Displacing the Antique

Art in America, Dec, 1998 by Edith Schloss

Two long-term exhibitions of ancient art, recently opened at a palace and a power plant, put some of Rome's finest historical works in thought-provoking new contexts.

In the great wave of museum activity that is sweeping Rome as the city gears up for the Holy Year, two marvelously evocative exhibitions of antiquity stand out. One is at Palazzo Altemps, the other in the Montemartini power plant. One is permanent, the other temporary. One meets with universal approval, the other with qualified admiration and controversy. One nestles in the heart of historical Rome among Renaissance and Baroque churches and palaces, the other sits in a raw working-class neighborhood which was the scene of many Neo-Realist films produced after World War II.

The collection presented at Palazzo Altemps was largely put together by the church princes of the Counter-Reformation in the 17th century. The works went through various vicissitudes of showing before they became a national collection. By contrast, most of the works presented at the Montemartini power plant came to light only around the turn of the century, excavated in the ruthless wave of building which followed the unification of Italy. They went straight to the Capitoline Museum and became municipal possessions. Beyond these differences, both collections are about Rome's deepest heritage, its Republican and Imperial past, when the Greek ideal was interpreted by Roman artists with wit and devotion, and when Roman artists expressed their own concerns in a fearless and straightforward manner.

Throwing open the gates of the freshly restored Palazzo Altemps, Rome gave itself a magnificent Christmas present last year: a new museum of antiquity. Covering a whole block just north of Piazza Navona, its main entrance on Piazza Sant'Apollinare, the palace developed from disparate structural elements, slowly evolving into a frescoed and colonnaded monument which bears the stamp of the Baroque. The Roman, Greek and Greek-influenced statuary it now houses was collected according to the criteria and preferences of the Baroque, so the museum presents a harmonious 17th-century whole. Some of the items belonged to the Altemps family, who were among the palazzo's last owners, as the heraldic Capricorn rearing on the roof loggia proudly proclaims. There are also groups of marbles from the Mattei, del Drago and Brancaccio collections, along with a selection of Egyptian art, displays of the ancient foundations of the palace, and examples of medieval dishes found at the site. However, the main body of the work here comes from the Boncompagni-Ludovisi Collection, once exhibited in the Baths of Diocletian near the Termini station.

When the monarchical church of the Counter-Reformation reached its zenith and popes tore down Rome's pestilent slums, a building boom ensued in the city. Newly rich aristocrats became ravenous collectors who vied with each other for the best examples of the art of the time, and had their vast new palaces and churches decorated with lavish frescoes. But the princes also had a hunger for pagan perfection. Archeological statuary could still be found under the broken ruins of the Empire, and treasures were dug up daily as the foundations of palaces and new straight thoroughfares were laid out.

The collection of antique sculptures belonging to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XX, was the most extensive and celebrated in the city. Some works were authentic Greek pieces salvaged by the Romans, but most were thought to be Roman copies of famous Greek bronzes or examples of what might be called late Roman Hellenism.

To display his enormous sculptural wealth, Cardinal Ludovisi set out to create a whole new landscape on a site that was once the fabled gardens of Sallust (and is today the bustling region around Via Veneto). Complete with follies, mazes, orchards, formal gardens, pleasure palaces and exotic collections of flora and fauna, the Ludovisi park was the wonderland of Europe for centuries. The classic splendor of the white figures under dark foliage or in frescoed halls attracted civilized travelers from all over who wished to be instructed and exalted, from Velazquez to Canova, from Goethe to Winckelmann, from Stendhal to the English lords on their Grand Tour. The sculptures were so widely copied and reproduced that they became fixtures in Western cultural consciousness.

Since nearly all the sculptures that came to light had been mutilated by pillage, war or weather, Ludovisi set up a restoration campaign by the best sculptors, which lasted from 1620 to 1630. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Alessandro Algardi, Filippo Buzzi and many others set about the task with gusto. Today at the Palazzo Altemps we can observe how Classical statuary was repaired and enhanced by the Baroque sculptors with style, knowledge and daring. They thought nothing of adding an unearthed limb from another work to replace one that had broken off, or of crowning a torso with a head displaying features rendered in a 17th-century style, just so the work would look whole again. For example when Bernini was having fun with the Ares (thought to be a Roman copy in marble of a Lysippus bronze), adding an extended foot made by himself, carving on the hilt of Ares's sword a freaky little demon (which was copied from a battle scene on a Roman sarcophagus), giving the god's cupid pal a new impish face, he was also acting with respect for the past as he saw it. Algardi's alterations to Prometheus are an extreme case of antiquarian interpretation: an intact torso was fitted with arms and legs from another antique sculpture, while the head was blithely carved by the 17th-century sculptor himself, making the Greek torch-bearer look like a Baroque angel.