Rome, Villa Giulia museum restores a distinctive Etruscan urn thanks to support from Q8


In Rome, the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia is restoring a very special 6th-century B.C.E. Etruscan urn thanks to support offered by Q8.

One of the most important objects in the collection of the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia has been restored: it is a very special Etruscan urn dating back to the second half of the 6th century B.C. Its uniqueness derives from the fact that it is a female figure lying on a kline, the ancient convivial bed on which guests at banquets used to lie. It was most likely to contain the remains of an upper-class Etruscan woman who lived and died in ancient Caere, present-day Cerveteri. In its sumptuous and refined appearance it gives back a very precise image of how women of the time liked to be represented: well-groomed accessories and gaudy jewelry denote luxury and a desire to display their social status.

The delicate and complex restoration work was carried out by the company CO.RE.CO. under the coordination of the Museum’s Restoration Service. The work, which is very fragile and lacunose, is composed of several fragments and therefore needed a specific and renewed restoration intervention to ensure its preservation and better enjoyment by the public, also in light of the necessary movements as part of possible temporary exhibitions. The restoration was made possible thanks to the contribution of Q8. “This partnership,” explains Valentino Nizzo, “is based on the awareness of the importance of enhancing specificities, of dialoguing with the territory also through the support of projects that allow a better legibility and understanding of our past.” “We are grateful to Q8 for espousing our philosophy and allowing us to return to the public in an even more ’seductive’ form an extraordinary work, truly unique in its kind since, like the famous Sarcophagus of the Bride and Groom, it helps us to understand in every detail the image and role in society of an Etruscan woman.”

As a result of this collaboration, which came about with the support of LoveItaly, it was therefore possible to carry out a very complex restoration operation, conducted with the aim of ensuring the long-term preservation of the find and the restoration of the legibility of the form and surface for the purpose of understanding the meaning of the object. The intervention involved, in addition to cleaning, the consolidation of fracture lines, disassembly of some parts, recomposition of the artifact with its integration, plastering and final protection. A new support was also designed and made, the technical characteristics of which were agreed upon in relation to the particular complexity of the work.

“We are very proud to have supported this restoration project,” explains Livio Livi, Board Member and Director of Human Resources and External Relations at Q8. “Q8 thus confirms its commitment to sustainability understood in all its dimensions: we are convinced that businesses play not only an economic role, but also a social one in support of the community and the territory. The museum and, in particular, the work in question, then, had particularly struck us because of the equal and therefore avant-garde role that women played in Etruscan society: an ante litteram testimony to the idea of inclusion that we also share in our Company.”

The work is already back available to the museum’s public. In addition, exclusively on Thursday, Oct. 21 and Tuesday, Oct. 26, during the hours of 12 noon and 4 p.m., the work will be on view outside its display case in the Hall of Fortune with opportunities to discover details of the restoration by restoration officer Miriam Lamonaca and the restorers from the DE.CO.RE company who supervised the work.

Rome, Villa Giulia museum restores a distinctive Etruscan urn thanks to support from Q8
Rome, Villa Giulia museum restores a distinctive Etruscan urn thanks to support from Q8


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