Villa Giulia: the eternal banquet of an Etruscan couple.

 

Ancient Etruscan Sarcophagus of the Spouses, 520 BC, made of terracotta which was once brightly painted, currently located at the Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum, Rome.

 

From the Banditaccia necropolis in Caere (modern Cerveteri), previously owned by the Ruspoli family, from which Felice Barnabei, founder of the museum, bought broken into more than 400 fragments! 

However, its function remains uncertain because burial and cremation were both practiced by the Etruscans. It may actually have been a large urn designed to contain the ashes of the deceased. Another example similar to this work is known (Louvre, Paris).
The urn is shaped as a bed upon which the deceased are resting and banqueting. The Etruscans, like the Greeks had adopted the Eastern custom of feasting in a reclining position. Etruscan women, who held an important place in society, could take part in a banquet (in Greece only men were admitted).

Centrale Montemartini. Not the average museum in Rome.

Agrippina the Younger.

What if the location for a collection of classical statues is a disused power station?
It happens in Rome where as many as 400 statues from the Capitoline Museums are housed since 1997 in the first public power station in Rome, built in 1912, named after its designer and fallen into disuse in 1963.
The result is certainly original:  the unusual contrast of Ancient Roman art and industrial archaeology is fascinating. 
When in 1995 humidity menaced the Roman sculptures on display in the Galleria Lapidaria wing of the Capitoline Museums the problem was solved by moving them to the Centrale Montemartini.
The first exhibition in 1997 The Machines and the Gods was to be only temporary but thanks to its success the 400 Roman sculptures remained.

A blasphemous Crucifixion (Palatine Museum).

Graffito caricature of the Crucifixion. Graffito from the early Christian period mocking the new religion. A man named Alexamenos is shown worshipping a donkey-headed figure on the Cross. Crucifixion was a humiliating punishment for the Romans. What is ridiculed here is that a sect could have grown up around the worship of a crucified man. The blasphemous inscription in Greek reads: ‘ Alexamenos worships his god’.

A blasphemous Crucifixion (Modern Art Gallery – Rome).

Crucifixion (1941). Renato Guttuso. 

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

One of the most famous paintings by Renato Guttuso.
Revolutionary, even heretical, especially for the presence of the naked figure of Mary Magdalene (which earned the artist the title of pictor diabolicus). The face of Christ is hidden and we can only guess his grimace of pain. It recalls the pathos of Rosso Fiorentino in the Deposition from the Cross. Influenced by Picasso’s Guernica Guttuso pays homage to the figure of the horse very similar to that depicted in Guernica. The agony of Christ as a symbol for those who suffer outrage, imprisonment and torture for their ideas.
Sciascia claimed that whatever Guttuso wanted to paint he always painted Sicily.

Vespa: from Hollywood to Bollywood.

Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd and a Vespa Chariot 1958.

Piaggio launched its original iconic Vespa in India creating an exclusive segment for the brand.
Its style has been conquering the streets across the world for six decades now. Designed by Corradino D’Ascanio the man who designed the Italian helicopter.
The name is the Italian for wasp (from Enrico Piaggio’s exclamation: “It looks like a wasp!”) It actually recalls a wasp for the engine sound, the vehicle body shape and the steering rod resembled antennae. The design is inspired by pre – World War II Cushman scooters made in Nebraska (olive green scooters popular in Italy). Ordered originally by Washington as field transport for the paratroops and Marines.
The biggest sales promo ever was Hollywood. In 1952 Audrey Hepburn side-saddled Gregory Peck’s Vespa in the feature film Roman Holidays for a ride through Rome resulting in over 100,000 sales. In 1956 John Wayne dismounted his horse in favor of the two wheeler to get between takes on sets. Lucia Bosé and her husband, the matador Luis Miguel Dominguìn as well as Marlon Brando and Dean Martin and the entertainer Abbe Lane had become Vespa owners. William Wyler filmed Ben Hur in 1959 allowing Charlton Heston to abandon horse and chariot between takes to take a spin on the Vespa.
When Vespa celebrated its 50^th anniversary in 1996 more than 15 million of the scooters had been sold worldwide. Other companies vied with Piaggio for market share but none came close to emulating the success or romance of Vespa.
Over the years Vespa has moved from being a mode of transport to a fashion accessory. However it has retained its core design and has only grown more stylish with time.
Piaggio felt that launching the Vespa as any other scooter would do injustice to its legacy. It deserved to be launched as a fashion brand. The campaign created by Meridian has been inspired by the product itself. The look has been designed keeping in mind its iconic style.

Aquilia Severa: the vestal who married an emperor.

Aquilia married the emperor Elagabalus in 220. Her father Quintus Aquilius was twice consul under Caracalla. The marriage was a sacrilege since she was a Vestal Virgin and the punishment for breaking the vow of celibacy was death (guilty Vestals were buried alive).
Elagabalus might have conceived the marriage for religious reasons: as a follower of the eastern cult of the Sun god El- Gabal he desired a symbolic union to Vesta.
Severa was repudiated only one year after the marriage probably for the lack of a heir. The emperor remarried (Annia Faustina who descended from Marcus Aurelius). But this marriage lasted less than one year. He returned to Severa claiming their divorce was not valid. It is believed she remained with Elagabalus till his assassination in 222.
Some literary sources state she was obliged to marry him, other go further alleging rape. Probably many stories about Elagabalus may have been exaggerated by his enemies. We don’t know whether Elagabalus had any feelings towards Severa. He appears to have been either homosexual or bisexual: the historian Cassius Dio claims that Elagabalus had a more stable relationship with his chariot driver Hierocles than with any of his wives.
Between 219 and 222 Elagabalus married and divorced four times!

Beauty cases for the underworld.

Cista Ficoroni (IV century b.C.) - Etruscan Museum Villa Giulia.

Cistae are metal boxes mostly cylindrical, covered with incised decorations.They were found in the fourth-century necropolis at Praeneste (a town, located 37 kilometers southeast of Rome, an Etruscan outpost in the seventh century B.C.). The most famous cista and the first to be discovered is the Ficoroni presently in the Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, named after the collector Francesco Ficoroni who first owned it. The cista was found at Praeneste but its dedicatory inscription indicates Rome as the place of production: NOVIOS PLVTIUS MED ROMAI FECID/ DINDIA MACOLNIA FILEAI DEDIT (Novios Plutios made me in Rome/ Dindia Macolnia gave me to her daughter).
The engraving represents the myth of the Argonauts: the boxing match between Pollux and Amicus, in which Pollux is victorious. The engravings might be the reproduction of a lost fifth-century painting by Mikon.
The function and use of Praenestine cistae are still unresolved questions. We can safely say that they were used as funerary objects to accompany the deceased into the next world. It has also been suggested that they were used as containers for toiletries, like a beauty case. Some contained tweezers, make-up boxes, mirrors, strigils and sponges. The large size of the Ficoroni cista, however, excludes such a function and points toward a more ritualistic use.