The Torlonia Marbles. Collecting Masterpieces
More than 90 extraordinary sculptures, never exhibited before
More than 90 works from the most important private collection of antique sculptures will be on display for the first time in the new exhibition venue of the Capitoline Museums in Villa Caffarelli until 29 June 2021.
Thanks to an important agreement between the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Torlonia Foundation, an extraordinary exhibition curated by Salvatore Settis and Carlo Gasparri with the installation by David Chipperfield Architects Milano opened in Rome.
Fascinating representation of a highly privileged cross-section of the history of collecting antiquities in Rome from the 15th to the 19th century.
Busts, reliefs, statues, sarcophagi and decorative elements, magnificent examples of ancient sculpture, but also a reflection of a cultural process of fundamental importance, which sees the beginnings of collecting antiquities and the passage from the collection to the Museum. A process in which Rome and Italy had an indisputable primacy.
The exhibition therefore retraces the formation of the Torlonia collection, while the last of its five sections is eloquently linked to the adjacent exedra of the bronzes and Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline Museums, highlighting the link between the beginnings of private collecting antiquities and the significance of the donation of the Lateran bronzes to the City by Sixtus IV in 1471.
The exhibition, with which, in the very year of the 150th anniversary of Roma Capitale, the new exhibition venue of the Capitoline Museums in Villa Caffarelli is inaugurated, is the first stop on a world tour, which will see these works travel to the main capitals.