2023-07-09 00:55:56
For the first time, an exhibition comprehensively addresses technology, the aesthetic dimension and the atmosphere surrounding artificial light in the Roman world. The exhibition, titled ‘New light from Pompeii to Rome’open at the Capitoline Museums until October 8, in the Italian capital, proposes a trip to the lights and atmosphere that illuminated the nights of the Romans.
No other city of antiquity as Pompeii has preserved so well and has brought to light so many lighting systems, which constituted a whole art. The passion they aroused generated a collector’s market. Exorbitant prices were paid for bronze lamps forged by the Greeks. The exhibition presents 170 bronze finds originals from Pompeii and Herculaneum, Roman cities destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79: oil lamps, chandeliers, torch holders… Works preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.
The roman artificial light, which the exhibition reveals to us, is the art of light. With their plastic shapes and elaborate surfaces, the oil lamps and bronze chandeliers create a spectacular scene of light and shadow. The presentation of the sample highlights that lighting is a technical-cultural product that allows, first of all, to create a human space to share.
«The theme of illumination offers a new perspective to understand the different spheres of life in ancient Rome: celebration and religion, magic and eroticismsleep and night”, explains the German archaeologist Ruth Bielfeldt, curator of the exhibition. “We have carried out an immense amount of archaeological and restoration research to understand the significance of antiquity in illustration, everyday life and the imagination”, adds the curator. The investigation lasted seven years.
The anthropological look at light, understood as a fundamental social mediator, serves as a guideline for the narrative journey. “The itinerary of the exhibition is divided into nine rooms, where the role of light in daily and social life is in dialogue with literary sources and archaeological finds from the Antiquarium of the Capitoline Museums,” he explains. Claudio Parisi Presicce, Superintendent of Cultural Assets of the capital. To connect the past and the present, the exhibition shows the lamps created by the lighting designer Ingo Maurer (1932-2019). His poetic, playful and rare creations testify to the vitality of a creative relationship with light that has lasted for two thousand years.
Three of the pieces from the ABC exhibition
To welcome visitors, there is an installation of a modern work, ‘Remember Yves‘, by designer Ingo Maurer, contrasting with an antique oil lamp, ‘The Silenus‘ (figure from Greek mythology), with lamp and decoration functions by projecting a contrast of light and shadow. In one of the rooms, visitors are invited to touch a replica of a large bat lamp, an iconic object in the exhibition.
In a couple of rooms, a reconstruction of the complex choreography of light linked to coexistence is offered. Several anthropomorphic works, such as the ‘trilichne’ (three lights) lucerne, with the figure of a dancer, show how much the stage light of the ‘convivium’ (the Roman banquet) was concentrated precisely on the marginalized social groups responsible for the service and entertainment. The relationship between artificial light and easement is expressed through the statue of the ‘lampador‘ (person who carried the lights), the so-called ‘Apollo de la Casa de Giulio Polibio’, a high-quality sculpture from the early imperial period in archaic style, which assumes the function of a tray holder. The aesthetics, function and history of the discovery of this figure and the other objects found in Pompeii are explained in a multimedia installation with interactive digital content.
The religious atmosphere in the light of Pompeii is also evoked by the furniture of the lararium (the place destined to worship the gods) of the Pompeii House of Fortune: It is a set of bronze statuettes and an elegant lamp in the shape of a human foot, exhibited for the first time in its entirety. The phallic lamps, belonging to ‘tintinnabula’ -an object representing a man with a phallus, which in ancient times was one of the most widely used amulets- in taverns and shops, testify to their magical aspects. Dionysian and erotic lamps evoke the sensuality of ancient light. Undoubtedly, Roman sensuality was influenced by light: In shops and taverns there were phallic lamps.
The exhibition closes with the evocation of the Vesuvius eruption. The bronze objects also narrate the moment of fear and flight from the catastrophe. A small lamp in the shape of the head of Africanus (National Archaeological Museum of Naples) accompanied two Pompeians during their escape. But only the lamp survived.
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