Category: Museums

Lorenzini Head cleaned by artifact-optimized laser

Ancient, Museums

One of the masterpieces of Etruscan sculpture has been given a high-tech laser cleaning. The larger-than-life male head is believed to have been part of a cult statue of the god Aplu (Apollo) that once stood in a temple in Volterra. It dates to around 480 B.C., and while it was made locally, the sculpture was done in archaic Greek style with the characteristic placid smile, almond-shaped eyes and prominent cheekbones. The domed forehead, the strong brows carved in relief and the elaborate hairstyle are typical of Etruscan figural sculpture. The eyes would originally have been filled with glass or stone, a technique derived from bronze sculpture used here in marble.

It is the earliest sculpture carved out of prized Carrara marble ever found in the Etruscan territory of central Italy. Very few late-archaic Etruscan (late 6th, early 5th century B.C.) marble sculptures have survived. Its local production incorporating Greek traditions, size and temple origin make the Lorenzini Head one of the most important sculptures in the Etruscan archaeological record and without question the most important statuary ever to emerge from Volterra. It has been included in every text on Etruscan art and was described by archaeologist and Etruscan expert Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli as “the most Greek of the Etruscan works.”

The statue was famous even in its own time. As the primary cult state of Volterra’s Temple of Apollo, it was widely reproduced in miniature and bronze figurines of the statue were widespread throughout the Volterran sphere of influence. Archaeologists believed they were used for devotional purposes in private homes.

According to Lorenzini family lore, it was discovered in a well in the courtyard of their old home in downtown Volterra, where tradition holds there was once an Etruscan temple. There was an extensive legal battle over who held legitimate title, the Lorenzini who owned the property or the artisan Maurizio Pazzagli whose grandparents had owned the well where it was found. The Lorenzini won, and in 1946 Lorenzo Lorenzini made a handshake agreement with the director of the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum to loan the head for display 364 days a year. On Christmas the head got to spend the day with family in their palazzo.

A second legal battle, this time with the state, was ignited in 1997 when Lorenzo’s heirs decided to sell the head. Italy wanted to keep it from leaving Volterra (the sellers stipulated as a condition of sale that it could not leave Italy, but it could end up anywhere in the country) and the court of Pisa ordered it sequestered in 1998. The situation was finally resolved only in 2019 when the Italian Culture Ministry exercised its right of pre-emption (ie, first refusal) and bought the Lorenzini Head for 355,000 euro.

They assigned it to the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, a decision which incensed the  Volterrans — neither its previous custodians at the Guarnacci Museum nor anyone else in the head’s hometown was even consulted — and caused the Mayor of Volterra to protest that “the sack of Volterra continues, albeit in a creeping way,” a pointed reference to the 1472 sack of the city by the Florentine troops of Lorenzo the Magnificent who wanted full control of the alum mines recently found in the area.

Cries of outrage notwithstanding, the Lorenzini Head is now in the care of the National Archaeological Museum. Restorer Daniela Manna deployed a laser with a pulse specifically optimized for cleaning objects of cultural heritage.

Thanks to the cleaning and restoration of the work, preceded by a series of diagnostic analyzes carried out by specialists from the Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences of the CNR in Florence, Daniela Manna was able to free, thanks to the use of the Eos 1000 laser LQS, the surfaces of the face and the splendid and highly detailed hair from the limestone incrustations that prevented the appreciation of the precise volume of the head and the quality of the marble.

The red haze that characterized the face was also eliminated, since it was actually modern paints and not an ancient pigment, which had been interpreted as an intentional coloring given for ritual or cultic reasons.

So cleaned up and free from colors and harshness that did not belong to it, the Lorenzini Head can today for the first time be fully appreciated and evaluated in its full and smooth forms, in its intentional asymmetries, certainly due to the evaluation of the point of view from which cult statue had to be observed in the mystical and evocative atmosphere of the temple that housed it in some sacred area of ​​ancient Velathri (Volterra).

The laser has been donated to the museum which plans to use it to clean the surfaces of marble, alabaster, stone and pottery artifacts in the collection, including Etruscan urns richly decorated with mythological scenes. The laser is so minutely programmable that it is the ultimate in non-invasive technologies, minimizing the use of harsher solvents and cleansers.

Viking kinsmen reunited in Denmark

Medieval, Museums

The skeletal remains of two close relatives who died 1,000 years ago  500 miles away from each other have been reunited in a new exhibition at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. The younger of the two was unearthed in 2008 on the Oxford University campus in a mass grave of Danes slaughtered by order of King Æthelred the Unready in 1002. The skeletal remains of his relative were discovered in the town of Otterup on the island of Funen.

The relationship was discovered last year in the course of a large DNA study of the remains of 442 people from the Bronze Age through the Middle Ages discovered in Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, England, Ireland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Poland, Italy, Russia and Ukraine. DNA extracted from teeth and femoral bones was compared with DNA from 3855 contemporary individuals and another 922 prehistoric individuals collected in previous studies.

DNA analysis found that the Oxford man and the Funen man were close relatives in the 2nd degree, meaning they were either half-brothers or nephew and uncle. Strontium isotope analysis of their teeth confirmed that they were both born and raised Otterup, but the younger man crossed the North Sea to end up slaughtered in Oxford. The older man died where he lived, on Funen, when he was around 50 years old.

Both of them lived hard lives with plenty of physical labor. They also ate the same type of diet, heavy on the land animal protein with some fish. The Funen man had severely worn teeth and arthritic lesions in almost all of his cervical and thoracic vertebrae, plus in several rib joints, one jaw joint and one big toe. Evidence of inflammation on his ribs suggest he may have had tuberculosis. Sharp-force trauma on his neck had healed, but a second injury on his pelvis had not. It may have been a death blow. Archaeologists hypothesize that he was a farmer for most of his life, but he did see combat on a few occasions.

The Oxford man was powerfully built, but he suffered inflammation on his legs likely caused by chronic sores or repeated blows to the legs. The sharp-force trauma on his body was massive. There were at least nine blows to head by a sword, multiple arrow wounds and spear wounds to his back. The brutality of his death is very much in keeping with descriptions of the St. Brice’s Day Massacre in chronicles and contemporary documents.

The Oxfordshire County Council’s Museum Resource Centre has now loaned the bones of the Oxford Dane to the National Museum where they will remain for three years. The exhibition, which brings together Denmark’s largest group of Viking Age treasures with a multimedia cinematic experience to give visitors an immersive insight into the Viking era, opens on June 26th.

Rijksmuseum acquires unique 17th c. Persian miniature

Modern(ish), Museums

The Rijksmuseum has acquired a unique Persian miniature with a Dutch inscription that dates to the early 17th century. The Dutch handwriting on the back marks the miniature as the earliest known example of Persian art in the Netherlands.

The miniature is 6.9 by 4.6 inches and features a central panel of a stylishly attired young man standing near a tree. A mendicant dervish sits on the ground looking up at him. A frame is drawn in around it and on the other side of the frame is a wide border of gold flowers, plants and birds. Across the top a herd of deer leap away from a hunting tiger.

The drawing was made by a still anonymous artist in Isfahan. On the back of the leaf are two Iranian cancels with the dates 1620/21 and 1630/1. The miniature therefore dates from the time of Shah Abbas the Great (1586-1628). This period is considered the pinnacle of Safawadic art.

These were the earliest days of Dutch engagement with Iran. Abbas had been the first Safavid Shah to make contact with European powers seeking allies against the Ottoman Empire. The first treaty between the Dutch East India Company and Iran, a deal to trade silk, was signed in 1623.

On the back is an inked inscription that reads “kalawat en sijne mat,” but its precise meaning is unknown. It does appear in Indonesian literature as the world for prince, and “mat” was an abbreviation for “majesty.” Rijksmuseum researchers believe the inscription is a curatorial note, evidence that the miniature was part of a Dutch collection shortly after it was made.

Only four other Iranian miniatures with an old Dutch inscription are known. Two of these are also in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. But all four are probably from around 1700 and of a much lesser quality. They may even be specially made for foreign travelers as a souvenir. The miniature that the Rijksmuseum has now acquired is not only of a much higher quality, but also almost a century older.

Marble skull identified as lost Bernini masterpiece

Modern(ish), Museums

An exquisitely modeled marble skull sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Pope Alexander VII in 1655 has been rediscovered in the Dresden State Art Collections. It was by no means hidden. It was on display, in fact, at Schloss Pillnitz palace south of Dresden when curator Claudia Kryza-Gersch spotted it while scouting items for a future Caravaggio exhibition. Several of Caravaggio’s paintings feature skulls (three St. Jeromes and two St. Francises, that I can think of), so she had the marble piece brought to the Dresden State Art Collections’ restoration laboratory for examination and conservation.

The life-size skull is made of white Carrara marble and is anatomically correct in minute detail from cranial sutures to the blade-thin nasal septum. Even the interior has been hollowed out and finished to full realism. Kryza-Gersch and the team of conservators at the workshop realized upon examination that this was an exceptionally high-quality piece. All they knew about it was that it came from Rome.

She hit the archives to find out more about its background and discovered that the skull had been acquired in 1728 from the noble Roman Chigi family by Friedrich August I of Saxony, aka Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Most of the 168 objects acquired in the sale were ancient sculptures. Only four of them, including the skull, were Baroque. The skull stayed in the archaeological collection out of sheer inertia. Curators of Augustus’ collection and later of the state collection were focused on the antiquities and had no interest in the more contemporary sculptures.

Then Kryza-Gersch made a eureka-level discovery: in correspondence from Baron Raymond Le Plat, Augustus’ art buyer, right before the Chigi sale went through, Le Plat referred to one of the four modern works as “a famous death head, work of Cavalier Bernini.” Further research through the Chigi archives and Bernini scholarship explained the full background of the piece. It was commissioned by Pope Alexander VII, né Fabio Chigi, on April 10th, 1655, just three days after his election as pope. He summoned Bernini to a private audience where he commissioned the sculptor to make him a lead sarcophagus to keep under the papal bed and a marble skull to keep on his desk.

The sleeping-over-a-coffin thing may have been a tad on the extra side, but keeping reminders of the impermanence and fragility of mortal life was not uncommon at the time. The memento mori was a very widespread theme in art, décor and jewelry. In fact, Bernini’s skull served double-duty when it appeared in a memento mori portrait of Alexander VII by Guido Ubaldo Abbatini, a student of Bernini’s, that is now in the collection of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

The portrait joins the newly-rediscovered skull in the new exhibition, Bernini, the Pope and Death.

The exhibition examines both the plague of Rome in 1656/57 and the pieces jointly created by Bernini and Alexander VII, who are rightly regarded as a “dream team” of the baroque era. In an attempt to provide as broad a context as possible for the skull, other parts of the presentation are dedicated to the Chigi family as promoters and collectors of art, to the rivalry between Bernini and Francesco Mochi, and to Bernini’s influence on the works of Balthasar Permoser, the court sculptor working in Dresden at the time.

Bernini, the Pope and Death runs at the Semperbau in Dresden until September 5th. You can take an online virtual tour of the exhibition led by  Claudia Kryza-Gersch which is being offered free of charge on several Wednesdays and Thursdays in June.

150 Merovingian sarcophagi in situ

Medieval, Museums

A vast Merovingian-era cemetery with more than 150 heavy lidded stone sarcophagi has gone on display in a new exhibition center built around the archaeological site in Luxeuil-les-Bains. The concentration of well-preserved stone sarcophagi is unique in eastern France, and in terms of area and density of remains, this is one of the largest and most important Merovingian sites in Europe.

The Gallo-Roman city of Luxovium grew over a 2nd century B.C. Gallic sanctuary to its namesake deity Luxovius. Hundreds of Gallic votive statuettes and dedications to Luxovius and his associated goddress Brixta have been discovered. The town at the foot of the Vosges was known for its hot springs, and the 1st century bathhouse  became the heart of a prosperous spa district. Roman Luxovium was devastated by Attila’s forces in 451, but while the town was, according to a 7th hagiography, a vegetation-choked ruin, the thermal baths were still very much in working order and still in use in 590 when Saint Columbanus had a monastery built there as a permanent home for his community.

The site preserved in the new museum was first discovered during a preventative archaeology excavation carried out in 2008-2009. Out of the old parking lot in the center of town, archaeological material from 2,000 years of history emerged, with the oldest remains from a 2nd century domus. The domus was abandoned in the early 4th century and reused as a pagan necropolis. A large early Christian funerary basilica, Saint-Martin, was built at the Abbey in the 5th-6th centuries. The entire church, including the sanctuary, was used for burials. About 350 burials have been unearthed in total, including the 150 stone sarcophagi. One crypt with elaborate vaulting was built in the 670s as the final resting place of Saint Valbert, third abbot of the monastery. His remains were translated as relics all over Europe, so there’s nothing much of Saint Valbert left in Saint Valbert’s crypt, but it attests to how sacred and important a space Saint-Martin was considered to be.

The church was rebuilt in the early 9th century and major modifications altered its architectural character beyond recognition. Saint-Martin evolved from monastic church to parish church in the 12th-13th centuries. It was demolished in 1797 during the dissolutions of the French Revolution. Today the foundations of the church are visible around the dense population of sarcophagi.

Dubbed L’Ecclesia, the new exhibition center was designed by architect Michel Malcotti with a suspended metal framework that allows visitors to explore walkways and stations throughout the site without a single pillar obscuring the landscape.

Each station has a theme that explains the remains of the Saint-Martin archaeological site :

  • The Saint-Martin site
  • The funeral basilica and methods of burial
  • The crypt of Saint Valbert
  • Ancient habitat
  • The late phases of the Saint-Martin church

A play of light stages these discoveries, drawing attention to details such as an inscription, a sarcophagus cover, a decoration, wells… The whole is accompanied by explanations in the form of reconstructions, 3D animations, plans, models, films, windows, to fully live this experience.

Extend your visit with the in-depth gallery, opening both on the remains and on the heritage of the city . A real link between the styles and eras of this rich heritage. This space details Irish monasticism, the Frankish world and the influence of Luxeuil Abbey, which was one of the most powerful in Europe.