In the history of fashion there are quite a few designers who were inspired by ancient art and in particular by Greek and Roman sculptures. For example, the draped motifs in Madame Grès' extraordinary gowns and in Valentina's evening dresses directly derive from fine classical sculptures. Yet other details found in sculptures can also be inspiring and, if you think you may want to explore the potential of ancient artworks, you should check out the Marmi Torlonia collection.
There is currently an exhibition where you can admire them, "I Marmi Torlonia. Collezionare Capolavori" (The Torlonia Marbles. Collecting Masterpieces) at the Gallerie d'Italia in Piazza Scala in Milan (till 18th September, so you can catch it in case you're in town for the Design Week or for the menswear shows).
The Torlonia Collection is one of the most important private collections of classical statuary, and this exhibition - featuring also five newly restored works - marks the beginning of a worldwide tour for the statues.
The story of this collection, one of world's most important private collections of Greek-Roman classical art, is complex: in 1875, the collection was located in Rome, in the family's palazzo in Via della Lungara, known as the Torlonia Museum. The latter included over 620 pieces, among them busts, reliefs, statues, sarcophagi, and decorative elements.
The collection started with a series of acquisitions: hoping to promote their cultural heritage through future generations, the family started amassing the sculptures discovered during archaeological excavations in their estates around Rome (from the Villa di Massenzio and Villa dei Quintili, to the properties at Porto, Sabina and Tuscia).
Little by little, the collection expanded and included also other pieces that belonged to noble families. The Torlonia were landowners, lenders and debt collectors and they often acquired new artworks from other families in lieu of payment. The collection also came to include the works that had originally belonged to sculptor and celebrated restorer Bartolomeo Cavaceppi.
Only members of the Roman aristocracy were admitted to the museum, but, from the end of the Second World War, a few experts or visiting dignitaries were also allowed to visit the museum.
In 1976, the private museum closed and was transformed into a series of mini-apartments without the necessary planning permissions. The collection was therefore moved into storage and was forgotten for several years.
Legal disputes between the family and the state followed with several governments attempting to persuade the noble family to either sell or display the works in public. In 2003, the Italian government also attempted to confiscate the statues.
Eventually, an agreement was reached by Italy's culture ministry and the Fondazione Torlonia and, restored and cleaned, 92 pieces from the collection went on display in 2021 at Villa Caffarelli, part of the larger complex of the Musei Capitolini. These pieces are now part of a touring exhibition.
The event in Milan is divided into sections: the imposing Consular Sarcophagus of the Via Ardeatina, with a group of Roman togates welcome visitors together with two recently restored busts (Domitian and Antinous), but there are more busts to discover, some of them portraits of famous (and infamous) Roman emperors, and exquisite portraits of their wives that can be very inspiring in fashion as well for their hairstyles and jewelry.
But there are plenty of other highlights in the exhibition spaces, including two giant carved tazze or basins, one with a famous frieze of the labors of Hercules, and another, the Tazza Cesi, featuring imagery of a Bacchic symposium. There is also the colossal Dace prisoner on display in Milan and the large marble relief showing a vivid scene at Rome's sea port of Ostia.
Discovered in 1863 at Portus Traiani, the relief represents an incredibly detailed busy port scene overseen by colossal images of the gods Bacchus and Poseidon and features two large sailing ships crammed with goods from Africa, proving that Roman navigators brought huge quantities of grain from what is now Libya to feed the population of the capital city.
Restorers found a touch of colour - mainly red and Egyptian blue - in this scene, a rare existing testament to the fact that classical sculptures were often decorated with bright paint.
Different elements can be inspiring and the statues can be admired in group or singularly, taking in the details, from the draped motifs of the tunics to the ribbed texture of the back of the sarcophagus.
The restoration process behind the event (a project financed by luxury jeweller Bulgari) is also intriguing as it reveals visitors how things have changed throughout the centuries.
Between the 17th and 18th century, restoration meant cleaning, but also adding new parts, often taken from other statues, so that some sculptures were completely modified (more modern heads were matched for example with ancient torsos creating anachronisms). One of the pieces on display, a Greek statue of a resting goat, for example, was restored by none other than Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Nowadays instead statues are mainly cleaned and additions from previous centuries are removed. The emphasis in this restoration project was indeed making clear what was original and what was not, as well as showing how the past manipulation of the sculptural parts radically transformed certain pieces.
To this aim the final section of the exhibition closes with a 112-piece Hercules in dialogue with a sculpture of Leda with the Swan: in both works, various stages of the cleaning process are visible, illustrating the many challenges facing contemporary restoration. The joints between fragments were deliberately left exposed to show this.
As the restoration continues in the Torlonia Laboratory in Rome, take a note about this event and its future exhibition dates: these artworks - testaments to a passion for collecting antiquities that was very popular from the 15th to the 19th century - remained hidden from the public for too many decades. It is now about time to learn their story and return to admire their magnificently elegant details.
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