The Torlonia Marbles Uncovered with Olga Cuckovic

okay uh i'm carolyn merrick program coordinator here at the center um and you know why you're here to see olga talk about the torlonium marbles and uh i'm as eager as you to hear about it so i'll just turn it over to olga yes hello hello caroline hello everyone i hope everyone's doing fine and here we are on this new adventure the trollonia marbles let's go through this the technical part of it okay so let me share my screen and start from the beginning so here we are when i was there to take a look at the at the exhibition of the thyronia marbles i honestly forgot to take a picture of me with a statue so i took this picture with the catalogue that was printed of course just for the exhibition and it is a really really great addition from which one can learn a lot not just about that event but also about the history of sculpting restoration and so much of that and there are some uh details and a bit of a gossip that the catalog doesn't really go into and i'll share a little bit of that with you to explain the whole background you know why is this such a such a big deal and who are these toronia guys and marcos so here is their coat of arms now coat of arms usually means like nobility yes it is nobility but uh for the roman tradition it's a very recent nobility only a couple of hundred years so trollonias came from france and uh that was in 1764 i will not be you know too many too many years it's all happening within a span of two centuries so it's not that difficult and so 1764 anyway is the beginning there's a uh marlino noir or something like that who comes to to rome as uh as attendant uh like a software butler of an abbot later uh cardinal who left him considerable wealth with his will and marino started a little business with selling fabric textile silk and his son giovanni was really really smart and from just dealing with the um trade being merchants they start giving money they start loaning the the money they open like a small bank and they started loaning money to very wealthy noble families actually formerly wealthy noble families who remained with properties and titles but they had very little cash so they enter into the banking business they start uh working for the pope as well as uh at financial advisors eventually they arrived to the point that thorlonia family helped the pope get the loans from the rothschilds and not just once uh throughout the 1800s several times you may imagine how a controversial that was but in the process turlonius acquired the title of princes and dukes and marquises of different properties and this is their coat of arms where you see the rosebuds the family is budding and there is like a comet so they really wear a comet on the um sky of the roman nobility so why am i showing you the little kids jumping around well this is an ancient roman aqueduct and that is today a public park barcode to the park of the aqueducts but it was a huge property called roma vecchia the old rome and the dralonians came in possession of that land when you see ancient roman aqueducts and roads and then you start digging you always find something rome is all about layers so they vary wisely acquired a lot of these huge properties where they would have the sharecroppers peasants working for them and they were getting money from the from the land but at the same time they did the excavations throughout the 1800s they excavated enormous amount of statues and mosaics reliefs from their lands and this is an ancient roman road anybody can can go it's a favorite place where we go for like a little picnic and there there's a huge amount of um ancient aqueducts now you will see here this is just a short video this was the land that was all owned by uh thorlonia's and there are also lands north of rome this is in the southern suburbs of rome but outside the rome there are the properties of which they became like princes and and dukes and wherever you see like a little run-down uh farm that might as well be torlonia property even today this this farm is uh is their their property they were not very much beloved by their by their peasants so uh in the process of getting really wealthy and digging all around and just consider the uh trollonia alessandra torlonia in the 1800s had 22 percent of the land of the papal states so that's a lot and when we say the people states it's all around rome uh between the terrain and the adriatic and there are so many ancient roman properties villas suburban villas and those were eventually bought by the nobility of of rome and eventually ended up in trollonia's hands so excavations upon excavations banking upon banking really good social relations and networking and this is today a museum casino nobile there is a land called villa torlonia and it's owned by the italian state today it was abandoned after the second world war and the state bought it from from them and there are 13 buildings in the whole property it's a beautiful beautiful park you can see even an obelisk like egyptian obelisk well uh the turlonia who started building his property here on the land that was owned by the colonna family now when we say colonna in in rome uh that's like wow cologne i know they had the pope uh in the 15th century if you saw the movie roman holiday where gregory peck and audrey had relocated each other and she realizes he's a journalist that amazing hall is in the palazzo colomna and thorlonius intermarried of course with colonel borgese had three popes and 34 cardinals darlonia never had a pope but they intermarried with five noble families within two generations of which four had popes and the fifth one had a few pardons so they were very very wise so at the certain point alessandra says i'm gonna build this huge huge thing and i want egyptian nobilis so he writes to the viceroy of egypt asking for two actually egyptian obelisks and the viceroy well never replied so that's when he had the auburn two obelisks made in baveno quarry in northern italy transported all the way imagine the buffaloes pulling the ship along the tiber and then the niene river so we even have the the obelisks here this building casino noble was rented to mussolini mussolini and his family lived here his famous uh balcony is in the central square of rome piazza piazza venezia but this is where the family lived for a symbolical rent of unaliera one cent and there's even the atomic shelter the bunker that can be normally normally visited and the museum inside this beautiful building and uh it's all built in this neoclassical style that was their major thing the antiquities and then imitation of the antiquities and inside this is the hall where mussolini watched movies again it's a museum today this green thing here that's a bit of contemporary art they have temporary exhibitions as well but there's plenty of neoclassical as here you see this is not ancient ancient roman but it's the imitation in that whole fashion a couple of hundred years ago returning to the classical beauty and you see little little angels like in roman times this is a beautiful theater and alessandro 1800s he loved parties and when he inaugurated the direction of the obelisks in the memory of his parents imagine the the guests there was a po there was a pope uh gregory the 16th of course the pope took uh but was taking the loans from torlonia so uh he better be there at the party and there was um the famous ludwig of bavaria the german king who built the neuschwanstein the the disney castle that fun fairy tale he was known as the fairy tale fairytale king so he was there as well and the parties were a great way of obtaining good social uh uh connections and uh the people who came to visit rome on the ground tour the talonians knew that england would be more important uh very soon would become very important so they sent their kids to study in london alessandro studied in london that was very farsighted because french was a sort of lingua franca but now they knew english because of the industrial revolution who has the money who will travel who will buy antiquities who will use their bank british so a lot a lot of parties a lot of parties here and this is a fake medieval little building one of the 13 buildings in the in the park it's another little museum today and uh it's a museum of um stained glass you can see beautiful windows there's a bit of fake roman ruins just for the for the good measure and this is villa albany villalvani uh i did not share the the photos from the internet which i wasn't sure about the copyright but this one is fine this is piranesi the engraver of the of the 1700s without piranesi for so many buildings and areas in rome we wouldn't have an idea how they looked like in the 1700s but this is villa albany today uh it was built by the cardinal albany he was the last view of the pope usually cardinals who become important they they're somehow connected with the pope directly and uh it took him 50 years to build this beautiful villa and it was just to house his collection of art uh same thing like with gallery borghese we had this uh presentation on the gallery bergese and the same thing the cardinal brogaser built the the whole villa the whole beautiful building just to house his collection of art and his private librarian was mr o'hare winkelmann the german historian who basically is a father of art history and classification of art of the classical classical times so he had a map maker mr nolly engraver piranesi winkelmann the librarian so the most important people in art of that time where with the cardinal when he was building this villa and in 2014 the thorlonia another alessandro the names are repeating in the in the family uh founded what is the fondazione the foundation of darlonia which also has extraordinary works of art that are not part of the exhibition that we're going to see because in this whole process they amassed almost a thousand pieces and they had their own museum in the 1870s they started their own their own museum and that one had 620 statues of those we're going to see not all of them but they chose 92 but what is in the villa albany is not exhibited and probably never will be uh what you're looking at are the 4th century bc etruscan frescoes they're called the the tomb that was found in one of the possessions of the of the turtle onions was discovered by an archaeologist francois and that's why it's called the francois tomb and these are the frescoes from from that time and all the etrusca etruscanologists are dying to to see them you can act this is sharon who's taking the dad across the stakes like in like in the greek mythology and you could in normal times you could call and make a reservation for the visit but they would send you the date which was fine with them so it was really really difficult to find the time and uh the possibility to see this collection it was theoretically possible but actually really difficult and they were offered recently seven million to uh land land the uh works of art the francois especially to one of the state-owned museums for an exhibition and they refuse well seven million you know when you are worth two billion seven million is like a change in your pocket so they yeah they don't they don't want to bother with that and uh they also owned the hotel in gilterra england here across the street is one of their main residences currently and this is where a lot of the travelers from grand tour would come hotel in guilterra england marino bologna you see on the streets of rome sometimes you can run into these inscriptions with their names because they they did a lot for embellishment of the streets of rome and they also have some charitable organizations and for some communities uh they they did a lot for example there is a there is a church with um a a relic of a bambino jesus baby jesus that is believed to have the power to heal little children so the thorlonians since they lived in the neighborhood they provided a carriage to carry the relic to the sick children who couldn't walk to to touch it and to pray in the church of aracheli so they did they did uh some charity and good works as well apart from amassing this enormous enormous fortune and they were always in love with ancient as you will see this is um ancient roman sarcophagus now this is the main square piazza venezia and this building with the tower to the left we are just next to the huge white monument called vitoriano that's another presentation that that you can see both on on my site and on your uh your youtube channel of centerville and where you see the building with the with the tower there was uh palazzo palazzo bologne which darlonius bought in 1807 and this is where they housed a huge collection as well but when piazza venezia was urbanistically organized the way you see today a lot a lot of roman old buildings were knocked down to make room for bigger squares and wider streets so some of that art is preserved and most famous one is the statue of hercules and leica it's not ancient roman it's a canova so a couple of hundred years canova was the most important neoclassical sculptor and this is an extraordinary statue which is uh today in the gallery of modern arts in uh in rome there's laika porthing who brought the poison shirt to hercules and hercules was in so much pain that he killed his little friend who well was not really guilty of anything but that's great don't now just a few more words before we get to the exhibition a lot of the statues that also came from this valley the castle that we're looking at was not owned by tholonius but by piccolomini another family that had a pope in the family and it's today a museum that houses the collection of reliefs and of generally fines that the turlonius found in this valley that you see behind the the castle now that was a lake huge lake the third biggest lake in italy called fortuna and fortuna was a moody lake so the level of the of the water would rise incredibly in just like a week or two um 30 feet 40 feet so it was it was a frequently a disaster for them for the locals so even ancient romans worked on making like a sort of a tunnel that would canal like an emissary that would regulate the level of the lake and they partly managed emperor claudius but alessandro torlonia decided to drain the whole lake and we're talking about 1850s for 20 years it was a huge huge thing as you may imagine uh the engineers who were french uh english swiss because at a certain point after working for the pope for such a long time and dealing with his finances consider also that the terlonias had a mandate a contract to administer the pope's monopoly on alum salt and tobacco now that's money ellen today doesn't mean much to us but alum the mineral was used to fix the dye in the process of dyeing the the fabric so it was extremely extremely important and and requested so with all that money however uh thorlonia realized that there is no progress with the pope that it's all very old-fashioned and it's gonna remain like that so he goes ventures into business with the french to build the railroads something the pope wasn't keen on so that's why he chose also to to work with foreign engineers and there were like 500 farms here but they were expropriated by the italian state in the 1950s but it was a very very it is a very fertile soil just didn't work out the way they wanted because some of the of the plants could grow in the microclimate that was present before but they could they cannot anymore so they grow mainly potatoes for their good potatoes so this is where they used to say a novelist wrote about them it says you know what they say at the top of the world there's god then there's a lot of nothing nothing and then there come torlonias then there come their armed guards then their guards dogs and then there's nothing nothing nothing and then the peasants and that's it so they did not earn the reputation of being very warm people i'd say quite quite arrogant but there we go these are some of the things that they found as they were drying the lake and they are in this museum josano the region south of rome southeast of rome they're beautiful beautiful pieces but now let me show you where they kept 620 pieces this may look like a rundown neighborhood but don't be deceived this is trastevere the neighborhood across the river across the terre haute but here to the right if we could knock on the door there's john cabot university that's also renting from the thorlonia's and this nondescript building to the left is where they kept their 620 statues this is their coat of arms and you see the rosebuds and the comet now just across the street there's the villa farnezina beautiful museum frescos by raphael owned by a banker and then by the papal family then another palazzo owned by another pope and today another museum so that's the neighborhood and in this nondescript building they had this museum also the first catalogue with the photographs not engravings which we're going to to see when we get to the exhibition and not everyone could could go and see that amazing collection but just their friends the the scientists archaeologists nobility it wasn't like a public museum and that's why it was so so so precious and they have the biggest and the best private collection of antiquity in the world and in 1970s and 76 the torlonians asked for the permission because in rome you have to have permission for just about anything change your window shutters no you can't but uh to repair the roof so that sounded well good enough so they get the permission they close the museum they close the building and poof nobody ever saw those statues anymore for almost 50 years they were stashed somewhere basement ground floor whatever and we some say basements and say well anyway it doesn't really matter because nobody could see them and they're like national treasure instead of restoring just the roof they turn this building illegally into 93 studio apartments for rent why not so there we go this starts the the story the uh the problems with the heirs who saw each other uh in 2012 getty comes in and they want to buy the collection mr berlusconi on the former prime minister offers 125 million of his own money no they refuse they seem to be willing to export all that to getty or at least what the getty uh would choose then the italian government jumps in they sequester a lot of their property there's a whole try still with their legal problems but eventually they managed to make a deal with the italian ministry of cultural heritage and finally uh 92 pieces are at the capitol line museums now the museums are closed again so i was really really lucky to be able to see that exhibition it was sponsored by bulgari who have done a lot in rome spanish steps and many other other things and they're still planning on doing more so we are here if you look straight these are the steps to the church of aracheli with that bambino jazoo the baby jesus relic to the left is the vittoriano uh the wedding cake monument and to the right are the steps leading to the capitoline museums and in one section there's the collecting masterpieces exhibition so few more steps and we are inside this gentleman is going to be the part of the exhibition obviously and here we are the we're created by germanicus germanicus was the the father of caligula and the grandfather of nero so two well famous nut cases and it's the only bronze statue in the exhibition because bronze is so so rare if it was found in the middle ages uh it was uh melted down for weapons and utensils it had uh um the reason people needed uh weapons uh they needed metal and the knowledge of producing metal was lost so whichever bronze they could find people melted melted down so sometimes in the countryside they run into the pieces made of bronze and now we'll talk a lot about the restoration and integration um there was this taste when there was a whole craze about antiquities in the 1700s especially 1800s they didn't really like broken statues and they're all broken they're old so a lot of the of the sculptors worked as restorers and they would integrate bits and pieces as much as they could because nobody wanted to buy a broken statue they cared more about appearances than authenticity today it's it's completely different it's a different different trend and germanicus for example his his right leg his right arm his whole head was was restored based on the type of the of the statue okay this could have been germanicus because he liked to be likened to alexander the great so and this is funny uh fringes that he has are banks so uh a lot is arbitrary we frequently cannot cannot tell if the statue was this or that and there he is the father the man who gave us caligula and mirror and behind him is a collection of the busts they're mainly members or they're the emperors or the members of the imperial imperial families so we see some famous faces like for example karakala karakala was the emperor at the beginning of the 3rd century and his father ceptinius severus was also the emperor and he killed his brother uh gaeta or jaita and they say that he got his this throne and was never in a good mood after that well do we know maybe he was like that even even before but karakala was also famous for having given the all the free roman citizens the right to um citizenship basically because he wanted to collect more taxes and his nose has been restored now most of the statues have their noses broken because they are well the most fragile part of the statue so they come to us without noses ears they are the max break the limbs a lot of the statues that we know from the antiquity they're basically just the torsos and then reworked if this face looks familiar this is hadrian second century and he was the first emperor who started wearing a beard they say it was because he wanted to hide the scars from juvenile acne and a beautiful book but not an easy read at all but one of the most beautiful books of the of the past century is the memoirs of hadrian by uh margaret your cenar the french writer will be the only woman to become member of the french academy and uh hadrian is famous for his system of fortifications the hadrian's wall and in between england and scotland the pantheon famous pantheon and uh also the villa in tivoli the hadrian's villa in tivoli it's a huge property and many many more things we could talk a lot about hadrian and uh this is one of the rare busts where also the bust is antique most of the bus that you see around him are actually modern 18 1900s but that's that's the original the original one with the gorgon the medusa which has this it's called apotropic or warding off evil or scaring the enemies purpose all any scary mask is actually like that you know warding off evil and the ladies did not have much choice of clothing so they had to respect very strict rules especially if they were of higher origin obviously so where they would get whimsical was with the hair so that's where you could show that your wealthy your status was all in your hair that if you had this elaborate hairstyle it meant you could afford the slaves and the ladies from the imperial families they were frequently uh the trendsetters or the influencers of of their time so dating of the statues frequently goes back to also the hairstyle well that's the same as in like 80s you know we can all tell which which photo was taken in the in the 80s uh a lot of these busts are also modern like all the way to the right you see the latest is very very obviously a 19th century bust it's a lady who is named here elena fausta connected with constantine but they're not sure is it his mother elena or helen or is it his wife fausta or his daughter helen if you don't have anything written down it's difficult to say and this is another lady from the uh caracallas family uh that's actually his mother obviously the wife of septimio and there is a very lovely lady uh here not well this one is lovely as well but i wanted to show you the the mother-in-law of emperor hadrian it's it looks to me it looks like metropolis you know that fritz fritz lang movie from the 1920s and yes most likely uh this is um the portrait from the 19 19 early 1900s some of them you know you can't really tell because to determine the the the the um the age of a piece of stone you have to do these very complicated mineralogical and there are many smart words about how that's determined so it's frequently difficult to to say if something is modern or just ancient or done in this in the same fashion and these two are are different uh for example the the young girl to the right she looks very etruscan she comes from world she from the from the area where there were the etruscan excavations but she's not etruscan it's an etruscan style and the old man very realistic when you see these very very realistic portraits they usually go back to the first century bc and with him uh it was it has always been a big puzzle you know is he like a fisherman the hat is is modern but he had a hat so it was restored but was he a fisherman or is it a hat that is actually like a royal insignia of the macedonian or greek kings so we really really don't don't know but he's one of the most famous faces of them of the exhibition and a lovely girl you can see she was much more adorned than than she is you see the the holes on her ears for the earrings and uh her hair and there was gold and stuff on her uh to embellish her hair and here her eyes are hollow because that's where the glass paste would have been or or ivory to create the the gaze to make it very realistic they were not not white we'll talk more about that a little later and uh here's another republican portrait uh extremely extremely realistic uh when you see these just think of the old republican uh tradition in a sense before the empire in ancient rome to have them the um faces or the busts of their ancestors in their homes and the portugals to protect the family in the future they would even carry these during the processions and the way they're made they're not idealized and uh that usually goes again back to the republican times served slightly into the imperial so we are around the first century bc first century added uh the latest vaccio de otricolli from the location where he was found the old man from otrikoli and after this very severe gentleman's face you see his eyes do not have holes because they were painted when they are holes then there was glass paste if they're smooth they were they were painted now we proceed through the exhibition and there's this beautiful nymph lymphs are the minor divinities of the greek mythology accepted very much and very gladly in the roman one and they are the divinities of the rivers and lakes and they're splashing around and this lovely lady is represented in a gesture of taking off her her sandal and frequently they are paired with the satires the satires are these creatures that lived in the forests and again greek mythology that was adopted by the by the roman and they were having a jolly good time together sometimes the phones would join in they are the guys with the gold legs and how do we know this young man is a satire because he has this pointed ear they had pointed ears and little little tails frequently they're mixed up sometimes they call them phone satires but generally speaking satires would be the ones with pointed ears and are getting drunk all the time uh following dionysus in the processions these two are dancing they say in vito aladan sadi invitation or dance there are many about 40 examples found there are all these replicas made in the roman times replicas of the greek originals but in the case of these two they're found together for the first time on the property of terlonia and the coins represent the pair together so it means that for the first time they were discovered in their original setting together a setter sort of inviting a nymph to to dance with him and then we have a very very typical um work of art for ancient greeks and then romans there are really no so very few bronzes that survive from the fourth fifth century bc from greece and what we have are the roman replicas and uh two of these were found the ones the left were found in the in the area of the of nowadays near the airport austria there was a town of austria where there are also very interesting excavations and the port that was built by trade and claudius and and trajan the emperors and the turlonius came in possession of that cool land and they found amazing amount of of art there a lot of these statues the athletes are frequently represented like washing themselves or pouring oil or sometimes you know tying the ribbons of the victor around their head frequently we again don't know so the easiest thing to say is always oh he's pouring oil but for this one he comes from the cafarella another property today public park of the thorlonia's and this young man is tying the the ribbon that symbolized his uh victory the palm branch was also a symbol of victory that's it goes into christianity where the palm branch is for the martyrs because the death as a martyr is a victory in in god so it starts with the greek athletes and their nudity is here is um athletic we have nudity in these statues which is either heroic or um athletic or divine and even for example napoleon when he conquered all of europe uh he commissioned the statue of himself as god mars nude of course with a little fig to cover up at least something so uh it goes back to the greek fascination with the perfection of the body and this young man his head is a restoration and you see the like the scar on the on the neck but the nose is fake restoration and the the scratches on the face are also fake to give the illusion that the statue is antique the statue is but not the face there you see a little better how they scratched it so it would look old and this is a lovely statue of the abundance and peace so the two of them that's a greek motive that was again adopted by the romans the cornucopia was the addition the cornucopia the corn of plenty with the edibles overflowing but you can tell this is the model that finds itself finds its way into the christianity as well there are these modules of um mothers with with the babies like the bachus and semele or isis and horus or in this case the peace and uh and abundance so the iconography kind of continues the beautiful statues very white you know there's been a lot of polemics about the the cleaning they had to get rid of the wax and dirt and maybe they made them way too white so because originally they were they were also painted but you can see that the yellow is the original part and then where for example the arm the arm is completely a restoration and this is the famous relief of the of the port that i mentioned earlier where it shows the activities that are taking place in the port of austria romans had two major ports one in baya near naples and uh clase in ravenna so the ravenna on the adriatic and via for the iranian sea in the in the mediterranean but rome had austria and here you see down to the left there's uh neptune the god of the of the sea up at the corner to the right there's uh dionysus with the panzer and we see the eye again the apotheopike eye which preserves the peace in the harbor and wards off the evil and protects the sailors from the evil divinities now in the middle is the famous lighthouse of austria where they still found some pigment left that is another proof that these statues and reliefs they're all painted but the pigment faded and the artists of the renaissance and baroque like we started michelangelo bernini they all thought the statues were uh they're white but in the recent times they the archaeologists started using and restorers very gentle methods like even just ultrasound for cleaning the statues and they're running more and more into the pigment the original pigment you see on the on the veils here at the bottom in the in the center you see twice the she-wolf with with the twins the symbol of rome and this is the ship that just sailed in so you see some people busy on it they're probably sacrificing some animals some gods you know to thank for the safe journey and this is the only greek piece uh goes back most likely to the 5th century bc we see the young man with the horse followed by a dog but in each corner at the top there are the figures with some legs that's what has remained so most likely the divinities to whom this young man is bringing some sacrifice it's extremely rare to find greek pieces even in greece you find the roman pieces that are the replicas of the greek now when i was in in athens i had to go to pirae to the harbor of athens to to see a few really important and great statues in bronze because even the archaeological museum in athens doesn't have that many there we go little legs on the divinity and the lovely lovely dog so now sarcophagi romans chose between cremation and and burials depending on the family wealth depending on the tradition of the area if there was plenty of wood there was more creation there was more cremation and it depended on the traditions it had no religious connotations and this is a sarcophagus they're now mainly from the second century and it's a sarcophagus of the so-called centaur who was a very learned person you see he surrounded himself with the philosophers with their scrolls and the the ladies with these little little horns here they're the muses there are nine muses inspiring different arts they're a daughter of zeus daughters of zeus and when you look at the lady in the in the center her face is not finished because that was the wife who most likely died much later and for whichever reason her face was never finished many of these sarcophagi were sold as the pieces that had to be finished you know it was the whole thing was done but the faces of the disease had to be done when that person died so it would be a sort of of a portrait so this is a beautiful piece see smart philosophers and and the muses and the death mask the damasks were used by the actors in the greek theater to express a certain mood the actors did not act with their own facial expressions but with different masks and you can see them in many museums as decorations as well and on the sarcophagi very very frequently and this is another beautiful sarcophagus with a very very popular motive which are the labors of hercules or the fatigues of hercules he had to earn a pardon for having killed his wife and the son but he was made crazy by jealous hera i mean who wouldn't be jealous i mean her husband had 71 they say illegitimate children so without him having all that legitimate children and without harass jealousy the greek mythology would be much more boring but like this it's quite exciting so hercules was his offspring and the strongest of the heroes and here we see the sequence of his heroic deeds we're going to start to the left from his killing of the so-called name lion and then he starts wearing the the lion's skin and you see his face here he's young and as we arrive to the far end he's older he has a beard so chronologically it's all chronologically uh carved and these are the so-called hesperid gardens from which he had to bring these golden apples and the guardian snake is sleeping on the corner at the corner of the sarcophagus so the whole life of adult labors of hercules on one sarcophagus and now there's a beautiful tatsa that's albani uh tata is like the basin in uh in italian and the pedestal is modern the the um the hold the thing to hold to the tata are also handles are modern and you can see again hercules and here he's killing the hydra the monster and inside just be prepared there's the head of medusa there's always been a head of meduza in that basin but this is a modern one from the 19th century that replaced the the old one but it follows the pattern that's how it was meduza the gorgon meduza who had those snakes and uh perez the hero cut the head of the medusa who was transforming her enemies into stone or whoever looked at her directly in the eye would become stone so he the person shined his shield and was kind of looking at the shield and hopes i don't know how but anyway cut cut her head and gave it to without looking older gave it to athena who put the head on her shield so she could petrify her enemies and then we know there are some famous designers who used medusa for their friends so that's quite scary and now we continue through the exhibition there are beautiful pieces these are always river gods uh they look like mature gentlemen not young men they uh carried the cornucopias they were the fountains they were in the gardens and this is the restoration of a fountain and the river god as nile because you see the sphinx to the right so that gives him an identity then there's this beautiful beautiful young man uh this is a part of the collection called cavatre because he was a restorer and a sculptor who had a big studio that everybody went to from england and um he died in 1799 and his method was studying the pieces and then giving them integrations based on the historical research and this head he named ptolemy ptolemy where the dynasty one of the two dynasties that inherited the kingdom of alexander the great and they go to egypt and this could also be anyone else actually but he was named tolomeo ptolemy the king of egypt so that was the family that ruled egypt cleopatra was a ptolemy she wasn't egyptian she was she was greek and there we go tolomeo as he was named by kava chappie the family bought the whole kava chappie collection at the auction and now the two warriors who originally were not together they were placed together in the museum of thorlonius and some of their characteristics were changed these are probably some greeks against the persians there are all these mythological and actual uh battles that are very popular in in art but for example the the warrior with the mustache that's that's not his original moustache that was added later to give him some kind of a celtic identity but he did not originally have mustache here the head is uh is antique restored quite but it's it's antique although it looks very white but um i read at least it was antique and again our celtic warrior now the ram is cute but it's not so much about the ram whose head is also integration but about the gentleman hanging underneath that's eulesses you know how he killed the nasty cyclop polyfamous and polyfamous was blinded so he was looking for uh the warriors for the ulysses friends who were trying to escape and they found a way because the the cyclops had sheep that would have to go graze in the morning so ulysses and his uh buddies are hanging on the sheep underneath and that's how they managed to escape from poly famous i remember that scared me a lot when i was a kid there he is hero ulysses and now the conversational piece apollo and marcia apollo the god of beauty who was also very vain and what happens when somebody challenges a god well that's why he's holding this skin because marcia the setter was stupid enough to challenge apollo but he found um an instrument that athena threw away so it and it was made by the by pun the the god of the forests for athena so it had this amazing sound and ma marcia see his ears his center he thought he could challenge apollo and of course that didn't go well so he was played and in this statue only the torso is antique you see the head the the arms they're all integrations this is the antique part and at marcia's feet we see that the flute that he found athena threw it away because she loves the sound and she played and played and played but then she realized she just had a glimpse of herself in this water surface in a lake and she saw how how ugly her cheeks looked like when she was blowing into the fluid so she threw it away she was vain too so that's how martial thing ended up flayed these were like conversational pieces that would be in these wealthy people's uh halls and they would entertain their guests now this is another collection gustiniani the family that also had cardinals collectors they had a collection of thousand two hundred statues they are dispersed all over the world and the most because they of course ran out of money as well but we're talking now about the 1600s they were also protectors of um uh caravaggio i'm going to talk about caravaggio and one other type and uh here we have more of the of the emperors and uh some they say okay the second one here like it's caesar maybe yes maybe no and then augustus and uh tiberius claudius so the busts were old all the rage antoninus fires with original this is the whole original restored original and then two modern luchovero and young mark aurelius marcus aurelius and this is vitalius but this is probably pseudo antique because such exaggerated characteristics that was not typical for the antiquity so it's most likely relatively modern past of an actual emperor vitalius is kind of cute and this is hestia justiniani now that sounds important justin yani again is this family of of collectors of the 1600s and this is um the most preserved the best preserved roman replica of this type of the statue which is greek in origin so 45th century bc but a roman replica and it was the question of social prestige to have your portrait painted with the with this lady or to have something like that in your own in your own collection so this is one of the most most famous pieces actually it was most likely first made of bronze because you see when the marble statues are made as replicas of bronze that they need these stunts that support the marble because it doesn't stay as strongly attached as as bronze and also the type of the of the hairstyle this would have been very typical for a bronze these heavy bangs would have been typical for a bronze statue this is now um isis looking for osiris or maybe it's ceres the goddess of of agriculture proserpine and this is the time when sorry kappa chappie was no longer around and so they would just order whatever they wanted so say okay i want the statue to be the goddess of agriculture so let's put some wheat in her hand and will give her the identity or it could be pelagia the the goddess who you see on the ships at the mosque that protects the the ship again it's difficult to to say this is a heavily restored warrior the head is antique and the pelvis is antique but this is the the position that was actually copied from a drawing by raphael it's a lovely lovely old head and medusa again gorgon meduza with the snake coils instead of the hair and then the setters satires and this is a way of putting together the collection it was very fashionable to have two statues like double and this resting satire is a prototype is praxitel the the sculptor from the fourth century bc and the cardinal had two uh it's an important piece of the statue we see this transition from archaic to classical where you have the position of the body the counterpost changes and he needs to lean on to something because he's totally off balance and he's got the panther skin because he's the the friend of uh dionysus so the two of them and talking about the two apart from the satires and the pan third is symbol of dionysus this is a drunken setter and that's what they did the best chasing nymphs and getting drunk there we go little horns too now the venuses these are also roman replicas of the statue of crouching venus from the 3rd century bc the original was lost and the first one in front of us the head is restored most likely by pietro bernini the father of john lorenzo who worked both worked for the justiniani for the cardinal and so this head is a restoration and this is not so this lovely lovely venus still has her original original head there are different types of venuses and one standing or the modus venus covering herself this is a crouching venus and now let's take a little walk to the whole hole and end up on this lovely ram or the goat now the statue is old and you see it was probably somewhere outside because of the how the fur is worn out but the face of this goat is way too eloquent it's bernini lorenzo bernini may did the restoration of this head and it actually becomes famous after that this goat the greatest of all times the greatest goat of all times very intense anthropomorphic they would say she's almost talking to us or he's almost okay now there's a very popular motive of the little boy fighting with the goose for the gardens especially and a typical representation of artemis for eastern roman empire in ephesus it's uh very typical in the museum in ephesus as you can see in turkey some of these statues and then all over the ancient roman world also in the martign museums in the capitol and museums and the the goddess artemis she's again the goddess of fertility she's like mother nature you see all these little animals and most famously these well what would they be they're not breasts and they're not eggs they're not gourds uh eventually the archaeologists and the art historians agreed that those well are bull testicles because the bull was has always been a symbol of life force and fertility and fertility also the felix symbols you know they're like cosmic virtue because uh we all depend on it and the the crops depend on fertility the animals and children everything's there because of the fertility and the bull is the symbol of that so the tastiest part of the bull for example italians make a salami let me not tell you how it's called you can ask me later if you want to know but um they would give it up as a gift for the goddess so they would invoke more fertility for the farm and for the family and all kinds of animals some mythological some are from the real world made part of artemis baggage and then this must have been like a funerary monument of a lady who probably had a shop where she sold well meat very realistic the tombs would frequently have something that would tell you about the the craft that they did and another uh famous tata the the basin chaisy from a garden in the 1500s where it was paired with a satire like the one you can see on the left was holding a wine skin that was a fountain in origin these gardens were near the vatican originally but they're no longer longer there it was a jc family and the the basin has the the legs and the rim restored but this is a satire that used to be the fountain but on the basin you see well again nymphs and the satires doing what they do the best well just having a jolly good time now another sarcophagus with the hercules but with the so-called non-pertaining lid even to uh the pair they don't come from the same period see the hairstyle always tells us the era and then the head of the gentleman just doesn't doesn't fit chronologically then this is a beautiful sarcophagus with the lion and the lions always popular in funerary art and generally in heroic art this was probably a tamer of the wild animals to see how his coming out from behind or maybe it was a magistrate who organized the venatio the the animal fights before the gladiators would show up in the amphitheaters we don't know and athena now we're getting closer to to the end of the exhibition athena with her symbolical helmet and uh olive tree and also the lil all and of course meduza uh on her chest well all the symbol of greece the symbol of wisdom this is already spots such as arini collection that's another family that the theologians intermarried with the only one that did not have the uh the pope but they had a couple of cardinals another river god where only the chest is actually original this is a philosopher crispus 3rd century bc stoic philosopher with restored head and also the sandals as you will see from karate marble lovely sandals even even today so that's sportsza chesarini collection and this is the catalogue uh one of those catalogs from late 1800s this conti family was known they also worked for the pope they worked for the nobility all over and this is the first catalogue with actually uh phototypes that's like the ancestor of photography but for the first time it's not incisions like the uh if anyone wants to later on you can always write to me as you know uh there is um if anybody is studying collections and collecting there's this so-called galleria justiniani and if you can download it it's free the pdf online all these amazing incisions of the justiniani collection but those are incisions these were for the first time uh the the photographs of the sort and it represents all the pieces i just picked up a few and the hercules but hercules made of 117 pieces that was the so-called uh pastiche popular especially in the 1700s but even earlier it's not really that it there was always a need to restore like that but it was also showing off the skill what are we capable of doing it's not the only statue of that kind there is in um a diane in c blunder museum in liverpool has another statue like that in c i n c e uh diane and she's made 120 pieces just uh consider that these statues were covered with wax and they were observed with the torches uh they did not have the lights as we have today even michelangelo when he was painting his sistine chapel the lights were completely different so maybe he needed those bright colors because of that we just have to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who lived well centuries ago but this hercules we call they call him frankenstein it's kinda cute and as you come out of the exhibition uh there's this beautiful hall with the pieces that the pope uh sixtus the force gave to the people of rome um this she-wolf and also uh the little boy pulling out the thorn from his foot not everything uh it's normally here the big statue of marcus aurelius is there because this whole section of the museum was built for it this glass roof around it the original is here now the copy is on the capitoline hill compedolio it wasn't melted down in the middle ages because people wrongly believed it was constantine constantine he was the she-wolf the symbol of rome with romulus and remus at the renaissance addition to this ancient statue that is most likely etruscan 5th century bc he was constantine 4th century first christian emperor and he's kind of looking at marcus aurelius from the other side of the hall and say hey marcus you know you are there only because they believed that you were me and marcus aurelius seems to say well give me five thank you for that and this is what i could do about the terlonia exhibition uh it will probably hopefully travel to louvre and then to united states who knows the future is really unpredictable at this point the the italian government has put aside 35 million to restore a palazzo near the coliseum and the collection will be will be probably placed there maybe it will finally become a public museum but it will remain the property of trollonia it will not become the property of the of the state and once you're done with the exhibition you can walk down to the ghetto and uh the jewish gather in rome is famous for excellent food especially for these fried artichokes jewish style so that's something that you absolutely have to do to conclude the whole tour and i hope you enjoyed it when in rome that's what you have to do go to see an exhibition and then go for some food good food always good wow olga wow um that was stunning thank you so much anybody have any questions or comments i have allowed you to unmute yourself or you could put them in the chat we have another 15 minutes or so okay john yeah can i ask a question yeah early in your presentation there was um a fresco of an etruscan fresco and it looked like a group of men fighting they all had swords either buried in each other or hanging in scabbards was that um etruscan funeral games or was that some battle or from what i read it's about the trojan war oh okay although a trojan war is greek obviously but uh these are from the 4th century bc so and homer is like 8th century bc so what i found was that it was um a trojan trojan warriors i know that the etruscan funerary right included the fights of them of the warriors and that's where the gladiator games actually come out from from the last continuous rights you you probably had that in mind yeah right it was the funeral right seth exactly it was it was but what i found about the the fresco francois uh was the trojan at least from one that i that i was looking at i don't know them very very well uh i didn't go that much into them but i could i could go back but i do remember one part was about the georgian georgian warriors okay thank you so much you're welcome oh i wanted to to add something of course you can ask me any any questions anytime um forgot to mention that you have somebody in the u.s that you've seen so many times but didn't know that a lovely lady has thorlonia's blood uh in her uh her grand grandmother was torlonia brook shields yeah and her grand grandmother was from the moore family the railroad um industrial industrialists so tolonia marries into american railroad business lz moore i think was her name and then marina thorlonia and then her son you know so they're all marina marries her her daughter sorry mary's frank shields the tennis player and then brook shields is the grandchild well there you go wow karen asked will olga in all caps will ogle be leading a travel group through the center will she be giving more presentations she's a wonderful speaker with so much knowledge thank you thank you well that's what i normally do believing um i work for this big american agency talk don't talk i've been with them for 10 years but i also do apart from working for them and coordinating some of their tours i organize tours for my private clients so yes i hope so i hope so but in in the meantime you know why not i believe that this virtual world is going to remain in a certain segment i don't think it's going to go away completely so maybe when i'm older and and retired maybe i'll do just the virtual tours if there's still anyone interested and if i can remember things but um yeah well this is my site olgarome.com you know i would love the tourism to come back and take people around actually but i would also like to continue doing doing these presentations because i i actually like how it is coming out i hope you like it too very much so very much so well that's a possibility i will talk to our travel department as well and the second question will she be giving more presentations um we do have one on the books the description isn't totally written yet for may 20th from 3 to 4 p.m called a pilgrimage to rome and elga if you want to describe what that's about a little bit image in rome uh we just did the churches of rome and that was the sort of generic or my choice of maybe about 20 churches in rome out of 900 but the pilgrimage in rome is a very specific way to to visit rome and there are seven churches which are the set the basilica seven basilicas that have to be uh visited as as a pilgrim and then there are the holy doors and there are certain rituals and then there is a tradition of the jubilees that started in the year 1300 celebrating the anniversary of the birth of jesus christ and it's been held first every 100 years and then every 50 every 25 and the jubilees are really interesting occasion for the pilgrims to come to rome millions normally normally come and it's a really really interesting tradition and i used to work with the pilgrims i must say i'm not i'm not catholic but i worked with catholic pilgrims in in major goria in ex yugoslavia and i entered into that world it was in the 80s and they said that's where the six children saw the blessed mother and it was a completely different world for me and eventually i ended up in rome and i encountered frequently people who want to know about it want to know okay which relics we're going to go to pray for this where do i go to pray for that because you know different saints have different tasks and they can intercede for different prayers and there are reasons for that so i hope you will you will join me we are also um thinking about doing something on just the caravaggio right carolyn yeah yeah we don't have the date but um you can also ask you know bernini michelangelo why not anybody else questions or comments you can like i said unmute yourself or you can put it in the chat i think you cannot mute yourself let me double check yes do you have any questions well i just i've just uh flabbergasted that um at the wealth of the torlonius and then when you said they had 22 percent of the they had they had of the papal states in the past the papal states were like a belt oh that cut italy in two halves and they arrived to have the 22 of that territory that's that's enormous and their wealth so has become a bit of a synonym with uh with embarrassment and there was this movie called romanco criminale uh the criminal novel novel about the crime something like that about a gang that actually existed in italy in the 70s and vanda de la mallana and one of the bosses is entering into this i don't know what it is long lamborghini whatever and he's entering into this car and he says only tarlonia and i have this kind of a car in rome interesting wow yeah okay um there is a question where did the marble come from the marble that i love that question because the marble came originally in all of the roman empire they had the quarries uh because we're talking about ancient statues so they had the quarries in egypt in uh greece and turkey a lot uh in europe as well you can find the maps of all the quarries and different kinds of marble in the case of the thorlonia's there is very few there is one statue with marmo bija that the gray the grey marble that is the statue of isis or ceres that's i believe from asia minor and um if it's a red porphyry it's from egypt the white marble there are two major types there is so called marmo pentelico which is greek and then there is today we call it karara marble but it was called luna lunense because the quarries were not called karara at that time but they are in northern tuscany they're like the cathedral under the earth of like white marble it's absolutely stunning i used to take groups there when i worked as a tour manager so it's extremely difficult to say sometimes um if you look at the marble if it has crystalline coarse granulation it is most likely greek if it's very soft soft so to say it looks like it like very small tiny granulation it should be karata but to really tell you have to do something it's called like isotopic something and then determine there's no really an answer to each piece unless it's um for example certain kind of yellow oh there was only that quarry where that jallo antico came from tunisia from northern africa certain kind of poor fury which is not marble but granite only from egypt because that kind is from there but it was all over the roman empire and it was brought to to rome that's fascinating white is mainly the greek or uh today but luna for the for the romans yeah it just seems like there's so much of it you know yeah the restoration is sometimes done uh in the old times all kinds of things were done you know the iron clams that would rust eventually so they had to put the lead around them to prevent the rusting of the surface now they use more brass and there is a lot of resin used and marble marble dust marble powder to fill in the the gaps and do the restoration so not so much of the actual pieces but in the past if you go through the museums you find the statue and it says oh not pertaining head but head looks fine it's also old because they would find such an abundance of these heads and legs and torsos and heads that they would take them you know stash them into the workshops and they said okay put it put it together oh okay well this one no not that one this one fits boom so whatever fitted so you you may have the arm from who knows where and then the leg from from somewhere else and then another piece restored today we are much more careful about that but imagine in the past you know who was really paying attention and writing down about everything right right important to sell the statue and if the guy wanted the whole statue the whole statue he'll get um yeah i once heard where the words um sincere comes from cena sarah without wax do you know this or is this maybe it was wrong sincere or honest something about well i learned where the statues um if you want to buy a good statue you know they said it was sincere without wax that wasn't filled in there were no nicks or cuts might as well be you know i'm really learning ev every every day so we can google that without chera c-e-r-a sensa without wax yeah b when you said sinchera i said sinchero means sincere ah no it's santa sense of see without wax all right well thank you all for coming we thank you it's just wonderful unbelievable thank you very much it was excellent thank you wonderful thanks thank you ma'am

Channel: The Center at Belvedere - Charlottesville, VA

Views: 4,352

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Id: 68ewmy7AyW8

Length: 82min 54sec (4974 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021