|
Item Number: 124242
Title: Athena Nike: la vittoria della dea Marmi greci del V e IV secolo a.C. della Fondazione Sorgente Group. Athena Nike: the Victory of the Goddess. Greek Marbles of the 5th and 4th century BC of Fondazione Sorgente Group
Author: La Rocca, Eugenio (ed)
Price: Not Available
ISBN: 9788865571262
Description: Roma: De Luca, 2013. 31cm., hardcover, 151pp. illus., most in color. Italian-English text. Exhibition held at Palazzo del Tritone, Roma. Summary: The goddess returns in her original form on 6 February thanks to the studies of Prof. Eugenio La Rocca and the virtual multimedia reconstruction of Paco Lanciano. The Fondazione Sorgente Group will be exhibiting the statue of 430 BC for the first time ever until 3 August together with the other Greek marbles of its collection in a fascinating innovative event that offers a unique opportunity to revisit the past of Ancient Greece. Rome, January 2013. A goddess glides down to earth to celebrate human victory. Thanks to multimedia technology, the statue of Athena Nike lives again and displays its original appearance with three-dimensional projections based on complex graphic studies. Entitled The Victory of the Goddess. Greek Marbles of the 5th and 4th Century BC from the Fondazione Sorgente Group Collection and inaugurated on 6 February, the exhibition will be held at the Spazio Espositivo Tritone, the Group’s exhibition centre, until 3 August, The three-dimensional installation brings the statue back to life in a virtual reconstruction that supplies its missing parts. Rescued from the oblivion of ages, the sculpture will appear from the darkness before our eyes in all its beauty and integrity. Background projections will embed it in its original setting, the classical Greece of the second half of the 5th century BC, the age of the Athenian democracy of Pericles and the building of the Parthenon. The virtual reconstruction of the sculpture by Paco Lanciano and his Mizar team harnesses sophisticated computer, audio and lighting systems and is based scientifically on Prof. Eugenio La Rocca’s painstaking study of the relevant iconographic, formal and technical hypotheses. The most sophisticated developments of computer science are applied to an ancient statue for the first time ever in Italy so as to reconstruct its missing parts and make it readily comprehensible and accessible as a whole to the public. Ancient sculpture meets present-day technology in the promotion of art. Carved around 430 BC from a single block of Parian marble, one of the finest varieties, the sculpture must have portrayed the winged Athena Nike. It served in the past as a votive image standing on a column or pillar at a height of about 5 metres in a sanctuary of Attica or the pro-Athenian region. The goddess was shown alighting on a rocky spur to celebrate the army’s victories, her left hand probably holding a crown of laurel or olive leaves for the victor in battle and the right a palm branch. While the traditional aegis on the breast completed and identified the figure as Athena, the wings characterized her as a Nike. It is possible that the Athena Nike of the Fondazione Sorgente Group was moved during the reign of Augustus from its original location to Rome, where it was restored and where the marble copy now in the Glencairn Museum near Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, USA, was probably produced in the Antonine era. The statue is included on the Ministry of Heritage list of protected works by virtue of its exceptional qualities. In addition to the Athena Nike, the exhibit presents a collection of the finest white marble statuary. The journey through antiquity in the Spazio Espositivo Tritone thus continues with two lekythoi and a louthrophoros of Pentelic marble from the first three decades of the 4th century BC, all with preserved scenes in relief. The fact that there are only about ten of these marble urns in museums and private hands in Italy makes the display of three from a single private collection a unique event. The intact lekythos is in fact subject to the Ministry of Heritage decree on formal notification. While the lekythoi have an elongated body and narrow neck, the louthrophoros takes the shape of an amphora made entirely of marble. In antiquity these were funeral monuments erected in memory of the deceased, portrayed in relief and with their names carved into the marble, and in celebration of their families. The urn known as the louthrophoros of Polystratos on the basis of the name inscribed could thus have belonged to the family of Polystratos Deiradiotes, a wealthy landowner and major figure on the Athenian political scene, remembered together with his children by an oration of Lysias and portrayed on the vessel itself. The three marble urns show the act of dexiosis or handclasp between two key figures of the scene in relief. According to recent studies, this symbolizes the affective bonds between the deceased and the still living members of their families, indivisibly united beyond the grave. The descriptive catalogue of the works exhibited will be edited by Prof. Eugenio La Rocca and feature texts by this scholar and others from the academic world, including Elena Ghisellini, Massimiliano Papini, Matthias Bruno and Alessandra Avagliano.
We regret to inform you that this title is no longer available.
Please contact us if you need additional assistance.
P.O. Box 3904, Kingston, New York 12402 US
Phone: 845-331-8519
Fax: 845-331-0852
Email: michael@artbooks.com