Sperlonga

Since its discovery in Rome in 1506, the Laocoön has been the most famous of all statues from antiquity. We would not have known who its creators were, however, if Pliny had not given us their names: they were the same three artists from Rhodes who created the extraordinary “marble Odyssey” discovered in 1957 in the sea grotto of Sperlonga in southern Latium. The chronology and significance of these sculptures have sparked much debate, but it appears that it may now be possible to offer a solution, whose novelty lies primarily in the fact that it is based, for the first time, on all the available sources – literary, epigraphic and archaeological. The Laocoön was created at the behest of the Council of Rhodes; it dates from the year 19 BC and illustrates a poem by Euphorion; it depicts the death of a depraved man reminiscent of Mark Antony; the sculptural group was specifically created for the future Emperor Tiberius at a time when the city of Rhodes was attempting to redeem itself in the eyes of Augustus, against whom it had fought twelve years earlier at Actium. The Odyssey statues at Sperlonga were made immediately after the Laocoön to decorate the grotto which formed a part of Tiberius’s villa. They illustrate the myth of Rome’s Greek origins, in the version known to the Rhodian historian, Xenagoras. Neither the Laocoön nor the sculptural groups from Sperlonga can be considered copies of lost originals: rather, the statues mark the culmination of the “Rhodian Baroque”, an artistic movement wrongly associated with the sculpture of Pergamon, whose origins can be traced instead, in our opinion, to the Nike of Samothrace.

In September 2014 the University of Milan, under the direction of Prof. Fabrizio Slavazzi and in collaboration with the Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of Lazio, conducted new excavations on the site of Sperlonga (LT). The activities were concentrated in the so-called "Villa della Grotta", especially in the hilly portion called Area V. In this part, in correspondence of Rooms V12 and V15, the excavation allowed the identification of an important sequence of transformations that, between the first and the fifth century AD, characterized this part of the villa. We are now able to qualify the area at a functional level, and re-define the northern limit of the original phase of the complex.

Each year over seven billion people across the world are drawn to see the latest feature films at the cinema. This episode reveals how the most powerful storytelling medium ever created exploits visual techniques invented by artists in the ancient world.

The investigation starts with the oldest recorded story, that of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. The story tells the tales (and adventures) of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.  One scene from the story, in particular, captured the imagination of Bronze Age people, and that was the slaying of a pride of lions. The story inspired the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal, in around 645BC, to cast himself in the leading role of Gilgamesh in a series of carved friezes for his throne room. The success of these lead Ashurbanipal to depict the battle against the Elamites and in particular visualised the prisoners grinding their ancestors bones to make their bread. Although mankind had discovered the power of the protagonist, in particular that of a hero, Ashurbanipal’s stories lacked emotion and so are hard to engage with.

Jumping forward several hundred years to the Ancient Greeks, we find the next missing element crucial to storing telling. In the grotto of the Villa de Tiberius in Spurlonga, Italy, a collection of sculptures were found that depict Odysseus‘s encounter with the cyclops. The statues show Odysseus getting the cyclops drunk and then tricking him, and driving a stake though his eye. By depicting the emotions in the scene we, as the viewer, get a greater connection with the story. If we care about the characters, we care about what happens next.

The Romans refined this process more when Emperor Trajan, celebrated his conquest of the Dacians, and created Trajan’s column in the heart of Rome. The 35m high marble column has the story of the event, spiraling around the column, from the base, right to the very top. Admired by Napoleon and Mussolini, it depicts an Epic with Trajan as the protagonist hero and the Dacian king Decebalus as the antagonist. The sculptors used many visual techniques still used today such as cut scenes, and birds eye and low views to add drama. The whole story can be summarised by looking up the western axis of the column. Although this captivated viewers there was still something missing.

The final piece in the jigsaw can be found in Australia which has some of oldest known painted images, some known to be over 40k years old. The aborigines still draw gods and spirits the same way their early ancestors did, for example images of barramundi fish. This consistency has lead to these images becoming symbols, triggering the viewer to recall well known stories passed down generation to generation. The real magic happened when the Aborigines came together to celebrate these stories, they recounted them adding drum beats, rhythm and chanting. Now two senses were being stimulated, the eyes and the ears.

When the pioneers of the nineteenth century created the first moving images, they were silent, but as soon as cinematographers added sound, cinema as we know it today took off.

This article suggests an alternative to the common formal approach to Roman gardens.  Traditional research has considered how the gardens were laid out and how they were planted, more important than which functions they filled.  Here function refers to their use in relation to the architectural whole they are a part of, and not to the general distinction between "ornamental" and "domestic" gardens.  To gain more understanding of their function, the author points to the evidence of the finds from gardens,  which apart from sculpture, has seldom attracted much interest.  (Summary on pages 96-97).

The marble statuette NM 3913 of unknown provenance is the well known sea monster Skylla, as she is represented in ancient Greek art from the late 5th century BC to the Roman Imperial period. The statuette is a mixed creature part-woman and part-animal. Normally she appears naked with windblown hair and one hand raised looking out for quarry. From the lower part of her body are developed two or three foreparts of dogs under a skirt of fins marking the join between the human part and the sea snake. The statuette NM 3913 is 0,30 m. in height and is 1/5 smaller than a life-size human. It is made of white, perhaps pentelic marble and even with both of her arms missing, it is likely that she was holding an oar or stone in her left hand. Also, her back side is roughly finished.
There are recognizable stylistic similarities with 4th century BC works but its rendering is stiff and "dry" without the energy and pathos of post Classical examples. It should be dated to the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 1st century BC, and could be seen within the stylistic tradition of that era. Although the decorative role of Skylla in ancient art is known, it is more likely that the statuette comes from a central acroterion of a funeral stele.

Ancient Roman triclinium grottoes and nymphaea can be found within residences from large scale villas to moderately sized urban houses. Though the viewer's experience varied depending on the setting, the goal was always the same: to artificially construct the reality of a grotto in a domestic setting. While some houses feature dining areas with fountains placed directly in the physical setting of a garden, how would viewer experience change when in an enclosed room like that of the triclinium-nymphaeum in the Domus Transitoria in Rome? That nymphaeum provides a controlled and enclosed environment differing from an outdoor triclinium or a natural grotto adapted to a particular use such as at Sperlonga. The Domus Transitoria nymphaeum is a constructed and highly idealized marble-clad grotto. How would viewer experience there differ compared with a triclinium grotto painted with Nilotic landscapes, such as at the Praedia of Julia Felix in Pompeii? Would these paintings have enhanced the effect, allowing the viewer to more easily believe they were truly immersed in an actual grotto? While three walls of the artificial grotto at the Praedia are enclosed, the fourth "wall" is formed by the garden, enhancing the constructed "reality" by its proximity to a real garden, itself enclosed. Focusing on examples from the Julio-Claudian and Flavian periods, this paper will explore not only how the constructed realities of triclinium grottoes differed from real grottoes, but also to what extent the viewer is manipulated to accept these artificial grottoes as reality in different settings.

Una ricostruzione storica nelle terre del basso Lazio, che ricostruisce gli avvicendamenti storici dall'età Preistorica fino all'avvento dei Longobardi. Uno studio completo che trova molti approfondimenti nei miti di tradizione classica e nelle testimonianze archeologiche presenti nel territorio.

The roman emperor villas hide special, spectacular – and now almost lost – spaces dedicated to
the presentation of epical and legendary events.
The whole research is based on accurate digital survey of the architectures and of the statuary groups, it
proposes an approach path that starts from an analysis of the naturals forms of the Tiberius’s antrum in
Sperlonga, this solution will become completely artificial in its forms in the Serapeo-Canopo of Hadrian’s
Villa. The Antra Cyclopis change their appearance over time, but they always retain the same function and
especially the theme of the sculptural decoration.
The statues that once adorned the Antra Cyclopis today have a different location than the original. Their
location in museums has misrepresented the original appearance of Antra Cyclopis. The digital survey, and
the successive production of three-dimensional digital models, allows, for first, to replace virtually the
sculptures in their old setting recreating the original scenography of the coenatio of Sperlonga and this has
proved the effective presence of the statues in the place assumed by archaeologists. Secondly, the
dimensional analysis leads to rule out the assumption that many scholars argue, about the presence of a
Cyclops, equal in size to the one from Sperlonga, in the Serapeo of the Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli.
With laser scanner even those areas that are placed in hardly reachable positions can be easily analyzed
without the use of any scaffolding. In the case of Sperlonga a full analysis of the intrados of the cave was
made, and through the production of contour lines we identified a collapsed zone, this is an important find,
while the archaeologists had not yet located it, for this reason it has attracted a particular interest, opening
the road to a possible debate on the historical vicissitudes of the events occurred there.