A baker of ancient Rome on display: the relief of Marcus Virgilius Eurisaces exhibited after restoration

The Centrale Montemartini is preparing to welcome an important new addition to its museum itinerary. Thanks to the initiative i Capolavori da scoprire, promoted by Roma Capitale, Assessorato alla Crescita Culturale - Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, the public will be able to admire the restoration and new display of the funerary relief from the late Republican age depicting the baker Marcus Virgilius Eurisaces, a wealthy freedman of Greek origin, and his wife Atistia.

The sculptural group shows the couple in a frontal position, as they look at each other: the sculptor thus wanted to emphasize the bond that united them in life. The figures emerge from the background, sculpted almost in the round; the man wears a toga draped in the typical fashion of the middle years of the first century BCE, and consistently the face follows the trends of late republican portraiture, realistically showing the signs of time. The woman, on the other hand, is wrapped in the wide cloak worn over the tunic, and the portrait lets us recognize the hairstyle in vogue in those years: hair divided by a central parting into side bands and gathered in a high bun probably composed of braids.

On the occasion of the restoration, the Centrale Montemartini museum wanted to offer a more complete reading of the work, returning the female figure’s head, which had been stolen in 1934 and never found again. The lacuna was restored with a specially made plaster face using, for appearance and slant, photos taken before the theft, when the relief was displayed in the open air along the walls near Porta Maggiore, on the site where the Rome-Frascati train station would be built in 1856.

The funerary relief, carefully restored by the Capitoline Superintendency of Cultural Heritage, represents an important historical and artistic testimony of this period, as a fundamental part of the imposing tomb of Eurysaces built shortly after the middle of the first century B.C. (40/30 B.C.), and unearthed in 1838 in the area formerly called ad Spem Veterem, today Porta Maggiore, where its remains are still visible.

For all information you can call +39 060608 or visit www.centralemontemartini.org.

Source: press release

A baker of ancient Rome on display: the relief of Marcus Virgilius Eurisaces exhibited after restoration

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