Archive for the 'Museums' Category

29
Aug

Photo Friday: the Nostoi Exhibit

By idcrome 0 Comments
Categories: Archaeology, Photo Friday, Museums and Photography

Photo of the Nostoi Exhibit in Rome by Susan Sanders

Photo Friday!  This week Susan Sanders brings us images of an extraordinary exhibit called Nostoi that’s being held at the Palazzo Poli, near the Trevi Fountain.  The exhibit showcases archaeological artifacts returned (or recovered by Carabinieri) to Italy from museums in the United States and elsewhere after being illegally excavated, exported, and sold.  (The exhibit was formerly hosted in the Palazzo Quirinale - it’s now moved.)

Among the artifacts on exhibit (and shown here in Susan’s photos) is the stunning Euphronius krater, a 2500 year old Greek red-figure vessel, which Italy regained after signing a deal with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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, a fact that was immediately recognized by the (then) director of the Met, Thomas Hoving, when he fell in love with the calyx krater at first sight in 1972.  He effused about the vase in his 1993 book, Making the Mummies Dance:

The Euphronios krate is everything I revere in a work of art.  It is flawless in technique, is a grand work of architecture, has several levels of heroic subject matter, and keeps on revealing something new at every glance.  To love it, you only have to look once.  To adore it, you  must read Homer and know that the drawing is perhaps the summit of fine art.  Truly, the calyx krater is one of those rare pieces that is legitimately the perfect object of adoration for botht he neophyte and the art snob.

What was not so legitimate about the vase was the way in which it was excavated and the way in which Thomas Hoving went about purchasing it in the early 1970s.  The vase was probably looted from an Etruscan tomb in Cerveteri, an archaeological site just to the north of Rome.  It seems then to have been smuggled out of Italy before Hoving agreed to pay a million dollars for the antiquity, bending and break rules and laws in the process.

After years of negotiation with the Met, the museum agreed to return the vase to Italy.  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.

In the meantime, American art dealer Robert Hecht — who sold the vase to Hoving in 1972 — has been put on trial in Rome, charged with knowingly acquiring allegedly looted ancient artifacts. He denies wrongdoing.

The vase and other returned antiquities are on show in the Palazzo Poli, at Via Poli 54, until 7 September, after which the exhibit will move to Athens, Greece.

For more photographs by Susan Sanders, visit her photo blog: Rome With A View.

The Euphronius Krater in the Nostoi Exhibit in Rome. Photo by Susan Sanders

06
Jun

Photo Friday: The Hellenistic Prince

By idcrome 0 Comments
Categories: Photo Friday, Museums, Photography and Art & Design

The Hellenistic Prince in Rome's Palazzo Massimo

Today, on Photo Friday, Susan Sanders gives us some beautiful photos of the second century BC Hellenistic Prince, an over life size bronze sculpture found on the ground floor of the Museo Nazionale Romano at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.

Since its discovery in 1885, on the slopes of the Quirinal Hill where it (perhaps) stood in the Baths of Constantine, the sculpture has been variously identified as Philip V of Macedon, Perseus, Alexander Balas, and more vaguely, a hero, a general, and Agrippa.  Despite all these attributions, scholars have not settled on an identification but instead of concentrated on understanding what this sculpture–with its rippling muscles and well-defined contours–might have meant to those who gazed upon it in Rome in the second century BC.

The Hellenistic Prince in Rome's Palazzo Massimo

German scholar Paul Zanker reminds us that this beautiful bronze would have seemed shockingly Greek (and shockingly naked) to Romans when it went on display shortly afer its creation in the second half of the second century BC.  In his book, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Zanker says:

When the splendid bronze statue honoring a great general was displayed in Rome, some time before the middle of the second century BC, the total nudity of the figure must have been extremely disturbing to most Romans.

Why the shock and awe?  Romans of the second century BC  were not portrayed nude in art.  It simply wasn’t done.  Rather, a Roman honored with a public likeness would most often be depicted wearing a toga, the symbol of his status and achievement in Rome’s competitive political world.  In fact, to the average Roman in the second century BC, nudity was a Greek perversion and the habits of such decadent foreigners were to be avoided.

So who then is this Greek-icizing bronze figure and what does he want us  to know about him when we gaze upon his abundance of bare skin?  Zanker maintains that the absence of a crown clearly demonstrates that he’s a Roman who forged across cultural boundaries before the rest of his peers.

His choice of pose is meant to remind us of the most famous of all Greeks.  With his weight thrown heavily onto one leg and his torso and arms spiraling around the staff on which he leans, the figure is reminiscent of a famous portrait of Alexander the Great made by the all-star sculptor, Lysippus in the 4th century BC.

Thus, Zanker concludes that this is a portrait of a Roman who wants us to admire him for the reasons that Alexander was admired: we are to gaze upon his god-like physique and to understand that he is a man of military prowess and superhuman achievement akin to that of his hero, Alexander.

The Hellenistic Prince in Rome's Palazzo Massimo

23
Dec

Lost and Found at the Quirinale Palace

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Categories: Archaeology and Museums

Nostoi Exhibit at the Quirinale Palace

Currently on exhibit at Rome’s Quirinale Palace are 68 archaeological artifacts returned (or recovered by Carabinieri) to Italy from museums in the United States and elsewhere after being illegally excavated, exported, and sold.

Among the star-studded objects on view is the Euphronios krater (above left - it won’t actually be on view in the exhibit until the middle of January), sometimes known as the Sarpedon krater, an ancient Greek bowl used for mixing wine with water which was created around the year 515 BC.  Formerly in the collection of the Metropolitan  Museum of art, it is considered one of the finest Greek vases in existence. Of the surviving 27 vases painted by the renowned Euphronios, it is the only complete example.  The krater is decorated with two scenes. An episode from the Trojan War is shown on the obverse; this illustration depicts the death of Sarpedon, son of Zeus and Laodamia. The reverse of the krater shows a contemporary scene of Athenian youths from the 6th century BC arming themselves before battle. In the scene of Sarpedon’s death, the god Hermes directs Sleep and Death to carry the fallen away to his homeland for burial.

Also on display is a Attic black figure hydria depicting horsemen by the Antimenes painter in the 4th century AD (above right).

Nostoi Exhibit at the Quirinale Palace

Equally lovely is the ivory face from a sculpture of Juno or Apollo that was made in the first century AD (above left) and the Attic red-figure kantharos featuring a Dionysian mask on one side (that shown in the photo above, right) and a mask of a satyr on the other side.  The vase is sometimes attributed to the Euphronios painter and dates to the fifth century BC.

The marble sculpture shown below is also part of the exhibit.  Dating to the fourth century BC, it shows two griffins attacking a deer and comes from a princely tomb in Ascoli Satriano, near Foggia.

These and 60 other returned and recovered objects can be seen at the Quirinale Palace until 2 March. More than half of the exhibit’s artifacts are pieces returned by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  The exhibit is titled “Nostoi: Returned Masterpieces,” which refers to a poem referring to the return of heroes from the Trojan War.

Nostoi Exhibit at the Quirinale Palace

21
Dec

Good News from the Vatican

By idcrome 0 Comments
Categories: Museums and Historic Sites

Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Both visitors and residents of Rome alike usually find it quite a hassle to visit the Vatican Museums.  Traditionally, the hours have been short and the crowds massive.  But, starting in 2008, the Vatican is imposing new hours with hopes of remedying the situation.

From 2 January 2008, the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel will be open from 8:30am to 6:00pm, with the last entrance at 4:00pm.  The entrance fee will also go up this year - from 13 euro to 14 euro.

For a complete schedule of Vatican Museum & Sistine Chapel hours for 2008, visit the Vatican Museums website.

23
Sep

Re-Amping the Past

By idcrome 0 Comments
Categories: Museums, Past & Present and Art & Design

Rome's Centrale Montemartini Museum

Most tourists visiting Rome stay for about three days. In that time they manage to see the Sistine Chapel, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Spanish Steps, the Colosseum, and the Roman Forum. And, just fitting all that into a few days takes discipline and stamina.

But, of course, there are a wealth of other things to see in Rome. “Roma. Non basta una vita,” says an old expression. “Rome. One lifetime isn’t enough.”

At Eternally Cool we largely agree with the maxim. One lifetime really isn’t enough to see all that Rome has to offer. But if you’re one of those people willing to spend part of your life getting to know the Eternal City, one place that you absolutely shouldn’t miss is the Centrale Montemartini Museum on Via Ostiense.

Rome's Centrale Montemartini Museum

The building in which the Centrale Montemartini Museum is housed was Rome’s first electric power plant. Inaugurated in 1912, it provided electricity to the Eternal City for some 50 years before being decommissioned. Today, its turbines and boilers are still in place and the air in the museum still holds a faint scent of oil and machinery.

All that power-producing machinery became a dramatic backdrop for some of Rome’s most stunning ancient sculptures when the Capitoline Museums closed for renovation in 1997.  Museum organizers had the wonderful idea of installing some of the Capitoline collection into the Centrale Montemartini and so some 400 ancient sculptures - many of them not previously on public view - were put on display in what was intended to be a temporary exhibition.  However, by the time the Capitoline Museums were restored and reopened, the Centrale Montemartini had been declared a raging success and it was decided to make the exhibition permanent.

Rome's Centrale Montemartini Museum

Residents and visitors of Rome alike celebrate the dramatic juxtaposition of white marble sculptures against dark twentieth-century machinery.  And, though thousands of years separated the crafting of the ancient sculptures and the installation of the electricity-producing turbines and boilers, the visual contrasts created in the Centrale Montemartini seem intended to make us compare the ancient Greek and Roman world view to our own.  Whereas the ancients believed their gods controlled all that happened in the universe - from thunder and lightening to good fortune and love - our modern world relies on scientific and technological advancement to keep the world spinning.  In particular, we count on electricity, for without it much of modern civilization would quickly disappear.  Thus, in the Centrale Montemartini, marble images of the gods that insured the well-being of the ancient world go head-to-head with the electric power that makes our modern world work.  It’s their gods versus ours and it’s hard to say who comes out ahead.

What to see in the museum?

The first floor showcases luxury goods from ancient Roman houses and tombs, most dating to the first century BC, as well as an impressive display of Roman portraiture, including the famous Togate Barberini, as well as images of Julius Caesar and Augustus.

The second floor is divided into two parts, one of which showcases sculptures that were displayed in public contexts in ancient Rome, and the other of which exhibits sculptures and mosaics found in private environments such as the luxury villas that belonged to Rome’s most elite citizens.

Centrale Montemartini Museum. Via Ostiense, 106.

Rome's Centrale Montemartini Museum