Art is divine

Marble Nobility

by Micha Christos

LE LOUVRE

Paris

From June 26 to November 11, 2024

MASTERPIECES FROM THE TORLONIA COLLECTION

Nil Barberini Ier siècle après JC Collection Torlonia, (ancien coll Barberini Villa Albani) ©Fondazione Torlonia

Amelung athlete Early 2nd century AD. Torlonia Collection ©Fondazione Torlonia

Agrippina the Elder Early 1st century AD, Torlonia Collection, Cavaceppi Workshop ©Fondazione Torlonia

Lucius Verus 161-168 AD Torlonia Collection ©Fondazione Torlonia

Hestia Giustiniani 2nd century AD Based on Greek original from 470-460 BC. Torlonia Collection ©Fondazione Torlonia

The Torlonia saga began with a young draper from Auvergne, Puy de Dôme. He left France under the name of Marin Tourlonias to settle in Italy and become a pawnbroker under the name of Marino Torlonia. His son Giovanni continued his father’s work by lending money to the Roman nobility. This wise banker had the Pope and the Bonaparte family as famous clients.

He was thus able to buy titles, marquis, duke then prince as well as properties and works of art to furnish his domains. A grandiose collector, he put together this fabulous collection of 600 antique statues, 60 of which are on display today in Paris. Throughout the 19th century, the Torlonia princes kept the largest private collection of ancient Roman sculpture in Rome.

This unique collection of its kind is revealed at the Louvre for its first stay outside Italy.

These marvels of sculptures take place in the restored setting offered by the summer apartments of Anne of Austria which extend into the so-called Augustus room, home of the permanent collections of ancient sculpture since the end of the 18th century and the birth of the Louvre Museum.

Born from the love for ancient art of the princes of the family, heirs to the nobility practices of the Rome of the Popes, the Torlonia collection intended, especially with the opening of the Museo Torlonia in the 1870s, to compete with the great public museums of the Vatican, the Capitol, the Louvre.

This collection, famous in Italy and little known in France, offers an aesthetic and archaeological dive into the discovery of the exceptional works of the Torlonia collection by bringing it into dialogue with the collections of the Louvre. Portraits, funerary sculptures, copies of famous Greek originals, works with a retrospective style nourished by Greek classicism or archaism, figures from the Thiasis and allegories reveal a repertoire of images and forms which are the strength of Roman art. Made of pieces from the very soil of the city of Rome or its immediate surroundings, at the center of power and artistic production in the Roman West, the collection is made up of sculptures of scholarly art, with high quality of execution.

Rome’s last princely collection and a museum looking to the future are embodied in an exceptional piece, already very renowned in the 17th century: the Caprone restored by Bernini. It was Alessandro Torlonia who decided to create a museum to show these ancient wonders.

These marble beauties have crossed the centuries with elegance and, in their silence, have held the secrets of the world for generations, yet they are all animated by this piece of soul of their creators and the passion that led them to find each other. thus gathered…