Guggenheim

Fig. 10. Marion E. Blake outside Rome, undated photograph(Fototeca Unione, American Academy, Fondo Van Deman, No. 597).


Foundation and an honorary degree from Western College in Oxford,Ohio. “Will wonders ever cease?” she asked.1

Two surviving photographs capture the person Marion Blake thatemerges from her letters. In one, she stands alone, intent, as she notesdown or sketches her impressions of the massive structure before her, alady in her floral dress, her purse dangling from her arm, intrepid,plucky, resolute at her task (Fig. 10). This was Marion Blake at work.The other photograph may well be the last one taken of Blake and wasnot printed until the spring after her death (Fig. 11). Here she sits, assid-uously proofreading her manuscript, putting into words some of thethoughts and observations she may have been recording out in the field.This is how she spent her last months in Rome. Anne Laidlaw wrote: “Iremember Miss Blake’s telling me, the second year I was a Fellow there,that she was trying hard to finish her book, since one never knew howmuch life one had left – and then she died that summer.”2 On September

1 Letter to Cora Eastman, January 24, 1954. On her transatlantic trips: 1952 questionnaire toalumnae, Faculty and Staff Biographical Records, Marion E. Blake.

2 Laidlaw continued: “I was just a beginning student, and never called her anything but arespectful Miss Blake.” “… She was a sweet and gentle soul – small, plump, and unassuming,just went about her research in the Library and lived out … But she was always kind to us, andmade a point of knowing the young Classical Fellows … unless you had a strong personali-ty … you went virtually unnoticed.” E-mail letter to Elizabeth Fentress.

Fig. 11. Marion E. Blake, 1961 (South Hadley, Massachusetts,Archives and Special Collections, Mount Holyoke College, Marion Blake Papers).

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24, 1961, Colonel De Daehn wrote to Cora Eastman, “She was quite wellthe 30th of Aug. The heart attack came in the night; she was taken tohospital and had a good night and Drs. expected to save her, but she diedthe 1st September, 4:30 p.m. Fortunately her death was easy. She did notknow that the end was near, and five minutes before her death she toldthe doctors with her usual friendly smile that she is much better andasked to take her home.”1

Looking back over Blake’s letters and reports, her repeated, if brief,comments from 1938 on show that mosaics remained much on her mind,but that she became swept up in the challenge and success of the construc-tion volumes. For these she received multiple grants that allowed her tocontinue living in Rome, which gradually became ‘home’. Like a refrain,over and over again, Blake stated that there was no time for mosaics any-more. Perhaps, in the back of her mind, she intended to return to themone day, just as she did to her beloved Edgecoop in Vermont.

Mount Holyoke College,South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA

[email protected]

Archive and Bibliography Abbreviations(The abbreviations listed on p. 13 are not included)

ASCMHC = South Hadley, Massachusetts, Archives and Special Collections,Mount Holyoke College: Marion E. Blake Papers.

Faculty and Staff Biographical Records, Marion E. Blake.

Blake 1941 = M. E. Blake, Mosaics of the Late Empire in Rome and Vicinity,«MAAR», 17, 1941, pp. 81-130.

Blake 1947 = M. E. Blake, Ancient Roman Construction in Italy from the PrehistoricPeriod to Augustus, Washington D.C. 1947.

Blake 1959 = M. E. Blake, Roman Construction in Italy from Tiberius Through theFlavians, Washington 1959.

Blake 1960 = M. E. Blake, Review of R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia, «ClassicalWorld», 54/3, 1960, pp. 83-84.

Blake 1973 = M. E. Blake, Roman Construction in Italy from Nerva Through the Antonines, edited and completed by Doris Taylor Bishop (Memoirs of the APS,96), Philadelphia 1973.

1 The Marion E. Blake Papers contain two telegrams to Cora Eastman from her brother,Azel Blake, regarding Blake’s death and funeral arrangements; an obituary note; a letter fromthe American Academy in Rome sent to Cora Eastman concerning Blake’s death; a copy ofthe Classical Society of the American Academy in Rome’s Fall Newsletter announcing Blake’sdeath.


Cohen, Joukowsky 2006 = G. Cohen, M. S. Joukowsky, Breaking Ground: Pioneering Women Archaeologists, University of Michigan Press 2004, (Paperback2006) http://brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/.

Dyson 2006 = S. Dyson, A History of Classical Archaeology in the Nineteenth andTwentieth Centuries, New York 2006.

Hadzsits 1931 = G. D. Hadzsits, The American Academy in Rome, «The Phi BetaKappa Key» 7/12, May 1931, pp. 759-763.

Yegul 1991 = F. Yegul, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding: Architecture at the Amer-ican Academy in Rome 1894-1940, New York-Oxford 1991.

Welch 2006 = K. Welch, Esther B. Van Deman, in: Cohen, Joukowsky 2006,pp. 68-108.

"What a Task for a Lady!" Marion Blake at Work

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