In the early 1980s, the Los Angeles Times ran an article on what was purportedly an unknown collection of 620 marbles dating back to the Roman era. The truth was that the collection was known, but not by the public at large. Ninety-two sculptures from this incomparable collection are now on display until April in the recently restored Villa Caffarelli in Rome. The Torlonia Marbles are no doubt the most important private collection of sculptures not only in Italy but in all of Europe. The collection has had an interesting history. Making sure that none of the marbles would be spirited out of the country, the Italian state has since the late 1940s kept a close eye on them. Shortly after World War II, disguised as a janitor, an official surreptitiously entered the Torlonia Museum where he catalogued the entire collection. Thereafter, if any of the sculptures turned up in a foreign collection, the culprits would be brought to the bar of justice.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, the collection was created by Principe Alessandro Torlonia. He founded the Torlonia Museum in 1875 in a structure built in the mid-nineteenth century by his father, Giovanni Torlonia (1754-1829). Mussolini made the nearby Villa Torlonia his state residence until his fall in 1943. Giovanni became wealthy as a banker, including working for the Vatican bank. His son, Alessandro (1800-1886), inherited the family’s banking fortune and had a dubious title bestowed upon the family by the Vatican.
With a vast fortune funding his passion, Alessandro became an avid collector. He took possession of marbles discovered in excavations in and around Rome and purchased entire collections from other famous collectors. His collection appeared in at least one publication in the nineteenth century, so it was no secret to historians at the time. In addition, to increase his cultural patronage and name in Rome, he had annual soirées to show off his vast collection of marbles. However, he invited only those who were listed on the aristocratic social register. Upon his death, Alessandro’s descendants inherited the villa, the museum, and its marbles.
However, since the 1950s this magnificent collection languished in a kind of legal limbo, still privately owned by the Torlonia family but overseen, if not guarded, by the Italian state. When news of it reached the public at large, art historians and others decried the condition of the sculptures in the museum. They had all been crowded together into a few rooms and were without proper environmental controls. The works were covered with dust and were degrading. Having a complete catalogue of the collection, the state stepped in to take control.
With both a shout of joy and a sigh of relief, I read last year just before our departure for Rome that a part of this invaluable collection would be on display. After arriving and a day or two of rest, Carole, my wife, and I were off to Villa Caffarelli for what was for us a long-awaited viewing of this remarkable collection. We were not disappointed.
The show is arranged more or less chronologically in separate rooms. But there are also rooms dedicated to Torlonia’s own archeological discoveries and to marbles that he bought from other major collections, like Vincenzo Giustiniani’s, from the eighteenth century, and that of Villa Albani from the nineteenth.
The current exhibit takes the visitor from the realism of Roman portraits to the imaginative images of Roman divinities. There are captivating marbles of goddesses, from Aphrodite and Eros to the leering faces of lascivious satyrs. There are also beautifully sculpted and idealized images of athletes and heroic images of warriors, as well as vainglorious representations of coronations. Equally important, the show contains depictions of everyday Roman life, including family and children.
Upon entering the first room of the show, the visitor encounters the collection’s only bronze, the full-standing Statue of Germanicus, perhaps the rarest piece in the collection. Behind the bronze is a cornucopia of 2000-year-old brightly restored marble busts that leave the viewer breathless. All contain a legitimate provenance that spans from approximately 100 BC to approximately 300 AD. The three shelves display over a dozen or more busts of famous Roman men and women: emperors, wives, and family members, each a masterpiece on its own. We were staring in the face of ancient Roman power in the brow-wrinkled portrait of the murderous Caracalla, who stared threateningly back. His absolute power over Roman life is made palpable in his chilling glare.
There are other important emperors, from Marcus Aurelius to regal portraits of Trajan, Augustus, and Claudius. Among my favorites is one merely identified as Ritratto Maschile, his large, noble Roman nose, curving downward. His pock-marked, wrinkled cheeks and penetrating stare are an insight into the soul of what I must interpret to be a disgruntled Roman citizen. Not all Romans were content with their lives.
Other portraits are delicately carved busts of women, the sweet face of the otherwise cunning Livia, Augustus’ wife, Agrippina Maior, daughter of Augustus, Flavia Domitilla, wife of Vespasian, who is represented next to Flavia in his imposing bust. The women are striking in their carefully sculpted coifs: the minute details of their elegant hairstyles flawlessly carved in the rigid marble defy imagination. Art historians use such realistic detail to date and analyze aspects of Roman life for women.
In addition to Roman realism, there are busts of those idealized and sometimes vengeful divinities: Artemis of Ephesus, in her Roman iteration as mother goddess, a sensuous Aphrodite and Eros, the vulgar and mischievous Satiro (satyr), the Greek mother goddess of the hearth, Hestia, and Apollo. There are idealized images of the male body, the Roman Atleta and the Statua Virile.
Though carved from rigid marble, the figures are not static. There is also an artfully restored and reconstructed marble of two heroic warriors, swords drawn and about to fight to the death. From Homer’s The Odyssey, there is Ulysses clinging to the underside of a ram (Statua di Ulisse Sotto il Montone) as he makes his daring escape from the ire of the angry and wounded Polyphemus. I could not help but think of the white stones on the north coast of Sicily that, legend tells us, an enraged Polyphemus hurled at the fleeing Ulysses and his men.
The various sarcophagi in the show are decorated with reliefs: the labors of Hercules and another, the triumph of Dionysus in India. Romans liked to think that these heroes and their heroic exploits defined their earthly lives before they took their final journey into the afterlife.
There are images from domestic life in the portraits of anonymous young boys and girls, of a husband and wife, and of a goat with an ornately flowing goatee and elegantly twisted baroque horns. Missing from the original, the head was purportedly added in the seventeenth century by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. There is a detailed relief of a Roman macelleria with slaughtered fowl and pigs hanging from hooks, awaiting their dressing by the macellaio. The Roman upper class ate well.
From emperors and wives to gods and goddesses, from heroic warriors to realistic images of people and domestic scenes, the exhibit is a fascinating representation of Roman life. The curators of this first limited release of the marbles must be commended for their selection of sculptures that provide a revealing overview of Roman life, their religion, their everyday lives, and redoubtable creativity.
If there are collections that define the patrimony of Italian culture, the Torlonia collection has to rank among the most complete and thorough, challenging those in the Vatican, Palazzo Maximus, and the Campidoglio. But my comparison to other museums does not diminish any other collection in Italy. It only points to the degree to which the Torlonia Marbles displayed at Villa Caffarelli, representing little more than ten percent of the total collection, have enriched Italy’s ever-growing cultural and artistic patrimony. In the final analysis, the collection is an extraordinary gift to the world of art. We can only wait with anticipation to see the more than five hundred remaining marbles still undergoing restoration.
Ken Scambray’s most recent book is Italian Immigration in the American West: 1870-1940.
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