In honor of this historic occasion, we’re taking a closer look at the illustrious collection and its magnificent artworks with exhibition co-curators Lisa Ayla Çakmak, Mary and Michael Jaharis Chair and Curator, and Katharine A. Raff, Elizabeth McIlvaine Curator, both of our Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium department.
#1. The Torlonia Collection comprises 622 sculptures.
The Torlonia Laboratories
Photo by Agostino Osio
This impressive group ranges in date from the 5th century BCE to the 4th century CE and spans a great diversity of types—from portraits of the imperial family and private individuals to images of gods and goddesses to large-scale funerary monuments and decorative objects. The Collection is on par with the Roman sculpture collections of such major institutions as the Capitoline Museums and the Vatican Museums in Rome in terms of its quality, depth, and breadth.
#2. The Collection was formed in the 19th century by the Italian Torlonia Family.
Having amassed great wealth through their commercial and banking activities, the Torlonia Family collected antiquities to furnish their many homes and estates. Over decades they essentially created a “collection of collections,” purchasing the entire inventory of the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (1716–1799) in 1800, acquiring a portion of the aristocratic Giustiniani family collection in 1825, and buying the Villa Albani, a palace filled with sculptures, in 1866. The Family also funded archaeological excavations on their various properties, which resulted in additional outstanding finds.
#3. In 1876, Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1800–1886) established a private museum in Rome to display the Family’s collection.
Gallery I of the Torlonia Museum, 1930s
Istituto Archeologico Germanico / Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. All rights reserved
Known as the Museo Torlonia (Torlonia Museum), the museum closed in the wake of World War II, and the Collection went unseen for generations.
#4. None of the sculptures in the Torlonia Collection have ever left Europe.
Portrait of a Man, known as the Old Man of Otricoli, mid-1st century BCE
Roman, late Republican Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
A photo of the Old Man of Otricoli in Diana E. E. Kleiner’s Roman Sculpture, page 38
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992
While Myth and Marble marks the first trans-Atlantic trip for works in the Torlonia Collection, a handful of works might seem familiar because of their widespread publication in art historical textbooks. The Portrait of a Man, known as the Old Man of Otricoli, for example, is one of the best-known examples of the Roman tradition of veristic, or realistic, portraiture, which was popular at the end of the Roman Republic. Sculptors working in this style would emphasize the physical signs of aging—such as deep-set wrinkles, sagging skin, sunken cheeks, and blemishes—as evidence of an individual’s experience, character, and virtues. Old Man of Otricoli embodies the traditional Republican aristocratic values of maturity and authority.
#5. Twenty-four works in the show have not been seen publicly in over 70 years and have been newly conserved just for our exhibition.
Funerary Monument of a Boy, Gaius Marcius Crescens, 2nd century CE
Roman, Imperial Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
One such newly cleaned, conserved, and researched object is this funerary monument of a boy, identified as Gaius Marcius Crencens. Gaius’s parents dedicated this monument to their beloved boy who died, according to the inscription, at the age of 14 years and 9 hours. Childhood mortality rates were high in antiquity. Grieving parents with the financial means to do so erected funerary monuments like this one and returned to them on significant occasions like birthdays and feast days to honor the memories of their lost loved ones.
#6. Nearly all of the sculptures were restored to a whole or finished state in the 17th through the 19th century, reflecting the tastes of the time.
While many 21st-century viewers are conditioned to appreciate the fragmentary state of ancient Roman sculpture, collectors in the 17th through 19th century favored complete works of art. At the time, artists regularly restored antiquities to earn income and gain experience working with sculpture, adding limbs and heads to ancient torsos. Nearly all of the artworks featured in this exhibition were restored in this way, many of them before they entered the Torlonia Collection.
Statue of Athena, late 1st century BCE–early 1st century CE
Roman, Imperial Period, Augustan Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
This statue of Athena has undergone significant physical changes over the centuries. The sculpture is now on its third head: the first is long gone; the second wore a simple helmet, as seen in artists’ drawings; and this third head was attached at some point after the statue entered the Torlonia Collection. This latest modification probably took place at the same time that the left arm holding a small owl was added—the owl being the symbol of both the city of Athens (the city to which Athena was patron deity) and the Torlonia Family.
#7. Some of the sculptures were restored by famed artists of the early modern era.
Statue of a Resting Goat, body: late 1st century CE. Roman, Imperial Period; head: attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680)
Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
While many of the restorations to sculptures in the Torlonia Collection were carried out by artists whose names are unknown to us today, some were completed by celebrated sculptors of the 17th through 19th century. For example, roughly two hundred years before it entered the Torlonia Collection, the Statue of a Resting Goat was restored by the young Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), who went on to become one of the most renowned sculptors of the Baroque period. Bernini carefully restored the fragmentary animal to a whole, adding a jaunty head covered in luscious curls. Today the work is a unique collaboration between ancient and early modern sculptors.
#8. There’s only one bronze sculpture in the Torlonia Collection.
Statue of Germanicus, 1st century CE
Roman, Imperial Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
Among the 622 sculptures in the collection, the Statue of Germanicus is the lone bronze. This speaks to the relative scarcity of large-scale ancient bronze sculptures that have made it to the present day, as in antiquity the metal was easily and often melted down and reused for weapons, coins, or tools.
This larger-than-life work was excavated in 1874; it likely survived the centuries because it was concealed underground. The subject may be Germanicus (15 BCE–19 CE), a Roman general and brother to Emperor Claudius. His untimely death at the age of 34 disrupted the succession plans of the imperial family.
#9. Some of the sculptures preserve traces of ancient pigments.
Portus Relief, late 2nd–early 3rd century CE
Roman, Imperial Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
In antiquity, stone sculptures were often richly painted. Many ancient pigments and binders naturally degraded over time or were removed by caretakers, either purposefully or unintentionally, during cleaning and restoration processes. Some ancient colors on sculptures in the Torlonia Collection can be seen with the naked eye today, as for example on one of its most famous works, a large relief depicting the imperial harbor at Portus. The dazzling scene, which was once enlivened with an array of colors, shows the ships, seafarers, and monuments that dotted the seaside landscape in the late second to early third century. Today, traces of red pigment are visible on the flames of the lighthouse and parts of the merchant ships.
Learn more about this relief and the various scenes it depicts in this video.
#10. The oldest object in the exhibition dates to the Greek Classical Period.
Attic Votive Relief, late 5th century BCE
Greek, Classical Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
While the majority of the objects in the exhibition were made during the Roman Imperial Period (27 BCE–476 CE), this relief fragment dates back to Classical Greece. Manufactured in the late fifth century BCE, the relief might have originally functioned as a votive offering in a religious setting, perhaps even on the Acropolis in Athens.
By the time the relief arrived in Rome, possibly in the second century CE, it was already 400 or 500 years old—roughly the same age as Renaissance objects are for us today. Elite Romans avidly collected art from ancient Greece as a way to signal their great wealth and status. Although Roman sculptures modeled on earlier Greek works were readily available, originals like this one were quite rare as well as very expensive to import. This Athenian relief is one of the only objects in the exhibition that was never restored in later centuries, making it a “true” ancient fragment.
#11. There is one unfinished sculpture in the exhibition.
Unfinished Statue of a Dacian Prisoner, early 2nd century CE
Roman, Imperial Period, Trajanic Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
Although the majority of the sculptures in the Torlonia Collection were discovered in a fragmentary state and restored to completion, this work was discovered unfinished—with its roughly carved garments and a vertical slab still attached to the back of the figure. It was found in 1859 in what appears to have been an ancient sculptors’ workshop, and it was never restored in the modern era.
The statue depicts a male captive from the region of Dacia (present-day Romania). Emperor Trajan conquered Dacia in two military campaigns carried out in 101–2 and 105–6 and commemorated Rome’s victory against this formidable foe with larger-than-life sculptures of Dacian male captives in his Forum. The figure’s pose, complete with a downward glance and (now-missing) hands crossed at the left hip, signified his defeat, and his distinctive costume would have marked him as an outsider to Roman viewers.
#12. The heaviest work in the exhibition weighs more than 12,000 pounds!
Sarcophagus Lid with Reclining Couple, second half of 2nd century CE
Roman, Imperial Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
Sarcophagus depicting the Labors of Hercules, second half of 2nd century CE
Roman, Imperial Period. Torlonia Collection, Rome. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
Marble is a very dense, durable, and extremely heavy material. This large marble sarcophagus (coffin) depicting a reclining couple on its lid is actually two pieces, each weighing over 6,000 pounds. The expensive ancient luxury good would have been imported into Rome from Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), the manufacturing center for the largest sarcophagi in the Roman world.
To ensure the safety of staff, visitors, and the objects themselves, the sarcophagus and its lid are displayed in the exhibition side by side rather than with the lid placed atop the sarcophagus, as would have been the case in its original funerary setting.
We cannot wait for our members and visitors to experience these remarkable works—the heaviest, the oldest, the lone bronze, those especially conserved for our show—all of them. Each has a unique and fascinating millennium-plus story to share, and we look forward to their North American debut with our Chicago audience!
—Lisa Ayla Çakmak, Mary and Michael Jaharis Chair and Curator, Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
Katharine A. Raff, Elizabeth McIlvaine Curator, Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
Sponsors
Lead support for Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection is provided by Shawn M. Donnelley and Christopher M. Kelly.
Major funding is contributed by the Jaharis Family Foundation, the Boshell Family Foundation, Dwyer Brown and Nancy Reynolds, Marion Cameron-Gray, and two anonymous donors.
Members of the Luminary Trust provide annual leadership support for the museum’s operations, including exhibition development, conservation and collection care, and educational programming. The Luminary Trust includes an anonymous donor, Karen Gray-Krehbiel and John Krehbiel, Jr., Kenneth C. Griffin, the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris, Josef and Margot Lakonishok, Ann and Samuel M. Mencoff, Sylvia Neil and Dan Fischel, Cari and Michael J. Sacks, and the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation.
The works of the Torlonia Collection have been restored by the Torlonia Foundation with the support of Fondazione Bvlgari.
