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Mar

More News from the Roman Forum

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology

The

After changes made to the admission policy at the Roman Forum earlier this week, as well as the reopening of the House of Augustus on the Palatine Hill after years of restoration, the Superintendency of Archaeology blows us away with another announcement about increased accessibility to monuments.

As of yesterday, 11 March, two monuments previously closed to the public will be open on a limited schedule. One, seen in the image above, is the so-called Temple of Romulus, a building constructed by the Emperor Maxentius (late 3rd-early 4th century AD) and dedicated in the memory of his son Romulus who died at a young age. Probably not a temple at all, many think that the “Temple of Romulus” served as an audience hall for the Roman Emperor. The remarkable preservation of the building - which still has its original domed roof and bronze doors (there’s even a claim that the keys to this door still exist) - is due to the fact that it was converted into the vestibule for the Church of San Cosmos and Damiano in the 6th century BC.

The other newly-opened monument is the Oratory of the 40 Martyrs, adjacent to the Church of Santa Maria Antiqua and near the Temple of Castor & Pollux. The oratory is a single apsidal room frescoed with two separate images of 40 martyrs put to death by the Emperor Diocletian, who in the 3rd century AD had them killed by throwing them into a frozen lake while preparing a hot bath on the shore as a temptation to them. Though the frescoes are not very well preserved, they are remarkable for the fact that they date from the end of the 8th century AD.

How can you visit these site? Guided visits are scheduled every day from 10:00am to 1:30pm and are offered in both Italian (10:30am and 12:00pm) and English (1:00pm). You can make an appointment at the ticket office of the Roman Forum (at Largo Romolo e Remo, just off Via dei Fori Imperiali) or you can reserve in advance (recommended) by calling the offices of Pierreci at +39.06.39967700. The guided visit costs 4.50 euro (this atop the 11 euro entry fee to the Forum) and if you reserve in advance there’s an additional fee of 1.50 euro.

Mar

Changes at the Forum & the Palatine

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology

The Roman Forum

As of tomorrow, Monday 10 March, changes are afoot at the Forum Romanum and the Palatine Hill. Entrance to the Forum - Rome’s most important archaeological site which for more than a decade has open to the public free of charge - will require the purchase of an 11 euro ticket that is good for two days and also provides admittance to the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill.

Though shelling out 11 euro for a visit to the Forum may be a bit hard on the pocketbook (especially if yours happens to be filled with American dollars), there’s good news to report as well. Tomorrow also marks the reopening of Augustus’s house on the Palatine Hill after years of restoration. No special reservation will be required to see the wonderful first-century paintings in the emperor’s abode, but there will be careful crowd control: only 5 people will be allowed to admire the artwork at a time. For more on the House of Augustus, click here.

The House of Augustus on Rome's Palatine Hill

Feb

Royalty at the Palazzo Massimo

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology and Art & Design

Attalus I and the Dying Gaul

The head of the ancient king who commissioned one of Rome’s most famous statues has gone on show for the first time in Italy. Many people believe the Dying Gaul in Rome’s Capitoline Museums (see above, right) celebrates a Roman conquest, but it was actually commissioned by Attalus I (269-197 BC), first king of Pergamon in modern-day Turkey. The statue commemorates Attalus’s triumphant victory over a Gallic tribe known as the Galatians in 238 BC.

The head of Attalus I (see above, left) and that of the last king of Pergamon, Attalus III (170-133 BC), have been loaned by state museums in Berlin and are on display in Rome’s Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. Both heads were dug up by German archaeologists during excavations at Pergamon in the second half of the 19th century and are thought once to have belonged to larger-than-life statues of the rulers. Dated to the third century BC, the head of Attalus I is topped by a mass of short wavy curls, but according to Perugia University archaeologist Filippo Coarelli the hair is not the king’s own. In the ancient equivalent of a PR job, a wig’ of curls was added to the statue at a later date to make the ruler look more like Greek golden boy Alexander the Great.

Initially the governor of Pergamon, Attalus I set the Attalid dynasty rolling when he crowned himself king of the city following his victory over the Galatians. The king was worshipped as a hero after his death, and experts believe his marble head was given the new hair-do at the beginning of the second century. ”It’s one of the most extraordinary and skilful pieces from the little-known period that marked the beginning of the Hellenistic age,” said Coarelli, explaining that there is a lack of historical documentation for the time. ”Many of the works from this period are difficult to date - but not so for this head, which is a chronological cornerstone,” he added.

Carved between 138 and 133 BC, the head of Attalus III is more classically styled and has a brooding look. It was found in a small Greek temple on a podium at the foot of the Theatre of Pergamon. A staunch supporter of the Roman Empire, Attalus III had no heirs and bequeathed the city of Pergamon to Rome on his death in 133 BC, ending the Attalid dynasty.

The heads are on loan as part of an agreement between Italy and Germany that will also see the two countries cooperating in research, restoration and the preservation of archaeological sites. In return, Italy has lent Berlin the famous bronze Boxer, a statue dating back to the first century BC that was found on the Quirinale hill in the 19th century, where it may once have decorated the Baths of Constantine. The Boxer usually forms part of the permanent collection at Palazzo Massimo, where the Attalid heads will be on show until 16 March.

Via Ansa

Feb

Under Wraps: The Temple of Portunus

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology

Rome's Temple of Portunus Under Scaffolding

The so-called “rectangular temple” in the Forum Boarium - near the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin and the Bocca della Verita - has been closed for decades. A temple was first founded on the site in the 6th century BC, though the building we see today is a reconstruction of about 80 BC.

Dedicated to Portunus, a god of rivers and harbors, the temple and its tutelary diety presided over one of Rome’s early ports on the Tiber River. But the thousands of years since antiquity have been rough on this structure: in the Middle Ages it was transformed from a pagan temple to a church, its location near the river and alongside of a busy road means that it’s been constantly caked in layers of pigeon poop and smog, and then there’s the water leaks that threatened the medieval frescoes inside.

An effort to clean and consolidate the building was undertaken some six years ago, but there wasn’t enough money to finish the job - conservators were only able to clean part of the cornice with the funds provided. However, in 2007 the World Monuments Fund and provided the 72,000 of the 1,4000,000 euro necessary to give a face lift to this most majestic of temples. With those funds, the western side of the temple will be cleaned and perhaps part of the front. The World Monuments Fund has also offered to help the Soprintendenza di Archeologica to find other sponsors to provide the funds necessary to complete the work.

Feb

Adopt-a-Fresco from Stabiae

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology

Fresco from Stabiae

Here at the eCool compound, we love adoption programs that let the whole world enjoy and support Italian art, culture, and food. Last year we were enthusiastic promoters of the adopt-a-sheep, adopt-an-olive-tree, and adopt-a-vine programs, all efforts that support sustainable agriculture on the Italian peninsula while letting you enjoy the fruits of the harvest.

This year we’ve turned our minds toward ancient art and culture and we’re thrilled to discover the adopt-a-fresco program sponsored by the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation, which lets you make a contribution that will preserve ancient paintings excavated from the the site of Stabiae, one of the many sites destroyed when the volcano Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.

Villa San Marco, Stabiae

Just three miles from Pompeii, the Roman site of Stabiae was a summer resort for rich and powerful Romans. The luxurious villas built by such Romans were destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius and were only rediscovered in the mid-18th century.

Among the many villas found at Stabiae, the most famous are Villa San Marco, Villa Del Pastore, and Villa Ariana. Though all provide valuable evidence about the ancient world, the star amongst them is the Villa San Marco, one of the largest villas ever discovered in Campania, which measures more than 11,000 square meters (see photos above and below). This villa has an atrium, a courtyard containing a pool, a triclinium with views of the Bay of Naples, a colonnaded courtyard, and a private bath complex.

Like other villas excavated in Stabiae, the Villa San Marco is important because it has provided us with beautiful frescoes, sculptures, mosaics, and architecture, which show styles and themes comparable to those found in Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Villa San Marco, Stabiae

Among the many goals of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation is that of restoring frescoes from Villa San Marco and other ancient luxury homes, for the site of Stabiae has yielded a wealth of beautiful artworks that are in need of care. Thus, RAS has devised an adopt-a-fresco program in which your contribution provides for the complete restoration of a fresco to the highest possible level, as well as the stabilization of the fresco so that it is able to travel to exhibitions around the world.

Furthermore, you can choose the fresco you’d like to restore - prices range from a few thousand dollars to well over ten thousand dollars - so this makes a great gift!

ADOPTION BENEFITS AND REWARDS

Mounted, high-resolution gift photograph of restored fresco, including plaque recognition of donor’s name

Donor’s name featured in “Hall of Fame” plaque (featuring names of all major RAS donors and supporters) on display at the on-site Villa San Marco Visitor’s and Research Center (start of construction underway).

Plaque with donor’s name attached to the back of restored original fresco, with recognition of donor’s name during traveling exhibit sponsored by RAS where the adopted restored fresco is on display. (Any museum reserves the right to revoke these benefits in the occasion that the restored fresco is present in a non RAS- sponsored event).

Complimentary access and special tour of the Stabiae site, including Villa San Marco and Villa Arianna, with RAS professional staff

Donation is tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law

For more information, visit the Restoring Ancient Stabiae adopt-a-fresco homepage (where you can download a catalog of frescoes in need).

Feb

Art Squad Triumph!

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology

A Piece of the Forma Urbis

Between 203 and 211, under the reign of the Emperor Septimius Severus, a massive marble map of ancient Rome was created. It originally measured 18 m (60 ft) wide by 13 m (45 ft) high and was carved into 150 marble slabs mounted on an interior wall of the Temple of Peace.

Created at a scale of approximately 1 to 240, the map was detailed enough to show the floor plans of nearly every temple, bath, and insula in the central Roman city. The boundaries of the plan were decided based on the available space on the marble, instead of by geographical or political borders as modern maps usually are.

The Plan was gradually destroyed during the Middle Ages, with the marble stones being used as building materials or for making lime. In 1562, the young antiquarian sculptor Giovanni Antonio Dosio excavated fragments of the Forma Urbis from a site near the Church of SS Cosma e Damiano, under the direction of the humanist condottiere Torquato Conti, who had purchased excavation rights from the canons of the church. Conti made a gift of the recovered fragments to Alessandro Cardinal Farnese

Since that time, a total of about 10% of the original surface area of the plan has since been recovered, in the form of over one thousand marble fragments, which are kept in the Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Capitoline Museums (just one of those fragments is shown above).

Now, thanks to the hard work of Italy’s Carabinieri Art Squad, another piece can be added to the collection. A recent Art Squad investigation led to the recovery of a Forma Urbis fragment in a private apartment…where it was being used to hold up a window. In further investigations, they also recovered another 618 antiquities destined to be sold on the black market.

Want to learn more about the Forma Urbis? The Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project is digitizing the fragments and using computer algorithms in an attempt to reassemble more of the map. They’ve currently got all 1186 surviving fragments online (we assume that excludes the recently recovered one) and they feature an extensive bibliography that will direct your reading.

Jan

Rosso Pompeiano : Pompeiian Red

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology and On Show

Ancient Roman Frescoes

When the volcano Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, it destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as a host of luxury villas overlooking the Bay of Naples. That ancient tragedy was a gift to the modern world: the pumice and ash that filled homes and displaced tens of thousands of people, also served to preserve the elaborate mural paintings that embellished residential structures.

The rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the mid-18th century and its subsequent (and still ongoing) excavation have made it clear that ancient Romans lived in houses that were much more elaborately decorated than our own. While the walls - and sometimes the ceiling vaults - of upper-class Roman abodes featured extraordinary embellishment undertaken by the era’s most exclusive artists, even lesser houses seem to have had at one or two painted rooms at the very least.

Ancient Roman Frescoes

Where and how to see these frescoes? A trip to Pompeii won’t serve you that well as many of the most elaborate frescoes were removed from the contexts in which they were discovered during early excavations. The permanent home for most of the detached frescoes is the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, but much to the frustration of many tourists, that collection of frescoes has been closed for many years due to ongoing museum rennovation.

But don’t despair! From now until 20 March, approximately 100 frescoes from the Naples Archaeological Museum have made their way to Rome and are on exhibit at the National Archaeological Museum at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme (photographs in this post show details of these remarkable paintings).

Ancient Roman Frescoes

Technically, the frescoes convince any viewer that the Romans were utterly and completely concerned with the creation of images that depicted a world much like our own. The human bodies shown are anatomically correct and they move and occupy space in a manner similar to our own. As well, any number of illusionistic frescoes make it clear that the Romans understood how to show three-dimensional perspective on a two-dimensional surface, for they go to great lengths to create images that make it appear as if the wall surface has disappeared and one is looking out into a garden, a landscape, or a world of fantastic architecture.

The subjects of the paintings likewise remind us that the Roman art addressed a variety of subjects, from every day life to myth to history. In one fresco, listeners surround a female musician (see image below), while in another a still life shows the dried fruits, mushrooms, and moray eels that could be found in the pantry of a wealthy Roman kitchen. In the realm of myth, the Trojan warrior Aeneas shares a tender embrace with Queen Dido (above, right) in one image, while the baby Hercules wrestles with snakes sent by the goddess Juno to kill him in another. And, a series of stunning dining rooms from a villa that perhaps belonged to the emperor Nero remind us that such decoration is not just an exercise in aesthetics, but that images often carry social and political meaning, for in these rooms Nero seems to pronounce his concern with the development of the area around the Sarno River on the Bay of Naples.

A few more recent discoveries also are included in the exhibition. These include an entire room from a Pompeii home decorated with garden motifs as well as frescoes of deities on a red background from an ancient hotel found in 2000 during construction of a highway near the site.

Ancient Roman Fresco

Photos by Susan Sanders

Exhibition open from 09.00-19.45, Tuesday-Sunday. Closed Mondays. National Archaeological Museum at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. Largo di Villa Peretti 1.

Jan

The Return of the Euphronius Vase

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology and Art & Design

Return of the Euphronius Vase to Italy

(Via AP) ROME - With the return of a long-sought masterpiece of antiquity, Italy on Friday trumpeted one of the successes of its campaign to recover what it says are looted treasures from museums and collectors around the world.

The 2,500-year-old vase by Greek artist Euphronius, which Italy regained after signing a deal with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was feted in Rome at an official presentation.

The Euphronius Krater — a large vase painted with scenes related to Homer’s epic poems “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” — is regarded as one of the finest examples of its kind. The vase was used as a bowl for mixing wine and water. (To read more about the vase itself and its brilliant paintings , we suggest this article from the Wall Street Journal.)

“It is universally considered the best work by the artist,” Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said at the ceremony. Also attending was his predecessor, Rocco Buttiglione, who started the country’s high-profile campaign to recover art.

Rutelli sought to reassure art lovers that the Met’s artistic richness would not suffer.

Return of the Euphronius Vase to Italy

This “doesn’t mean we’re taking an opportunity away from the public,” the minister said, stressing that the deal calls for Italy to lend equally significant artifacts to the Met for four years. “The policy of exchanging items resolves a tough confrontation without hurting” museum visitors, he said.

The Euphronius Krater was at the heart of negotiations with the New York museum. And it was the focal point of Italian government efforts to recover ancient treasures that have ended up in museums or private collections with what Italy claims was false documentation after being allegedly looted from archaeological sites.

Euphronius was one of Athens’ greatest vase painters during a time of unequaled mastery for pottery in the ancient world. Like many other vessels, the krater was exported to Italy, and it is believed to have been used by the Etruscan civilization to decorate a tomb near Rome.

More than 2,000 years later, the priceless vase was looted from the site by Italy’s “tombaroli” — or tomb raiders — and smuggled out of the country, Italian authorities say.

The museum bought it for $1 million in 1972 from American art dealer Robert Hecht, who is on trial in Rome on charges of knowingly acquiring allegedly looted ancient artifacts. He denies wrongdoing.

The deal that was eventually sealed with the New York museum in February 2006 called for the return of the vase by mid-January 2008. The museum also agreed to return 20 other antiquities.

NB: The Euphronius Krater is currently on exhibit in Rome at the Quirinale Palace, in an show titled Nostoi (see our post on the exhibit here). The exhibit will remain open until 2 March, after which the Euphronius Vase will be moved to its permanent home in National Etruscan Museum at the Villa Giulia in Rome.

The Euphronius Vase

Jan

The Museum of Beauty

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology and Everything Else

Venus de Milo

Konica Minolta has opened an excellent online Museum of Beauty that allows its visitors to better understand the Louvre’s famous sculpture of Venus de Milo. One of the world’s most famous Greek sculptures, the statue is a slightly over-life size image of Aphrodite or Venus, the goddess of love. She so fascinates the public that the gallery in which she stands in the Louvre is usually mobbed with visitors snapping photos as quickly as possible - making a real and reverential visit impossible. Now, however, with the help of Konica Minolta, devotees and scholars of the sculpture can examine her up-close at the Museum of Beauty.

Venus de Milo

Discovered in fragments on the Aegean island of Milos in 1820, the sculpture made its way to Paris where it was reassembled in the early 19th century. Now, however, Venus has extended her domain, taking the forces of love and beauty into the virtual world . How does a Greek goddess impose her image on our computer screens? Using a laser measuring instrument, Konica Minolta gathered the 3D data from the statue, then processed it and texture-molded it, in order to make a laser reproduction of the statue.

Data was acquired by means of a non-contact 3D digitizer which projects a red laser light on the statue and captures the reflected light with a CCD camera ( you can see a demo at the Museum of Beauty). Some 300 scans were made.

Venus de Milo

What was gained by the process? First and foremost, the resultant Museum of Beauty website, provides a way to see and study the Venus de Milo even if you’ve not got time to dash to Louvre. Details abound: the sculpture’s scarred surface - a testament to years of wear and tear before her discovery - is shown up-close; evidence that she once wore a golden ornament in her hair is likewise visible; and so are the holes that once bound a bracelet to her upper right arm.

The missing arms are among the most notable aspects of the Venus. Though she was found with arms, it was discovered in reconstruction that those arms were created later than the sculpture itself, thus a decision was made to leave them off. So what did her original arms look like? Was she holding a hair ornament? A mirror? Was she reaching for her lover, Mars, the god of war? The question remains unanswered, but Konica Minolta used their 3D data to recreate the sculpture in a variety of poses.

Venus de Milo

Jan

Excavation of a Cryptoporticus on the Palatine Hill

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Archaeology and Historic Sites

Excavation of a Cryptoporticus on the Palatine Hill

This weekend, archaeologists in Rome have announced a new discovery amongst the complex jumble of ruins on the Palatine Hill. In the depths of this all-important hill, excavators say they they have found a cryptoporticus or underground passage that may have been the site at which the Roman Emperor Caligula was killed by the Praetorian Guard in January in 41 AD.

The Roman historian, Suetonius, recounts the murder:

On the ninth day before the Kalends of February, at about the seventh hour [Caligula] hesitated whether or not to get up for luncheon, since his stomach was still disordered from excess of food on the day before, but at length he came out at the persuasion of his friends. In the covered passage through which he had to pass, some boys of good birth, who had been summoned from Asia to appear on the stage, were rehearsing their parts, and he stopped to watch and encourage them….From this point there are two versions of the story: some say that as he was talking with the boys, Chaerea came up behind, and gave him a deep cut in the neck, having first cried, “Take that,” and that then the tribune Cornelius Sabinus, who was the other conspirator and faced Gaius, stabbed him in the breast [part of the ritual at the sacrifice was that the slayer raised his axe with the question “Shall I do it?” to which the priest replied “Take that”]. Others say that Sabinus, after getting rid of the crowd through centurions who were in the plot, asked for the watchword, as soldiers do; and that when Gaius gave him “Jupiter,” he cried “So be it,” [another formula at a sacrifice was “receive the fulfillment of your omen”, i.e., in naming Jupiter, the god of the thunderbolt and sudden death], and as Gaius looked around, he split his jawbone with a blow of his sword. As he lay upon the ground and with writhing limbs called out that he still lived, the others dispatched him with thirty wounds; for the general signal was ” Strike again.” Some even thrust their swords through his privates. At the beginning of the disturbance his bearers ran to his aid with their poles [with which they carried his litter], and presently the Germans of his body-guard, and they slew several of his assassins, as well as some inoffensive senators. (Quoted from the Ancient History Sourcebook)

This underground passageway - perhaps the scene of an imperial murder - connects the house of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, with the Roman Forum. Currently, it lays some nine meters below the elaborate Gardens that the noble Farnese family created on the hilltop in the 16th century when they leveled the ruins of the House of Tiberius, thereby filling the tunnel with earth.

Excavation of the cryptoporticus began in September under the direction of archaeologist Maria Antonietta Tomei. She and her team have spent the past months removing tons of earth from the five-meter tall tunnel, as well as from lateral passageways.

Excavation of a Cryptoporticus on the Palatine Hill

In the process the excavation team has discovered a sizable fragment of a marble sculpture depicting a member of the imperial family as a Greek god (see above, left), as well as three marble wings, perhaps belonging to akroterial or rooftop sculptures that embellished the nearby Temple of Victory.

What can be learned from these excavations? Superintendent of Archaeology, Angelo Bottini suggests that the discovery demonstrates that the House of Augustus - parts of which will open to the public on 2 March 2008 - was much more extensive than has previously been suggested.

Excavation of a Cryptoporticus on the Palatine Hill