Museo Barracco

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Piccola Farnesina ai Baullari , seat of the Museo Barracco in Rome

The Museo di scultura antica Giovanni Barracco or Museo Barracco for short is part of the municipal museums of Rome and is located in the Rione Parione on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II . It is housed in the Piccola Farnesina ai Baullari and goes back to a gift from Baron Giovanni Barracco (1829–1914), who donated his collection of antiquities to the city of Rome in 1902.

The founder

Giovanni Barracco

Giovanni Barracco, who came from an old family in Calabria , was already enthusiastic about ancient languages ​​and culture in his youth. His friendship with the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli , excavator in Pompeii and director of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples , introduced him to ancient art , especially ancient sculpture. After moving to Turin, where he was elected to the first parliament of united Italy in 1861, he began to be passionate about the art of Egypt and the Middle East and to buy a private collection on the international art market. When Rome became the capital of Italy in 1870, he moved there with his collection. Advised first by Wolfgang Helbig , then by Ludwig Pollak , he increased his collection to include works of Etruscan , Greek and Roman art , and occasionally also medieval art . The aim of his collection was to put together a small museum of ancient art for comparative art studies in order to be able to analyze the contributions of individual cultures in the Mediterranean region to the formation of ancient art.

Accommodation

In 1902, Barracco handed over his collection to the city, which in return provided a building plot on which a neoclassical building was erected according to plans by the architect Gaetano Koch to house the museum, initially known as the Museo di Scultura Antica . After the death of Barracco, Ludwig Pollak took over the management of the museum. In the 1930s, however, the building had to give way to the urban planning plans of Benito Mussolini and in 1938 the holdings were stored in the stacks of the Capitoline Museums . It was not until 1948 that the museum was able to reopen in the Piccola Farnesina ai Baullari on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II , which was seriously redesigned at the end of the 19th century .

collection

The original focus of the collection is Egyptian art, represented predominantly by funerary art, sarcophagus parts , canopic jars , especially from the Old Kingdom . There are also Egyptiacs from the art trade that were found in Italy. These include a sphinx from the 18th dynasty from the Isis sanctuary on the Field of Mars in Rome or the head of Seti I from the 19th dynasty , which was used as building material in the Castello Savelli in Grottaferrata .

The Assyrian art comes with a number of important reliefs from the royal palaces of Nineveh , Nimrud and Khorsabad presented. The reliefs with scenes of war and hunting as well as processions of prisoners come mainly from the Neo-Assyrian period from the beginning of the 9th century to the end of the 7th century BC. Chr.

Miniature team from Cyprus, 2nd quarter 5th century BC Chr.

The pieces on the art of Cyprus form a small, very special collective topic , which in many respects occupies a mediating position between the Greek art of the west and the Phoenician art of the eastern Mediterranean. Statuettes of gods, including Herakles - Melkart , and adorants , but also a small team of toys from a grave testify to an often overlooked artistry of Cyprus in antiquity.

The art of classical antiquity , which makes up a large part of the collection, is predominantly represented by Roman copies and originals of Greek art. The pieces range from archaic finds from the colonies of Magna Graecia to high-quality copies of Greek masterpieces by Myron , Phidias , Polyklet and Lysipp . In addition to some pieces from the Hellenistic period, the collection also includes Roman portraits, the fragment of a historical relief, and Roman grave steles from Palmyra in Syria .

The collection by two cassettes reliefs from the 11th century from the first construction of the cathedral in Rounding Sorrento and the detail of the apse mosaic of Old St. Peter's in Rome.

literature

  • Giovanni Barracco, Wolfgang Helbig , Frédéric Bruckmann : La Collection Barracco. Two volumes. Publishing House for Art and Science, Munich 1893; Forzani, Rome 1893.
  • Maresita Nota Santi, Maria Gabriella Cimino: Museo Barracco. Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Rome 1999, ISBN 88-240-3689-9 .

Web links

Commons : Museo Barracco  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 41 ° 53 ′ 48.4 ″  N , 12 ° 28 ′ 21.3 ″  E