Works and artifacts from Naples and Pompeii on display at the Hermitage St. Petersburg

On view until June 23, 2019,at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg is the exhibition Gods, Men, Heroes. From the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. Sponsored by the prestigious State Hermitage Museum with the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, the result of the Collaboration Agreement signed in 2017 between the two Campania institutions and the Russian museum, in connection with Ermitage Italia, the exhibition features nearly 200 works including frescoes, statues, mosaics and everyday objects, selected from the collections of the two sites, to tell the story of theart, history and everyday life of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, whose sudden and tragic destruction made it possible to preserve and return to posterity unique masterpieces of art and evidence of life and culture.

Several thematic sections are narrated by this exhibition set up in the great hall of the Manege of the Small Hermitage (a two-story palace erected next to the Winter Palace, the former imperial residence of the Romanovs, and the New Hermitage, the first palace in Russia to be expressly built to house the Museum’s collections), thanks to selected testimonies of the heritage of the ancient Roman city submerged by the lapilli and ashes of Vesuvius in 79. AD. Pompeii’s sudden end, which occurred sometime between Aug. 24 or, as even the most recent discoveries would suggest, in October, has in many cases crystallized scenes, situations and people, caught by surprise at that tragic moment, in their usual activities. An entire city, with its houses, public buildings, streets, stores, factories, temples and markets, with its inhabitants but also with the many objects in use in different environments, has been unearthed since 1748 and continues to this day to reveal new sites and new works.

The exhibition is organized at the Hermitage by the Department of Classical Antiquities, headed by Anna Trofimova, and is curated for the Italian side by Paola Rubino De Ritis, Valeria Sanpaolo and Luana Toniolo, with the scientific direction of Paolo Giulierini director of the MANN and Massimo Osanna Professor at theUniversity of Naples Federico II and Alfonsina Russo, Interim Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii; for the Hermitage Museum it is curated by Anna Trofimova and Andrey Zuznecov. The exhibition has the organizational support of Villaggio Globale International, the collaboration of Hermitage Italy, the ItalianEmbassy in Moscow, the Italian Consulate General and theItalian Cultural Institute in St. Petersburg, and is accompanied in our country by Electa catalog, with contributions by Luigi Gallo, Massimo Osanna, Federica Rossi, Valeria Sanpaolo, Luana Toniolo and Anna Trofimova. A major exhibition that comes to life thanks to the support of Lavazza, a partner of the State Hermitage Museum since 2016, which has always spoken out in favor of artistic and cultural promotion at the international level.

Among the works on display in the exhibition are theHermes of Mercury from the Temple of Apollo and the Bust of Jupiter from the Capitolium, dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva (both on loan from the MANN), as well as frescoes such as Zeus Enthroned from the House of the Dioscuri and Achilles and Briseis from the House of the Tragic Poet (MANN), the Dionysus and Ariadne and Alexander and Roxane from the House of the Golden Bracelet and Heracles and Deianira and Juno and Hebe from the Stabia Villas of the Pompeii Archaeological Park. The custom of adorning gardens with depictions of deities is evidenced by statues such as those from Villa A at Oplontis, the small and refined Venus made in the late first century B.C., which still retains faint traces of color, or the statue of Nike, while the Neo-Attic reliefs on display, inserted in Pompeii along the walls of the houses, recall the fashion of the time and the owners’ interest in the works of Greece.

Yet the great merit of the Vesuvian excavations, promoted in the last two decades of the first half of the 18th century by Charles III of Bourbon in the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia, was was to give us a never-before-seen glimpse of the daily life of the ancient Romans, hitherto almost unknown; it is in this sense that the section of the exhibition devoted to “Men,” which is also rich in the sculptural and pictorial representations of the city elites, assumes particular relevance. Of the impressive array of everyday objects that have surfaced in Pompeii, bronze craters, glass and ceramic furnishings, pots and pans, specimens of great interest have been selected for the exhibition in St. Petersburg, subdivided by type and materials, which make it possible to reconstruct customs, trade, crafts and everyday activities: from education to the table. A brazier from the now disused Stabian baths, a bronze water heater from the Villa of Ariadne in Stabia, with a lion’s head faucet and three swans with outstretched wings on the edge of the stove, tall candelabra to light tricliners or a crater like that of Julius Polybius ageminated with polychrome effects; as well like the beautiful iron and bronze safe with complex and engineered locking systems, usually placed in the atrium, there where the master of the house presented himself; and, again, richly decorated marble tables (beautiful the one lent by the Pompeii Archaeological Park with two fantastic animals) illustrate so many aspects of Pompeian customs. The relief of the master builder (structor) Diogenes will show the tools used for building activities, a plumb line, a trowel, an orthogonal-cutting mallet, a chisel and an archipendolo, and the 4 frescoes from the praedia of the wealthy Pompeian Julia Felix, will offer an exciting look at the small, big events that took place in the forum, on a market day (the nundinae): Sale of pottery, Sale of textiles, Reading of edict, Punishment of schoolboy. Then, from Naples, objects of great refinement and exceptional loans, such as the absolute unicum of the Blue Vase, a masterpiece in blue glass and cameo that constitutes one of the iconic works of the MANN (discovered by the Bourbons in the necropolis of Pompeii in 1837) and the cameo glass asters of Dionysus and Ariadne from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

Finally, one could not forget the theater and gladiatorial games. Rich marble furnishings for the gardens of Pompeii’s houses bearing theatrical depictions in relief, as well as plaster matrices of masks selected for the occasion testify to the passion of Pompeii’s inhabitants for theater, while frescoes, helmets and bronze cnemides, decorated with mythological scenes telling in turn of gods and heroes, resurfaced from the ashes of time, will remind visitors to theHermitage of the importance and prevalence in the Roman world of gladiatorial games, so beloved by the people, and will make them dream of the wonders preserved in Italy in the two prestigious Campania venues.

Source: press release

Works and artifacts from Naples and Pompeii on display at the Hermitage St. Petersburg

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