Find

Find; Burial

head portrait

Santo Varni 1888, Decreto 3-5 marzo 1 acquisto

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 31

marmo bianco- scultura

Mostra di Arte Antica - Genova, Palazzo Bianco - 1892

The portrait may correspond to the ‘schlichten’ type of Antonia Maior in terms of hairstyle; the portrait may date from the period 37-39 AD when Antonia, as Augusta, received special honours from her nephew Caligula; the stylistic rendering of the surfaces and the workmanship of the hair also date to these years. Historical sources tell us that Livia married the future first emperor of Rome at the age of 18, with one marriage and two children behind her. She played an important role in the political life of Augustus even though some ancient authors accuse her of having killed all his descendants and Augustus himself. Found in the 19th century in the excavations of the city of Luni (possibly from the forum), the portrait came from the auction of the collection of sculptor Santo Varni, purchased in 1887/88 by the Municipality of Genoa. The head, in a 19th-century restoration, was cut to better fit the modern base, but, as with the so-called Caligula, it had to end in an inverted cone to allow it to be inserted into a statue. The characteristics of this head consist of a strong idealisation of the face, emphasised by the slight twisting of the head and a certain lack of strong physiognomic elements, made more evident by the loss of the nose, which, in the case of Livia - known for its aquiline shape - would have been decisive. Added to this are attributes, such as diadem and infula, that are characteristic of the portraiture of Livia, Antonia Minor, Agrippina Maior, etc. It is clear that we are in the presence of a deliberately idealised imperial portrait. The type of the hairstyle may belong to the 'schlichten' type of Antonia Maior; the portrait may date from the period 37-39 AD when Antonia, as Augusta, received special honours from her nephew Caligula; the stylistic rendering of the surfaces and the workmanship of the hair also date back to these years.

burial

1954

periodo paleolitico superiore

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 180; Larghezza: 50

osso

It is one of the most spectacular Upper Palaeolithic burial artefacts, and due to the richness and variety of its grave goods, its excellent state of preservation and its precise stratigraphic location, it has been an important source of archaeological, palethnological and anthropological data since the time of its discovery. Attributed over the course of time by some scholars to the Ancient Epigravettian and by others to the Gravettian, the 'Prince' burial now appears to be definitively classifiable within the latter phase, as proposed by Cardini and also confirmed by direct AMS dating, which qualifies the burial as one of the last manifestations of the rich and elaborate funerary complex that Gravettian culture developed from the 27th millennium onwards. As in the burial of the 'Prince', in other Gravettian culture burials, such as that of Sungir in Russia, the communities to which the deceased belonged felt the need to emphasise signs and gestures in order to elaborate and ritualise violent deaths, extraordinary events and situations. Many individuals from this period, in fact, show skeletal pathologies and are arranged in multiple burials with objects that are exceptional for their material, workmanship, provenance or all these characteristics. In the case of the 'Prince', the devastating wound to the left shoulder was in fact immediately identified by Luigi Cardini as the probable cause of death, a violent death perhaps due to a very strong blow inflicted on the jaw and left shoulder probably by an animal, perhaps a bear or a lion. In any case, the spectacular nature of the burial, which has led scholars to speak of 'staging', indicates that the group of hunter-gatherers to which he belonged must have considered him to be a special individual to whom special funerary treatment was reserved. Some elements of the 'Prince's' trousseau have provided very interesting data. The ivory pendants found on the side of the knee come from the working of the same fragment and represent highly singular objects in Upper Palaeolithic Italian contexts, given the rarity of mammoths in the faunal record of the time. The ivory from which they were made is probably imported material from a long distance, as is the flint of the blade held by the 'Prince', which came from southern France (Vaucluse region) over 200 km away. This is the same flint as the blade found in the triple burial of the Barma Grande, Balzi Rossi, IM, which further unifies these extraordinary funerary events. Recent biomechanical studies would confirm these indications of the mobility of Gravettian populations, a very intense mobility as confirmed by the structural adaptations of certain bones to mechanical stress. These studies have also made it possible to specify that in addition to the shoulder wound, another possible injury involves the fibula of the right leg. The skeleton of the 'Prince' has always been an important source of information on the physical anthropology of the Upper Palaeolithic populations. Initially, studies focused on the skull for a typological classification and to assess its relationship with the Balzi Rossi individuals. approximately, a value in line with those of Gravettian populations and also attributed to the quality of the diet with a good protein component. For the 'Prince' in particular, the stable isotope assay suggests dietary information: around 1/4 of the protein in the youngster's diet in the last year of life was of marine origin. The set of data recently obtained complements the more traditional archaeological and palaeoanthropological data and makes it possible to delineate ever more precisely aspects of the culture and behaviour of the young 'Prince' within the peoples of his time, who have very suggestively been called the 'hunters of the Golden Age' to emphasise not only the variety of animal species to which these populations had access, but also the richness of the archaeological evidence they left us and the complexity of the artistic and funerary manifestations that Gravettian culture was able to express throughout the European continent, from England to Italy, from Portugal to Russia. A burial lying in a bed of red ochre that over time has impregnated the bones and grave goods with colour; ochre was used in Palaeolithic burial rituals to sprinkle the deceased and the burial pit. The individual was buried supine with a few stones over his hands and feet (not visible today) according to a ritual repeated in various other burials of the period. In the burial there is a rich trousseau that determined the modern name of Prince for the individual laid to rest. The trousseau consists of: two ivory pendants in the shape of a figure eight; a charm bracelet consisting of small pierced shells and a pierced pendant of mammouth ivory; a flint blade; four pierced sticks made from elk antlers; hundreds of perforated shells (Nasse) around the head, which allowed the excavator Luigi Cardini to hypothesise the reconstruction, together with two deer canines, an ivory pendant and a Cyprea shell, of a kind of headdress; a lump of yellow ochre in the area of the jaw, as if to fill in the large lack thereof.

Patera

Re Vittorio Emanuele II 1866 donazione

Pittore del Louvre

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 13; Diametro: 42; Varie: Diametro piede 15

argilla rossa- verniciatura

Odone di Savoia 1846-1866 le collezioni di un Principe per Genova - Genova - 1996

This large multi-coloured painted plate was made by an Apulian painter (called Painter of the Louvre) active in Southern Italy between 325 and 300 BC. The scenes on the two sides depict subjects related to the cult of Dionysus, the god of wine: a satyr with a musical instrument and bunch of grapes, a female follower of the god with a crown of flowers, winged cupids and male and female figures with the various symbols of Dionysus, crowns, bunches, tirsi. A true masterpiece of harmony between the shape of the vase, the colours, the figures and the elements of floral decoration. It is part of the collection of Prince Odon of Savoy, which includes numerous pieces of great beauty and, especially among the painted ceramics from the Greek and Hellenistic periods, masterpieces attributed to the greatest artists of the ancient world.

zoomorphic statue

1936

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 98; Larghezza: 40; Profondità: 59

marmo bianco- scultura

The sculpture can be compared with others of the same type discovered in various regions of the empire, generally placed inside masonry tombs lined up along roads or used as crowning on roofs. The iconography derives from oriental originals disseminated as early as the 7th century B.C. with Greek and Etruscan mediation; it spread with the Roman conquest particularly in Iberia, Provence and Northern Italy and gave rise to a variant characterised by the presence of a severed human head. There have been various interpretations of these iconographies from Benoit (1946) to the present day. There are also different positions regarding the dating, as some emphasise the possible relationship - due to the location of the find - with a late Roman necropolis datable between the 3rd and 6th century AD, and therefore propose a much later chronology. The statue depicts Cerberus, the ferocious three-headed dog guardian of Hades, crouched on his hind legs in the act of resting his left paw on the severed head of a man. The massive torso of the animal, freshly hewn, is surmounted by three Molossian dog heads (one of which is now lost), the central one being the largest; the muzzles, with ears perked up and mouths half-open with teeth clearly in view, are framed by a circle of fur, which also descends to the centre of the chest. The human head, possibly a portrait, depicting a young man, with closed eyes and a face stiffened in the swell of death, is carefully worked in the hairdo with large locks arranged in several turns, which accompanies the contour of the skull, leaving the fleshy ears uncovered. Particularly interesting is the monster's tail, depicted as a snake that adheres with sinuous coils to the back and ends in a tuft where the animal's head with crest and beard is recognisable. Although not a specimen of high artistic value, perhaps produced by a local craftsman, the sculpture constitutes an interesting example of syncretism between various funerary beliefs, which fits well into the mixed culture of the genuine centre, not yet homologated in the Roman sense: The terrifying guardian of Hades, derived from Greek mythology and accepted into the classical collective imagination, is represented with the domestic features of the faithful dog watching over his master's tomb, a type not uncommon in burials in Greece and the Roman world; the severed human head refers to Celtic rituals, while the eagle-tail with bearded head descends directly from Etruscan underworld iconography.

Natura ferita

Uecker, Günther

1987 - 1987 - XX

2507

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 130; Larghezza: 55

tronco di pino, chiodi, cenere, colla, lacca nera

After his art studies in Germany, Uecker joined the Zero Group in 1957. The surface covered with nails stands as an antithesis to the painted surface and at the same time allows the artist to explore the articulation of light through the shadows created by the nails. The work in the Museum's collections is part of this field of research. The juxtaposition of the pine trunk treated on its surface with glue and ash as if to protect its integrity, with the violent and destabilising presence of the nails driven into the upper part of the trunk. A nature that recalls the artist's sign - gesture and makes explicit his ironic and desecrating will in reference to the environment and its mistreatment by mankind. In addition to the sculpture, the preparatory drawing is also in the collection. With charcoal and pencil, Uecker draws in a gestural and almost violent manner the design that he will realise three-dimensionally.

Macchina inutile

Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli 1990

Munari, Bruno

1945 - 1945 - XX

716

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 140; Larghezza: 45

alluminio anodizzato bianco e nero

Astrattismo in Italia nella raccolta Cernuschi Ghiringhelli - 1985 - Villa Croce, Genova

Bruno Munari was a great experimenter, even in the direction of applied arts. He began making his first Machines from 1933 and in 15 years designed 93 of them using techniques derived from the industrial production of serial products. The earliest works have allusive titles (Sensitive Machines, Machine Breath) that then ironically turn into Useless Machines to emphasize the pure and unique aesthetic function untied from any functionality and efficiency. “Personally, I thought it would be interesting to free the abstract forms from the static nature of the painting and suspend them in the air, connected to each other so that they live with us in our environment, sensitive to the true atmosphere of reality.”

Painting

Painting