With all the museums and churches that Rome offers, it seems futile to suggest one over another, especially when the average visitor is in Rome for only a few days. But the Palazzo Massimo’s superb collection of marbles and bronzes, as well as mosaics, frescoes, and coin collection, should be at the top of any visitor’s list in Rome. The collection is vast, so I am limiting my discussion only to the sculptures. It boasts the most extensive collection of Roman sculptures of any museum in Italy or Europe. Only the Torlonia Collection of 619 sculptures will challenge the Massimo when it finally finds a permanent home. Carole and I made our third visit over the years to the Palazzo Massimo. Each time we visit, we are bedazzled by the quality of the sculptures, their excellent restoration, and intelligent arrangement.
The first room contains more than a dozen busts, some of famous Roman families and others of anonymous Romans. They represent the dominant realistic style of Roman-era marbles, capturing hairstyles and clothing for both men and women. At times, some of the busts are unflattering. Facial features are out of balance, perhaps a nose is too large, or their faces are ridged with lines and wrinkles.
But the viewer must be on guard: sculptors were in thrall to the power of the aristocracy. One plaque identifies the bust of Antonia Minor, the daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, and the mother of Claudius. Her curled hairstyle was characteristic of aristocratic Roman women’s style of hair. Her bust is clearly of a youthful Antonia. However, we are warned that all of her busts depict her as youthful, even when she was in old age. At times, the Roman aristocracy overruled artistic style, or else the sculptor might just pay a high price for his craftsmanship. Exile might be the least of the penalties. Augustus, who was something of a prude, found Ovid’s love poems vulgar and exiled him for life from Rome. However, nearby is the bust of one unidentified aristocratic woman whose portrait is, well, less than flattering. But I don’t want to be mean-spirited with an unbecoming description of her flaws.
Germanicus, Augustus’s nephew, is depicted as a young man with a compassionate expression. The viewer must marvel at the ability of the sculptor to express such sensitivity with a medium as unforgiving as marble. I am reminded of another anonymous Roman sculpture in the Capitoline Museum of the Dying Gaul. Its subtle and emotional depiction of the defeated and dying warrior has inspired the awe and reverence of admirers for centuries.
It is characteristic in Roman artistic style to represent men with a dense and full beard, a sure sign of the subject’s virility. The bust of a Roman warrior with his helmet on is sculpted with a full, neatly trimmed beard. His portrait is an expression of the imperial power that created the Roman Empire. Honoring that same male prowess, in another room there is the famous Roman copy of the original Greek Discus Thrower. It is an idealized image of the male athlete in the flower of his youth and power. But as we soon discovered minutes later in the collection, realism brings us back to reality. The Romans knew that such prowess, athletic or imperial, would not last forever.
As the visitor wanders through the collection, the marbles also give us an insight into Roman religion and culture. A larger-than-life daughter of the mythical Niobe is dramatically depicted with an arrow in her back. In the Metamorphoses Ovid tells us that, because of her vanity, the gods killed her seven children and then turned Niobe into a marble statue that weeps with tears over her loss. The Romans were well aware that the gods did not look kindly upon vain citizens, despite the great power that Rome wielded in the Mediterranean and other parts of the known world.
Perhaps the most provocative of the marbles is that of Hermaphrodite, the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite. Lying prone on one side, the marble is a dramatic expression of Romans’ puzzlement over cross-gender or nonbinary people. Viewed from the back, it appears as though it is yet another idealized portrait of the female body. However, upon circling the marble, the viewer suddenly realizes the truth. It is a delightful sculptural ploy in which we fall prey to our own assumptions. The existence of the sculpture and Hermaphrodite’s well-known place in Roman mythology speaks to the Romans’ acceptance of cross-gender people among them.
Hermaphrodite gives us pause to reflect on our contemporary values. Recontextualized in our own era, the sculpture would ignite a fiery discourse over cultural values and mores if displayed publicly in the US. But there are numerous copies of this sculpture throughout Europe, one of which can be found in the Uffizi. For centuries, sculptural nudity has outraged travelers from the US. Only recently parents of school-age children living in Florida declared Michelangelo’s David pornographic. But for the Greeks and Romans, as well as Renaissance artists, the human form was an object to be appreciated. In an adjacent room, there is a delicately rendered life-size sculpture of a modest and crouching Venus just after her bath. Greek, Roman, and Renaissance artists all celebrated the human form as an image of who we are or what we aspire to be.
There is also a rare bronze of Dionysus, the Greek god of fertility. This is a Roman copy of a Greek original. It has a dramatic history: workers found it buried in the mud in 1885 while excavating the foundations for the Ponte Garibaldi. One theory is that in anticipation of an invasion, it was hidden in the river and then forgotten. Its location in the river reminds us of the Bronzes of Riace, whose discovery off the coast of Calabria in the Mediterranean still puzzles art historians.
Steps away are two bronzes that inspire as much speculation over their origins as any of the works in the collection. In one room stands the idealized full-body bronze that bears the title The Hellenistic Prince, yet another portrait of the idealized human form. Creating a dramatic contrast to the prowess of the youthful prince, in the same room is another remarkable bronze, the Boxer at Rest. The historical plaque informs us that both were also found buried, this time on the Quirinal Hill during the excavation for the National Theater. Though they were found together, they are from different periods. The Prince is a rare original Greek bronze. How it survived for so many years before its burial is anyone’s guess. It is a remarkable example of the style that would find its ultimate expression in the works of Michelangelo and his contemporaries during the Renaissance.
Next to the Prince is The Boxer at Rest, of Roman-era origins. It all but defies description. If artistic skill defines any of the works in the collection, the anonymous artist who created the Boxer takes artistic expression in bronze to another level. In Greece and Rome, pugilists were revered athletes, as long as they were in their prime. But this athlete is an aged, beaten, and bloodied boxer, who, given the condition of his swollen face and disfigured ears, is at the end of his career. Seated, slumped, and exhausted, he is perhaps just fresh from his final defeat at the hands of some youthful, faster, and stronger opponent. With scars from earlier battles and with bleeding wounds, he sits, his face glazed in defeat, at the end of his athletic prowess as a boxer who was once showered with accolades from admiring Romans. Is he now to be cast aside, as of no worth to his once-admiring fans? Or will Romans find a way to honor him in his old age? From his strained posture and his sorrowful gaze, it is not likely. He inspires our profound sympathy and concern for his fate. The Boxer is a lump of metal, but the artist behind his creation made him truly human.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Massimo’s collection is that it gives us an insight into the historical context in which these sculptures were created. Roman artists, like Renaissance artists, were also considered mere artisans in the service of their rich patrons. It is well known that Michelangelo’s father was appalled that his son wanted to become an artist, a profession of little status in Florence at the time. In fact, Florentine artist Alan Pascuzzi, in his remarkable book Becoming Michelangelo, tells us that to burnish his name, Lorenzo de’ Medici established a school for sculptors in Florence where a youthful Michelangelo learned the rudiments of sculpting marble.
One of the historical plaques informs us that in their efforts to elevate their social standing, Romans established workshops in Greece and Rome, and trained sculptors to make copies of Greek originals. The upstart, provincial Roman citizens, among their more sophisticated Etruscan neighbors, were intent on distinguishing themselves by buying and placing beautiful works of art in their villas. Pascuzzi tells us that Lorenzo, likewise, intended to adorn Florence with statues just as Athens and Rome were. Few if any of the sculptures in the Palazzo Massimo identify the Roman artists. Nevertheless, their anonymous works are a testimony to an artisan and creative tradition handed down by Greek and Roman cultures that would, one day, give birth to the Renaissance in Italy and throughout Europe.
Ken Scambray’s most recent book is Italian Immigration in the American West: 1870-1940 (Univ. of Nevada Press, 2021)
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