Rare Medici porcelain vases donated to Florence museum

Museums, Renaissance

Two rare Florentine vases from the 16th century made in the attempt to produce in Europe porcelain of like quality and type as that imported from China have been donated to the Museum of San Marco in Florence. They are two of only 60 to 70 surviving pieces manufactured in the Casino di San Marco complex, established by Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici. Today only one other example of Medici porcelain is in a Tuscan Culture Ministry institution, so the donation of two vases triples the number in public collections in their place of origin.

Manufactured between 1575 and 1585, both vases are white with blue decoration and feature striking serpentine handles.

The first vessel is a jug, or mesciroba, 16 centimeters tall. It has a globular body, a long cylindrical neck, and a spout with a distinctive triangular cross-section, while the handle consists of two snake-like forms joined together—a design that gives the object a particularly elaborate appearance. The white surface is decorated in deep blue with peonies, daisies, and lotus flowers. The decoration draws specifically on Chinese porcelain from the Ming Dynasty and the Yongle period, but the Eastern model is not the object’s sole source of inspiration. The shapes of the flowers, in fact, derive from a decorative tradition that had already been influenced by Islamic metalware, while the structure of the vessel recalls the Hispano-Moorish mescirobes with tall necks and spheroidal bodies produced in the Valencia region between the 14th and 15th centuries. […]

The second piece, on the other hand, is slightly larger, about 20 centimeters tall, and has a different shape. It is a vase with an ovoid body, two opposing serpentine handles, and a hexagonal spout protruding from the body (its shape finds a parallel in the grotesque-decorated Urbino majolica pieces that had already been part of the Medici collections since 1569).

The grand-ducal workshop of Casino di San Marco was one of several founded by Francesco I as a laboratory for experimentation where painters, sculptors, academics and artisans worked together to investigate natural phenomena and invent new materials and processes. Francesco had a great personal interest in alchemy and glassmaking, as well as in collecting at and antiquities, and he invested much time and money promoting technical innovation by marrying the experimental sciences in the applied arts.

On the first floor of the palace alone were glass works, an alchemy laboratory, foundries for metal work, including the forging of steel tools hard enough to hew porphyry, furnaces where rock crystal was fused to create decorative objects and precious stones (emeralds, rubies) were counterfeited, and ovens for producing a soft paste porcelain that became known as “Medici porcelain.”

In 1575, the Florentine manufactory succeeded in producing the first examples of what would come to be known as “Medici Porcelain, ” a soft-paste porcelain that represented Europe’s first successful attempt to reproduce the Eastern material. The venture was short-lived, however: the very high temperatures required for firing and the high production costs limited its development, and the manufactory ceased operations after the death of Francesco I in 1587, resulting in a very limited production run (the inventories of the Medici court recorded about three hundred pieces, but today only sixty or seventy survive worldwide). It is in this context that the donation of the two vases to the Museum of San Marco should be viewed, as it expands an already extremely rare presence in Tuscan public collections.

Both vases bear the workshop’s mark on the bottom: the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore painted in blue, surmounted by the letter “F,” the initial identifying Florence. This is one of the features that allows us to recognize production linked to the court of Francesco I and immediately connects the objects to the experimentation carried out in the Tuscan capital.

The vases have gone on display in the Museum of San Marco’s Greek Hall, where they will be neighbors with Renaissance majolica apothecary jars from the Dominican convent that was across the street from the Casino di San Marco.

More than 30 early Iron Age houses found in South Tyrol

Ancient

The remains of more than 30 dwellings from the early Iron Age have been unearthed at Galgenbichl in Italy’s autonomous Alpine region of the South Tyrol. They date to between 800 and 500 B.C. This is the first time a settlement of this size from this era has been archaeologically investigated, and it is now considered one of the most important early Iron Age sites in the Alpine region.

In late 2025, the regional Office for Archaeology began exploratory investigations along the routes of new highway access roads and excavations of sites with archaeological material began in February of this year. When the topsoil was removed from the Galgenbichl site, the remains of different types of dwellings were uncovered. On the steep slope of the hillside, houses were made with heavy stone foundations topped by a log structure. On the valley side, homes were raised on wooden piles.

Artifacts unearthed at the settlement include fragments of everyday ceramic vessels, bones of domestic animals, particularly cattle, evidence of bronze working, loom weights and spindle whorls for the home production of textiles and millstones indicating grain was processed there. The preponderance of cattle bones suggest a relatively high standard of living for the period, as do the facilities for metalworking and the grinding of grain.

A remarkable discovery concerns the treatment of deceased children. Within the settlement, a small burial ground was found containing only infants. Unlike the nearby cremation cemetery in Windschnur (also in Niederrasen), these children were not cremated but buried directly within the settlement. This suggests that there were apparently special forms of farewell and remembrance for them. At the same time, the find serves as a reminder of how high infant mortality was at that time: many children did not survive their first year, with mortality rates ranging from 20 to 35 percent.

The settlement was located on the east-west axis through the Puster Valley, a strategically important link connecting the Venetii of northern Italy with the Raetians of what is now Switzerland. It continued to be populated until the 1st century B.C. By that time the area had changed from a Raetian community to part of the Celtic kingdom of Noricum, but continued to have strategic significance. Layers of charcoal and the charred remains of wooden beams from the pile homes point to the settlement having been destroyed by fire.

Celtic shield and weapon set found in Hungary

Ancient

A rare set of Celtic shield fittings and spearhead has been discovered near the village of Erdőbénye in northeastern Hungary. It is the first of its kind from the region and will shed new light on Celtic communities in the area during the Iron Age.

Archaeologists and volunteers made the find during a community fieldwork as part of a multi-year project to systematically map known archaeological sites and identify previously-unknown ones in the Erdőbénye region. Led by archaeologists with the Hungarian National Museum, the community archaeology teams survey sites with metal detectors and excavate finds they encounter.

This September, the fieldwork uncovered a complete assemblage of shield fittings next to a spearhead. The shield fittings include the handle that would have been in the back of the wooden shield and a matched pair of decorative metals from the front of the shield. The shield parts and spear were deposited together deliberately, in the 4th or 3rd century B.C. when Celtic La Tène culture peoples were settling the Carpathian Basin including what is now Hungary. There were civilian communities established and sometimes it was not a peaceful process. Large-scale movement of Celtic peoples led to the first Sack of Rome in 390 B.C. and the invasion of Greece in 279 B.C.

Hungary’s location as the gateway to the Balkans from Central Europe made it a key route for the migrating Celtic peoples. Artifacts from the period found in Hungary, particularly ones that originated in the Mediterranean region, attest to how the settlers brought southern European culture to the area through trade, exchange of goods and military contact.

Roman sailor’s grave marker found in New Orleans goes on display in Italy

Ancient, Museums

The National Archeological Museum of Civitavecchia officially reopened to the public on Thursday after a major renovation and redesign, and the repatriated funerary inscription of Roman navy soldier Sextus Congenius Verus is one of the featured artifacts. The information plaque credits Tulane University anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband Aaron Lorenz for the rediscovery of the slab in the backyard of their New Orleans home and its return to Italy.

The marble slab with the funerary inscription of a Roman sailor dating to the 2nd century A.D. made headlines last year when it was discovered so incongruously in the backyard of a historic shotgun house in the Carrolton neighborhood of New Orleans.

The Latin inscription translates to:

“To the spirits of the dead for Sextus Congenius Verus, soldier of the praetorian fleet Misenensis, from the tribe (natio) of the Bessi, (who) lived 42 years (and) served 22 in the military, on the trireme Asclepius. Atilius Carus and Vettius Longinus, his heirs, made (this) for him well deserving.”

The Praetorian fleet of Misenum and the trireme Asclepius were harbored and resupplied at the port of Centumcellae, the ancient name of Civitavecchia. It was a rectangular port on the Tyrrhenian sea 35 miles northwest of Rome built in 108 A.D. by Trajan’s architect Apollodorus of Damascus. It was one of the most important seaports in the western Mediterranean for hundreds of years.

Funerary inscriptions of many soldiers who served on the Misenum and Ravenna fleets have been discovered in Civitavecchia. A necropolis replete with them was unearthed during construction of a prison in 1864, the slab dedicated to Sextus Congenius Verus among them. For decades they were exhibited at the city’s National Archaeological Museum.

The ancient port (with later improvements and additions) was still in use during World War II, which made it a target for Allied bombing. The port and the museum were destroyed in bombing raids in 1943 and 1944. Sextus Congenius Verus’ inscription went missing. It was listed on an earlier inventory, but had not been seen since the museum was bombed in 1943.

After Tulane University Classics professor Susann Lusnia translated the funerary inscription and identified its origins in Civitavecchia, the slab was given to the FBI’s Art Crime Team to arrange repatriation. It was officially returned to Italy in a ceremony in Rome in April of this year. Conservators at the National Archeological Museum of Civitavecchia cleaned and prepared it for exhibition while the museum’s refurbishment project was completed.

Sextus Congenius Verus’ funerary marker is now part of a new permanent exhibition that creates a cohesive narrative of the 3,000-year-old history of Civitavecchia and its environs. Objects that have been in storage for decades are now in public view for the first time. The updated exhibition will also include new 3D models, multimedia displays and accessibility tools to make the archaeological patrimony of Civitavecchia widely accessible to visitors of all abilities.

Roman-era pyramid tomb with Greek stele found in Egypt

Ancient

A Roman-era tomb in the shape of a small pyramid has been discovered in the Dakhla Oasis of Egypt’s Western Desert. The tomb is a combination of Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultural and funerary traditions.

The tomb was found at Bir al-Shaghala, part of the necropolis of the ancient city of Mut, capital of the oasis in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. One of seven major oases in Egypt, Dakhla covers 770 square miles in the deep desert about 465 miles southwest of Cairo and has been continuously inhabited for more than 2,000 years. The tomb is about 1,700 years old.

It was built with mud bricks arranged in a pyramidical shape, but unlike its monumental pharaonic inspirations, the tomb was small, intended to hold the remains of one husband and wife. Fourteen steps lead down to the entrance to the tomb: a sandstone doorway built in classic dynastic Egyptian style and carved with the iconography of the traditional Egyptian religion. A winged sun disk flanked by two cobras and bracketed by bundles of papyrus reeds was carved on the cornice, while funerary spells in hieroglyphic texts were carved on the door jams to guard and protect the deceased on their journey to the underworld. The entrance was sealed with a heavy block of stone engraved with the god Osiris and more hieroglyphic protective spells.

The stand-out feature among the funerary reliefs is on the lintel stone above the doorway. It depicts the sun god Ra’s nocturnal journey through the underworld as described in the Amduat, an important funerary text from the New Kingdom that was discovered carved on the walls of the tombs of pharaohs. It was exclusively used for pharaohs and very few select high officials until the 21st Dynasty (1077-943 B.C.).

This is the first time the Amduat scene has been found in the necropolis, and it is an extraordinary testament to the longevity of traditional pharaonic religion in Egyptian culture even after many centuries of Ptolemaic Greek and Roman rule.

Inside the tomb is a mudbrick hall under a vaulted roof. The roof had partially collapsed. Two burial chamber built of mud brick coated with mortar were on the right side of the hall, and the pyramid structure was built above them. Embedded in the south wall is a funerary stele with a funerary poem in Greek painted in red letters. It is 19 lines long and dedicated to one Pisechtes who may have been a judge. It dates to the late 3rd or early 4th century.

The excavation also uncovered a sandstone offering table positioned above a sandstone purification basin, a collection of pottery vessels, and a bronze coin bearing a relief depiction of the Roman Emperor Constantine.

Archaeologists also found evidence suggesting the tomb may have been reused later. A mudbrick chapel was discovered above the main entrance, with a funerary shrine in front of it consisting of four square mudbrick columns. […]

Hisham El-Leithy, Secretary-General of the SCA, said the tomb’s architectural features, inscriptions and funerary texts provide important information about funerary practices and the cultural and religious life of the Dakhla Oasis during the Roman period.