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P&M
Carta senior: a Virgilian
publicity campaign for the Region of Lazio
Federica Pellati
Last November, the region of Lazio launched Carta senior,
an initiative that enables retired people to travel free on
public transport. In the publicity material published by the
Roman offices of J. Walter Thompson there appears a graphical
re-elaboration of the sculptural group "Aeneas, Anchises
and Ascanius" by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, creating a scholarly
double citation: a famous episode from Virgil's Aeneid
translated visually by a seventeenth century interpreter of
classical Roman art, Gian Lorenzo Bernini's masterpiece in the
Galleria Borghese.
This image gives way to a metaphor that highlights the value
of the elderly as the bedrock of society, with particular reference
to that of ancient Rome. The aim of the campaign is to give
to the elderly the perception of belonging to a society that
values them and supports them, projecting them into antiquity
by means of the artistic tradition of Rome, and by celebrating
them as a kind of privileged group: not elderly but "seniores."
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News
"The strange intimacy between the eye
and the contemplated object"
Monica Centanni, Daniela Sacco
Andrea Pinotti, Quadro e tipo. L'estetico in Burckhardt,
Ed. Il Castoro, Milan 2004
The "architectural manner" in ancient drama:
Duilio Cambellotti on show in Palermo
Simona Dolari
"Artista di Dioniso. Duilio Cambellotti e il Teatro greco
di Siracusa 1914-1948", Salone degli Specchi del Teatro
Politeama, Palermo
A treatise on "iconosophy": the Muses of
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo
Elisa Bastianello
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Della Forma delle Muse, edited
by Alessandra Ruffino, La Finestra, Trento 2002
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Warburg
Marta Grazioli
Fritz Saxl 'interpreter' of Mnemosyne.
Thematic and methodological convergences
between Warburg's Bilderatlas and the essays of his
closest collaborator
The inherent problems of interpreting Aby Warburg's Atlas
of Memory appear to be not only finding methodological
criteria, but also reliable critical references to make up for
the state of incompleteness of his work and, apart from his
unsystematic notes and isolated reflections, the lack of exegetical
and didactical apparatus by his own hand. This essay exposes
a few facts that justify attributing a role of critical and
descriptive apparatus to some of the works of Warburg's closest
collaborator: Fritz Saxl.
Saxl is the acknowledged inventor of what can be defined as
the principal structure of the Atlas - the wooden frame
covered in black fabric - and the champion of the techniques
employed to display the montages as a system for organising
and presenting photographs.
He also seems to deserve a privileged role as 'interpreter of
Mnemosyne'. There are many other factors that would
support this definition: chief among them the many roles he
carried out at Warburg's side - as a student during the early
years of their friendship, and as his interpreter during the
years of his sickness, as his assistant and successor, collaborator
and advisor, and as secretary and promoter of his works and
library. Various writings of Saxl's between 1920 and 1930 explicitly
declare their aim to present and explain Warburg's work and
the value of his research, the innovative method he introduced
and the significance as well as the importance of the function
of the library he founded.
Furthermore, the iconological itineraries that weave through
the Mnemosyne plates, find in several significant instances
of Saxl's studies appropriate documentation and reformulation,
especially with regard to the following great themes: astrology
and the transmission of astrological symbols; the classical
tradition and the propagation of its models and symbols in western
learning, particularly during the Renaissance; and the work
of Rembrandt and his relationship with the classics.
An analysis of Plate B of Mnemosyne provides several
examples of instances that justify establishing interpretative
criteria for the Atlas using Saxl's essays as vehicles for close
examinations of Warburg's themes. |
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Essays
Lorenzo Bonoldi
The Nachleben of the Brescia Venus-Victory
This article is a development on the essay entitled Venus
Volubilis/Venusta Victoria published in Rivista di Engramma
The iconographic type of the 'Victory with clipeus'
is defined in archaeological jargon as a 'Brescia type Victory',
after the name of the most famous example of this figurative
typology.
The statue known as the 'Brescia Victory', placed on the temple
of Vespasian in Brescia in 75 AC, and then knocked down during
the barbaric invasions, lay unseen until 1826, when it was rediscovered
during the archaeological excavations of the Capitolium
in Brescia. When it was found, the statue had no shield, but
nonetheless it was thought that it belonged to the typology
of the Victoria in clipeo scribens and was restored
complete with shield. The reconstruction of the statue's presumed
original appearance derived from the awareness of an iconographic
typology widely documented in antiquity, especially in glyptics
and numismatics.
Indeed, it was due to the circulation of ancient gems and coins
that the typology of the Victoria in clipeo scribens
survived the dark ages. An example of this can be seen in a
fresco in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantova, attributable to Giulio
Romano (1530 ca.). Through the mechanics of tradition, the figure
of the Victory with clipeus made it to the 19th Century:
an exemplary case can be seen in a Napoleonic medal minted in
1807, nineteen years before the discovery of the monumental
sculpture from Brescia.
After its discovery in 1826, and its restoration in the form
of a Victory, the sculpture was endowed with powerful civic
and political significance. An example of the use of the Brescia
Victory as a symbol of civic virtue can be seen in the posters
for the first Italian air-show (Brescia 1919) in which the figure
functions as witness to the show. The Brescia bronze was later,
in 1921, chosen as the subject for a series of stamps for the
celebration of the third anniversary of the battle of Vittorio
Veneto; in 1923 a copy of the Brescia Victory was placed on
the Monument to the Fallen at the Tonale alpine pass.
However, by now archaeologists were beginning to suspect that
the original appearance of the Brescia Victory was not what
the 19th century restoration had conferred upon her. Scientific
speculation led many critics to believe that the so-called Brescia
Victory in reality was a Venus in disguise. This belief met
with two confirmations. Gabriele d'Annunzio, who in 1934 commissioned
a copy of the statue, asked that it should be made without wings.
In 1933 Duilio Cambellotti, in the Victory Triptych for the
Prefettura in Ragusa, having to create an allegory of the victory
of Vittorio Veneto, created an iconographic mix that can be
seen as the result of the archaeological debate on the relationship
between two famous examples of ancient Graeco-Roman art - the
Brescia Victory and the Venus of Milo (found in 1820). |
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engramma
classicae humanitatis traditio
