The picture posted here portrays the “Guerriero di Capestrano” (Capestrano Warrior), dated around the 6th century b.C.
The statue was found by a farmer in 1934 while he was working on a piece of land that belonged to him, near Capestrano, in the province of L'Aquila and later placed in the Archaeological Museum of Chieti.
Now have a look at the picture and try not to forget it since you may not see this statue again. The warrior was indeed moved to L'Aquila because the clownish macho Duce who rules Italy, also known to the rest of the world as the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, wanted it at the G8 headquarters.
The G8 will indeed take place in the finance police headquarters in Coppito, near L'Aquila, from 8th to 10th July.
The
mayor of Chieti announced yesterday that the warrior wouldn’t
have moved from the museum, but this morning the statue was taken away.
The idea of moving the G8 from Sardinia to L’Aquila was already rather stupid (if the main worry was caused by protesters, well Sardinia’s position would have guaranteed more protection than L’Aquila, you can indeed reach the latter by car, train or bus and even on foot, but to reach Sardinia you need a boat...), but the idea of moving an extremely fragile 2m tall statue from the 6th century b.C. from a museum just to use it to as a room decoration is extremely demented.
The legs and feet of the warrior are rather fragile and the sombrero-like helmet the warrior wears on its head is actually detachable, so it may break. The statue has already received further shocks since it was installed on a solid plinth in the Chieti museum and the concrete support had to be broken using a hammer to release the warrior. Besides there have been further aftershocks in L’Aquila and if the statue is not installed in a protected place it may fall and break down. The warrior may even be stolen, so worries about its safety are multiplied.
Wonder why it wasn’t possible using a copy? Because Emperor Napoleon Berlusconi said President Barack Obama wanted to see it. What about explaining him the statue could have been admired in a museum?
Though there were plans of moving also Francesco Paolo Michetti’s massive painting entitled “La Figlia di Iorio” (Iorio's daughter), inspired by a Gabriele D'Annunzio play, it was later on decided that a print of the painting would have been equally fine. Apparently in this way Berlusconi wants to show off some of the local art and save money at the same time, moving just one art piece (I shudder thinking what he would have done if he had wanted to spend a little bit of money, get the "Mona Lisa" back?)
I'm enraged at the way art is being raped in Abruzzo. So far Berlusconi has used the earthquake in the region where I was born as political propaganda, now he has turned teh G8 into a chance to show to the rest of the world how many nice things he has done for L’Aquila and he is even claiming that Abruzzo, this unknown little region, has finally been discovered. I can assure you that there were no dinosaurs or prehistoric human beings in the place before Berlusconi arrived, Abruzzo isn't indeed the lost land of Atlantis. In fact I think it was a rather civilised region before Berlusconi and his cohort of demented joyful art rapists, political jesters and prostitutes arrived.
PS The safety of the G8 leaders will be guaranteed during this useless and expensive meeting by two plans: in case a big earthquake strikes again before Tuesday the G8 will be moved to Rome; if an earthquake strikes during the meeting, the leaders will be evacuated by helicopter/car. The inhabitants of L'Aquila were not guaranteed any evacuation plan before the major earthquake of 6th April, even though at the end of March there had already been a few earthquakes in the city.
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