Wanderings in the Roman Campagna / by Rodolfo Lanciani.

  • Rodolfo Lanciani
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wanderings in the Roman Campagna / by Rodolfo Lanciani. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    at Frascati, is now exhibited in the Braccio Nuovo at the Vatican; to the Dionysus of Euphranor, whose replica I discovered in 1881 in Hadrian’s villa; and to scores of other subjects which are daily unearthed from the archaeological strata of our land. Where, then, have the original Greek masterpieces vanished, which Roman conquerors and Roman em¬ perors are known to have removed by the thousand from Magna Grsecia, Sicily, Greece, and Asia Minor, and to have carried home as spoils of war, or else by theft or by purchase ? There is no exaggeration in say¬ ing that, at the beginning of the third century after Christ, Rome contained more works of the great masters than could be seen on the shores of the Aegean Sea. Each of the Roman temples, forums, basilicas, baths, palaces, and villas was a museum in itself. Two hundred and sixty-one pieces of sculpture or pictures in mosaic have already been dug out from Hadrian’s villa. Gio¬ vanni Antonio Riccy published in 1802 a list of one hun¬ dred and twenty works of art excavated in the imperial domain of Roma Vecchia.1 Their number has since doubled. In 1884 Luigi Boccanera found, in a couple of days, seventeen statues and busts in the peristyle of Voconius Pollio’s villa at Marino. This as regards quantity. As far as quality is concerned, I can only say that if one Roman temple alone could be reconstructed, with its artistic contents, it would cast into the shade any museum of the present day. But where have all these treasures gone ? How is it that we must consider our¬ selves lucky if we discover one Greek original among a thousand Roman copies ? The answer to this query 1 “ Dell’ antico Pago Lemonio,” in Oggi Roma Vecchia, Rome, Ful- goni, 1802, ch. xii, p. 109.