ROME. BEAUTY TRIUMPHS WITH THE TORLONIAS
Postponed for many months, the exhibition “The Torlonia Marbles. Collecting Masterpieces” has finally opened its doors to the public and will be on display until June 29, 2021. After more than fifty years the masterpieces are now accessible to the general public at the Capitoline Museums’ new exhibition venue of Villa Caffarelli. The venue is in itself extraordinary, as it dates back to the sixteenth century, when Ascanio Caffarelli, son of Gian Pietro, who had been a page boy to Charles V, was gifted a plot of land on the Capitolium from the emperor. Over the centuries the palace has undergone a number of transformations which have profoundly changed its original appearance. On display, 92 Greco-roman artworks selected from among the 620 inventoried marbles belonging to the world’s most prestigious private collection of ancient sculptures; the Torlonia Collection, an arthistory and archeological treasure.
The project is an initiative by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism together with the Torlonia Foundation. Curators of the exhibition are Salvatore Settis and Carlo Gasparri, archaeologists and academics of the Accademia dei Lincei, whereas the set-up is by David Chipperfield Architects Milan. Main sponsor of the exhibition is the Maison Bulgari, whose significant contribution allowed for the restoration, promoted by the Torlonia Foundation, of the ancient marbles. The organizational and promotional aspects of the exhibition are handled by Electa, who also published the catalog.
As Settis defined it, highlighting its uniqueness, it’s “a collection of collections” through the centuries: “the quality of many of the artworks is outstanding, as is, above all, the fact that having put together the abundant production in the nineteenth century, the Torlonia family was able to purchase even more ancient collections held by great families fallen on hard times. The most wellknown case is that of the extremely refined collection of the Marquis Giustiniani, held in the building where the Senate now stands, which the Torlonia family purchased en bloc and which includes pieces of extremely high quality. They also purchased Villa Albani. Today Villa Albani Torlonia continues to maintain its late eighteenth century appearance, and it is an absolute pearl, situated in the heart of Rome, which no one knows about”.
One of the great families of Rome, the Torlonias were textile merchants and tailors in Rome’s Piazza di
On display, 92 Greco-roman artworks selected from among the 620 inventoried marbles belonging to the world’s most prestigious private collection of ancient sculptures; the Torlonia Collection, an art-history and archeological treasure.
Spagna. Of Papal nobility, and with economic resources of banking and agricultural origins, they were one of the last Roman families upon which a newly created ducal title, and subsequently a princely one, was bestowed by the popes, for the massive works carried out by Alessandro Torlonia (1878) to drain Lake Fucino; an enterprise previously attempted by Gaius Julius Caesar.
The last of the princely Roman families thus collected an artistic treasure of immense value and quality. Originally exhibited in the Lungara palace following the creation of the Museum, set up by Prince Alessandro Torlonia in 1875, it was subsequently closed to the general public in the forties.
The marbles therefore bear great witness to the history of antiquity collecting that took place in Rome between the 15th and the 19th century. The sculptures on display at Villa Caffarelli, however, are not just outstanding examples of ancient sculptures, but they stand to exemplify a cultural process, i.e. the transition from private collecting to the modern public museum; a process in which the Eternal City, and Italy as a whole, have had indisputable dominance. Oftentimes, behind extraordinary collections, there is the careful devotion of individual