On the Spiritual Matter of Art Curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi 17 October 2019

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on the spiritual matter of art curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi 17 October 2019 – 8 March 2020

Rome, 16 October 2019. What does it mean today to talk about spirituality? Where does spirituality fit into a world dominated by a digital and technological culture and an ultra-deterministic mentality? Is there still a spiritual dimension underpinning the demands of art? In order to reflect on these and other questions MAXXI, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, is bringing together a number of leading figures from the contemporary art scene in the major group show on the spiritual matter of art, strongly supported by the President of the Fondazione MAXXI Giovanna Melandri and curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi (from 17 October 2019 to 8 March 2020). Main partner Enel, which for the period of the exhibition is supporting the initiative Enel Tuesdays with a special ticket price reduction every Tuesday. Sponsor Inwit. on the spiritual matter of art is a project that investigates the issue of the spiritual through the lens of contemporary art and, at the same time, that of the ancient history of Rome. In a layout offering diverse possible paths, the exhibition features the works of 19 artists, leading names on the international scene from very different backgrounds and cultures. The works of John Armleder, Matilde Cassani, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Elisabetta Di Maggio, Jimmie Durham, Haris Epaminonda, Hassan Khan, Kimsooja, Abdoulaye Konaté, Victor Man, Shirin Neshat, Yoko Ono, Michal Rovner, Remo Salvadori, Tomás Saraceno, Sean Scully, Jeremy Shaw and Namsal Siedlecki, mainly produced in the last two years and reworked specifically for the MAXXI space, are displayed alongside 17 extraordinary Etruscan, Roman and local archaeological relics loaned by four of the city’s leading museums: Vatican Museums, The National Roman Museum, The National Etruscan Museum - Villa Giulia and the Capitoline Museums. The relics date from a period between the VIII century B.C. and the end of the IV century A.D., that is, from the origins of the Roman period through to the moment in which Christianity became a state religion, and are therefore representative of the path that leads to the ancient and the pre-modern world, from the collective dimension of the sacred in the pagan era to the establishment of a more individual dimension of the spiritual in the post-classical era.

“The question of being, of man’s spiritual expansion, has always defined artistic research”, says Giovanna Melandri, “Art is at times capable of capturing our tension and going beyond the illusion of forms and matter (Maya). As Schopenhauer wrote, art can miraculously elevate itself above life, contemplating and transcending it. I was very eager for this project to go ahead. It was not easy to define its contents and confines, but I am certain that this exhibition will make a further contribution to amplifying the boundaries of the artistic and conceptual research of the MAXXI “laboratory”. I am convinced that the question of our spiritual nature, above and beyond any religious dogma, is a question that urgently needs to be asked of contemporary man. I would like to thank the Vatican Museum, the National Roman Museum, the National Etruscan Museum - Villa Giulia and the Capitoline Museums for having contributed to this project alongside us.”

“The compresence and the relationship between contrasting elements are clearly evident", says Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of MAXXI Arte, “and its emphasis underlies the entire project. It is actually this impossible composition of body and spirit, between matter and spirit that is the most faithful representation of our existence. By the “spiritual stuff of art”, I mean that which leverages this dichotomy, between a material dimension bound up with personal experience and a need to rediscover practices and meanings that elevate the spirit above it.”

Gallery 4 will be dedicated to on the spiritual matter of art, welcoming visitors with an exhibition layout composed of lateral visions and totemic walls that permit a play of references between works of art and archaeological relics, thus facilitating continuous dialogue between ancient and contemporary sensibilities.

There will be a number of installations on display, including those by Matilde Cassani (fabric drapery, like a threshold introducing the space of the sacred), Enzo Cucchi (an artist to whom MAXXI is also devoting an Art Collection Focus show in the Gian Ferrari Hall, 17 October – January 2020), Jimmie Durham, Haris Epaminonda, Remo Salvadori and Namsal Siedlecki, produced or revised specifically for this project. The layout opens and closes with sound installations by Hassan Khan (a composition for hand claps) and Kimsooja (transmitting the echoes of a Tibetan chant), after which one accesses the large central space that houses large two-dimensional works including those by John Armleder, Francesco Clemente, Abdoulaye Konaté, Victor Man and Sean Scully in close relations with the objects from antiquity (the pair of Peacocks from the Musei Vaticani, the Fegato dello Scasato from Villa Giulia, the Winged Scarab from the Musei Capitolini, the Chrismon Necklace and the Leontocefala statue, both from the Museo Nazionale Romano and the Gem of the Goddess Rome from the Musei Capitolini – Fondazione Santarelli). Photography (the hands of Iranian women in the gesture of offering verses by poets of the Farsi tradition by Shirin Neshat) and video (Michal Rovner and Jeremy Shaw) dialogue with the immersive installations by Elisabetta Di Maggio (who recreates with postage stamps the Cosmatesque floor of St. Mark’s Basilica) and by Tomás Saraceno (who transforms the fluctuations of spider’s webs into sonic vibrations), concluding with a major work of participatory work by Yoko Ono.

The on the spiritual matter of art project also provides for the creation of a catalogue due to be published by Quodlibet in the autumn of this year that will feature texts by Andrea Carandini, Padre Paolo Benanti, Stefano Catucci, Raffaella Frascarelli and Riccardo Venturi. The critical apparatus present in the book also underlies the curatorial thinking and layout of the exhibition, the visual-photographic design of which will be curated by Agostino Osio (Alto Piano studio, Milan).

Flanking the exhibition project, an extensive Public Program will see a series of talks with the artists (Sean Scully, 17 October 2019 – Jimmie Durham, 17 November 2019); lectures (Massimo Cacciari, 25 October 2019 - Corrado Augias, 21 January 2020 – Andrea Carandini 25 January 2020 - Massimo Recalcati, 7 March 2020); film screening (A true story, dedicated to Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian philosopher, mystic and yogi, 13 November 2019); performances (Pejman Tadayon Ensemble, 30 November 2019 – Krishna Das, 4 December 2019).

On the occasion of the exhibition della materia spirituale dell'arte MAXXI will be screening three films, part of the official programme of the XIV edition of the Rome Film Festival, exploring the theme of the spiritual through the eyes of three great directors: Dersu Uzala - The Hunter, 1975, by Akira Kurosawa (18 October, 4:30 PM); The Tree of Life, 2012, by Terrence Malick (22 October, 4:00 PM); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Julian Schnabel (25 October, 5:00 PM). Admission with a ticket or accreditation from the Rome Film Festival, www.romacinemafest.org.

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on the spiritual matter of art

17 ottobre 2019 – 8 marzo 2020

Giovanna Melandri, President Fondazione MAXXI

I was only twenty and in New York when you might say I was blown over by my reading of the prophetic book by Wassily Kandinsky Concerning the Spiritual in Art. When it was published, at the start of the magmatic first decade of the 20th century, a time when illusions and tensions were boiling over and would lead to seasons of darkness, this highly original text had represented a watershed in the vision of art and its interactions with the individual and with history. As someone who could never have imagined that one day I would be a part of the adventure of directing MAXXI, immersed in the observatory of Reagan’s America, it made a deep impression on me. Almost a revelation. The father of lyrical abstraction seemed to be taking me by the hand and accompanying me to explore the subconscious all the way to where the sparks of artistic creativity are lit, viewing in a revolutionary way the world and its most acute contradictions: the challenges of nature, of knowledge, of human liberation, of politics not solely as an exercise (and abuse) of power. Art as the full expression of the interior. Art as the keystone of a revolutionary sensitivity. I have often mulled over this discovery, a message capable of connecting and reverberating painting and music, sign and color, philosophy and ideology, launched over a century ago. I believe it left behind a plot that is still fertile, even in a social and technological horizon that has changed radically and tumultuously, coming close to resembling science fiction. The idea of an exhibition that in new forms would return to the thread woven by Kandinsky repeatedly encouraged me to gather and renew ideas and work hypotheses, and to dialogue with interlocutors of every inspiration and discipline. I cannot overlook, in particular, with emotion and regret, how this idea made progress in some long conversations with Lea Mattarella; how it took shape and a direction thanks to some of the insights of a figure so beloved on the art scene, who unfortunately passed away before seeing the realization of a project she was so keen on. And now that on the spiritual matter of art is finally seeing the light, I would like to dedicate it to her. About this exhibition – breaking for the first time with what is customary form – I speak in the first person because I imagined it, I wanted it very much and had done so for a long time, I studied and perfected it through a close-knit confrontation with the museum’s curatorial team. And I say this – believing it to be the fruit of one of the most beautiful qualities of our group – with sincerity: it was not a foregone conclusion to add to MAXXI’s programming a project that wishes to restore and rethink the idea of the function of art as a field and instrument of spiritual elevation. For one serious reason. In recent years, sowing our seeds well, we have in fact followed a research thread and in-depth analysis that we could call socio-political, which is especially attentive to the multiplicity, the liveliness, the visionariness of currents and artistic and cultural personalities capable of illiuminating the most burning dimensions and contexts of the global era. Mounting such a different artistic and scientific project, in many ways unknown to us, might even lead others to think there has been a change in direction, an improvisation, with respect to our DNA. Not at all. Thanks to the commitment of Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, on the spiritual matter of art subtracts neither identity nor coherence from MAXXI’s profile. If anything, it introduces a trace of reflection that is perhaps overlooked in the open debate between the contemporary arts and, for this same reason, stimulating, unusual, and innovatiìve. “We are made of a dark and burning energy and of a luminous and gelid thought,” says Andrea Carandini, with his customary wisdom, in the beautiful conversation with the curator and director of MAXXI included in this volume. There: we shaped the exhibition on the spiritual matter of art precisely to be able to look onto those borders and those connections that – inside the folds of the secular events and the adventure of each one of us – fuel ancient needs and unprecedented dilemmas. Matter-essence, body-soul, immanence- trascendence are knots that are constantly being wound, untied, rewound in the evolution and the parabola of thinking and of society. What meaning do they acquire (or lose) in the chaotic digital network? Contemporary artists contribute, with diverse languages and insights, to kindling new questions on meaning, to digging under the layers of traditions, customs, and ways. The primate of technology and a certain careening in the essential values of peaceful coexistence cause us to doubt, however, whether we are really capable of listening to it, the evocative force of art, its interior provocation. A prestigious group of artists on the Italian and international scene, among the most authoritative and revolutionary, bring forward and reinterpret some of their recent works for the space and, we could say, the philosophy of MAXXI. Here they have the opportunity to liaise with archaeological artefacts from the Etruscan and Roman ages, equally extraordinary, on loan here from the major centers for the conservation of classical heritage: the Vatican Museums, Museo Nazionale Romano, Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, and

Musei Capitolini. An artistic approach and comparison immersed in the millennia, the sensitivity, and the spirituality of our times and the mythology and sacredness of the remote origins of a civilization. Hence, for instance, installations and works by Enzo Cucchi and Jimmie Durham, Yoko Ono and Tomás Saraceno, Remo Salvadori and Sean Scully are reflected in the Cornelian Gem of the Goddess Roma, the Golden Necklace with Chrismon, the Peacocks from the Pine Cone Courtyard in bronze, or the terracota Liver of the Scasato. As is determined by our museum’s genetic code, this exhibition, in many ways stupefying, does not remove itself from the effort to conceive and promote a stimulating project of multidisciplinary in-depth analysis. Encounters with the artists, scholars, and teachers, film screenings, performances: the protagonists themselves of this major group event and some of the most listened to voices on the cultural scene will accompany us along an ambitious route. After all, a museum-cum-laboratory like MAXXI is fully aware of the fact that art is often capable of capturing the most hidden drives of human nature, of going beyond the deceit of forms and matter, of being elevated – Schopenhauer wrote – above life, and to contemplate it, by transcending it. I am convinced that on the spiritual matter of art will help to bring to life our mission, triggering interest and curiosity, for it offers, beyond any philosophical theory or religious creed, crucial questions to ask our contemporaries. Right away.

on the spiritual matter of art

17 ottobre 2019 – 8 marzo 2020

THE EXHIBITION Myth, metaphor, symbol, enigma, ritual, spirit, soul, sacred. In an era dominated by technical-scientific thought and the growing supremacy of the machine, these words seem to belong to an ancient and archaic language, but it is precisely around them that the reflections and suggestions of the works and artefacts presented in the exhibition move. on the spiritual matter of art takes its cue from the need of today's artists to reaffirm the centrality of man and its ecosystem, with all its criticalities and complexity, in the search for a spiritual dimension. An attitude which, if in the past was opposed to the idea of spirituality, today becomes the essence. Artists of different cultures, histories, traditions and geographical areas therefore suggest perspectives able to overcome the differences in a syncretism that contains them and at the same time transcends them, but which is based on the never resolved antinomy between body and soul, matter and spirit, rational and irrational. With current forms and meanings, here then reappear oracles, rituals, cosmogonies, symbols that trace unprecedented paths in the never appeased anxiety of man to approach the immeasurable, the incomprehensible, the inscrutable. Understanding this means having understood how, through art, it is possible today to find one of the few dimensions that remain fiercely anchored to the sense of time and of human person's space, to its existence in relation to the environment and to other living beings, and still able to hear and know how to ask those universal questions that have accompanied us from the dawn of civilisation, and on which our evolution is based. This is the reason for the presence of some of the archaeological finds on display, in wanting to reiterate the importance of History beyond History, in recovering a sacred and spiritual time that has its roots in the geographical area where Rome was born at the dawn of its civilisation, itself founded on a never resolved dialectic of opposites. Its origin is linked to the myth that contains this principle, the fratricide of a twin, and embodies the eternal antinomy between reason and madness, legitimate and illegitimate, order and subversion, sacred and profanation. In the encounter between the symbolic and spiritual meanings of the finds and the works of art, a connection is thus established which, beyond time and space, informs both a connection capable of rediscovering and suggesting new and ancient values and possible interpretations in search of a renewed shared, syncretic and collective spirituality made up of images, bodies, gestures, rhythms, words: a spiritual matter, which is proper to art.

Coming from some of the main national museums in Rome, the archaeological finds on display are testimony to man's need to relate to the divine, the supernatural. Objects and artefacts are from a period that runs from the birth of Rome in the 8th century BC up to the edict of Constantine (313 AD) and then of Thessalonica (380 AD), an act that establishes the definitive assertion of Christian monotheism and the end of the archaic period. Until then, Rome is the centre of great religious syncretism: its very foundation takes place through an Etruscan ritual, while mystery cults from the East proliferate in the Republican and Imperial ages. From the pair of Etruscan bronze hands of the 7th century BC to the gold necklace with the Chrismon of the early 5th century AD, a symbolic universe is highlighted in which everything is in dialogue with everything and where man's consciousness evolves from a sacred dimension not distinct from the civil dimension to definition of a personal soul.

Chosen with a deliberately non-archaeological or anthropological approach, finds apparently distant in time, the gorgòneion and peacocks of Hadrian's mausoleum, protectors of the threshold between life and death, or livers as cosmogonic maps in the hands of the Etruscan or further the gem with the Capitoline wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, represent signs with open, syncretic and enigmatic meanings, evocative of that path that leads from the archaic world to the pre-modern world, from the collective sacred to the individual spiritual. Rituality, image, oracle, and then mundus, habitus, logos are pieces that give rise to a form of pre-scientific wisdom that claims to be universal without becoming abstract. An archaic wisdom, which, even before attempting to reveal the divine nature, allows us a wider and deeper knowledge of interiority and human nature.

This Wunderkammer at the centre of the exhibition space, which enters into close dialogue with the works of art around it, anticipates a foray into Victor Man's paintings.

on the spiritual matter of art

17 october 2019 – 8 march 2020

WORKS

JOHN ARMLEDER (1948, Geneva) Skateboarding is not a Crime, 2019 mixed media on canvas Courtesy: the artist and Massimo De Carlo Milan/London/Hong Kong In fifty years of career John Armleder has distinguished himself for the conscious choice to avoid an exclusive expressive medium and recognisable style, thus opening himself to multiform experiments that combine painting, sculpture, environmental installation, performance, video, sound and even text. His oeuvre challenges the concepts of authorship and uniqueness of the work of art and welcomes and transforms the everyday, sublimating it into a chaotic triumph of shapes, materials and colours. The series of Pour Paintings, of which the painting Skateboarding is not a Crime is part, is characterised by large drippings of pictorial matter on large canvases. Among vibrant colours, glimmers of gold and silver, Armleder's sensitivity plays - not without an unexpected ironic and irreverent vein - on the thin line that divides the great tradition of abstract art and pure decoration.

MATILDE CASSANI (1980, Domodossola) Tutto, 2019 fabric Courtesy: the artist The large tent with the writing Tutto [All], placed at the entrance of the exhibition, is the metaphor of a threshold to cross, rite of passage that introduces the visitor to the theme of spirituality. The work evokes a syncretic dimension, a shared rituality, a particular attention to the architectural aspect and "performativity that creates the space", as Cassani, who trained as an architect, declares. The piece on display is taken from a complex project consisting of a performance and several fabric elements, conceived on the occasion of Manifesta 12 in Palermo. Observing the tradition of Sicilian baroque and reflecting on the religious and cultural influences that characterise the history of the city, the artist blends different rituals creating an unexpected celebration in the heart of the historic centre (Quattro Canti). The title Tutto contains and expresses precisely the will to mix people, ideological differences, elements of popular tradition, the past and the present, in a single great celebratory moment.

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE (1952, Napoli) Crown, 1988 oil on canvas, triptych Collection Fondazione MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo Manifestly evident in Francesco Clemente’s oeuvre are symbols and iconographic references from the Western figurative tradition and the aniconic Eastern one, resulting in a co-presence of cultures and aesthetics that derive from the sensitivity developed by the artist during the long periods of time he has spent between New York and India over the past four decades. With particular attention toward forms and especially the human figure, Clemente’s works encourage cultural and formal elements that are distant from each other, and foster the conversation and relationship between different spatialities and temporalities. Even the ten-meter long triptych Crown, a tangle of signs and patterns alluding to the crown of thorns, combines the Christian iconography of the Passion of Christ and the concept of “weaving” in the Tantric sphere: “Tantra means weaving, it is the image of consciousness as the embroidery of full and void”. Crown is a crucial work in the artist’s career, because it is where Clemente begins to interpret the spiritual via abstract forms, availing himself of visual patterns and Eastern symbols.

ENZO CUCCHI (1949, Morro d’Alba) Idoli e scopritori del fuoco, 2010-2014 bronze, silicone on concrete base Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Balice&Hertling (Paris), Galleria Zero (Milan), Carlo Virgilio Gallery (Rome) An extraordinary inventor of powerful and enigmatic images, the research of Enzo Cucchi encompasses dreamlike visions, the mystical and religious popular culture of his native land (the Marches) and art history, with explicit references to classical literature and mythology. His aesthetic ranges from time to history, thus synthesizing individual myths and collective sensitivity. Legend and rite are also present in the recent corpus of works entitled Idoli e scopritori del fuoco, a series of bronze sculptures installed on slender cement columns. Small figures that harken back to an archaic world, half men and half gods, idols and the discoverers of fire, wizards, haruspices, vestals, connotated by symbols and iconographic references. Once again, Cucchi has conceived a complex symbolic alphabet, where figurative elements and abstract elements share a total vision in which life and death are seen as the inseparable parts of a single existential cycle.

ELISABETTA DI MAGGIO (1964, Milano) Greetings from Venice, 2018 paper, stamps, glass Courtesy: Galleria Christian Stein, Milan Time is the central theme of Elisabetta Di Maggio’s artistic research. Time as the invisible force in human dynamics, such as memory and historical stratification, but also as a connection between different temporalities, between past and future, for a reinterpretation of the present time through the gaze of yesterday and vice versa. This feeling takes shape in large-scale installations that consider the place that hosts them and its history. The same may be said for Greetings from Venice, conceived in 2018 for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, the city’s ancient trading place and post office headquarters. Here the reference is to the extraordinary tile floor of Saint Mark’s Basilica: the abstract ornaments, formal and conceptual maps, become a collage of almost a thousand used postage stamps from every nation in the world. A network of relations that transpires in Di Maggio’s artistic process, in a collective ritual that witnessed the participation of a group of students in the minutious and creative gesture of collecting, classifying, and composing the small paper tiles one by one.

JIMMIE DURHAM (1940, United States) FIRE CUP, 2019 black marble and oak Courtesy: the artist Multimedia artist, poet, and essayist, Jimmie Durham’s works are deconstructions of the socio-political diktats imposed by the dominant cultures, reappropriating himself of the needs, the spiritual journeys, the drives underlying humans. His reinterpretation of reality is expressed in mysterious gravity-defying sculptures, assemblages of various materials and objects, with a prevalence for those of natural origin alongside industrial artefacts. The never-before-exhibited FIRE CUP, whose only elements are the oak wood and the basalt stone carved by the artist, encompasses the deep meaning of the ancestral rite (the reference here is to the Holy Grail) and the versatile and generating power of nature. The concave shape of the surface also recalls the cupules (cupstones, in the language of the Americans Indians), hollows made by humans since the Paleolithic period on the surface of masses and inside which wooden sticks were rubbed to light sacred fires.

HARIS EPAMINONDA (1980, Nicosia) Untitled #13 t/g, 2019 Mirrored and black polished lacquered wooden structures with brass hinge, velvet curtain, two wooden spheres with golden leaf Courtesy: the artist and Galleria Massimo Minini Sculptures, photographs, books, ceramics, footages: crafted and found objects that Haris Epaminonda assembles in rigorous site-specific installations, with which she outlines a space suspended in time and elaborates a personal visual vocabulary consisting of associations between different elements. Just like Untitled #13 t/g, in her works there are multiple visual-narrative readings, and numerous are the historical,

artistic, biographical and autobiographical references, the dreams and the memories that together create new and enigmatic tales: archaic worlds, myths, legends, symbols are transformed and acquire unexpected meanings as they become works of art. Much like a large-scale collage, Epaminonda identifies objects whose materialness, property, and symbology she is familiar with (in the work exhibited, two reflecting structures, a velvet curtain and two golden spheres), using them to create spaces that are motionless, silent, absolute in their geometries, metaphysical in their timeless nature.

HASSAN KHAN (1975, Londra) Live Ammunition!, 2015 4 channel sound installation Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris LightShift, 2015 programmed shifting lights, programmable LED lights, DMX controller, computer, light control software Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris Artist, musician, writer, Hassan Khan uses a variety of means of expression, from the video to the installation, from sound to performance art, as instruments aimed at a linguistic-conceptual research that poses ongoing existential questions. The two works, Live Ammunition! and LightShift, respectively a multi-channel composition for clapping hands and a beam of coloured light that varies slowly but constantly, together create a multisensory space welcoming the visitor at the exhibition entrance, thus delineating a suspended space, “something to briefly belong to before it passes”. It is indeed a place of passage, which becomes the site of an initiatory rite: “it might take a moment to walk through a room but it is also always a transition”, the artist remarks. The ritual of hand-clapping in Khan’s work accompanies references to the present time, like the marches in the square after the Egyptian coup d’état in 2013, which the title Live Ammunition! alludes to.

KIMSOOJA (1957, Taegu) Mandala, 2003 single channel mixed media sound installation (Tibetan Chant) Courtesy: the artist, Collection Paolo Vicentini, Milan, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan A South Korean artist of American origin and adoption, Kimsooja carries out a conceptual research that investigates the dualistic nature of the existing, the balance between opposites, uniting elements of together Oriental and Western philosophy and aesthetics. From her earliest works we can see a strong focus on colour and its symbolic values: an example is the famous series Bottari (1992) based on the scheme of the five Korean colours, known as obangsaek, which tradition associates with cardinal points and natural elements. In the work on display, the first version of which in 2003 had the subtitle Zone of Zero, sound, colour and matter come together in the harmonic form of a Buddhist maṇḍala. Combining sacred and profane, pop images and religious expressions, the artist echoes Tibetan, Islamic and Gregorian chants in a jukebox speaker. Creating a balance between different traditions and cultures, the work explores the concept of totality and unity between body and mind as a state to reach zero degree of the spirit.

ABDOULAYE KONATÉ (1953, Diré) Ocean, Mother and Life, 2015 textile Private collection Aboulaye Konaté’s works are known for their pattern of horizontal fabrics in bright colours. The artist’s reflections on the socio-political emergencies of the contemporary age, interpreted through the magnifying lens of Mali, the artist’s native country, are translated in his oeuvre in large two-dimensional coloured installations. The aesthetic of the forms and the symbols, both figurative and abstract, is prevalent here. Hence, Ocean, Mother and Life appears to be a homage to water – a vital element, but one that was hard to obtain during Konaté’s childhood – to the power of the sea, to the ocean as deity and generating mother. Here, the environmentalist reflection inherent in the work, a warning in times of emergency and water pollution around the planet, is triggered from the figurative composition the artist creates by using materials typical of Malian tradition, in this case coloured fabrics and cloth. The result of this is an abundant universe of marine flora and fauna, an atmosphere filled with cultural, religious, social, historical meanings, a symphony of threads and colours that opens up to another level, a timeless and spiritual one, of space.

VICTOR MAN (1974, Cluj-Napoca) Two Skulls After El Greco and Blackbird, 2017-2018 oil on canvas Courtesy: the artist and Plan B, Cluj/Berlin Moonlight (All Nations Flag), 2018 oil on canvas on wood Courtesy: the artist Self-Portrait With The Yellow Shadow of Christ, 2018-2019 oil on canvas Courtesy: the artist Self-Portrait With The Yellow Shadow of Christ, 2019 oil on canvas on wood Courtesy: the artist The painting of Victor Man is characterised by recurring attention to the portrait in the foreground and a non- realistic use of colour, with dark and cold shades, reminiscent of the images reflected by the 'Claude glass' (or black mirror), an ancient instrument used by landscapers in the 17th century. The titles of the works have a strong descriptive value that, without ever completely revealing it, announce the subject of his compositions which always remains enigmatic. In the three works on display, we find different expressions of Man's complex iconography based on personal memories and literary and artistic citations – this is the case of Self- Portrait With The Yellow Shadow of Christ which refers to a famous work by Paul Gauguin – on disturbing and surreal elements as in Moonlight (All Nations Flag) and on a dark and ambiguous religiosity as in the contemporary memento mori of Two Skulls After El Greco and Blackbird.

SHIRIN NESHAT (1957, Qazvin) Offerings, 2019 photogravure on Hahnemühle paper Courtesy: the artist The images that form Offerings reclaim the compositional aesthetics of the series Women of Hallah (1993- 97), one of the most famous works by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat that marks the beginning of her reflection on the complexity of Islamic culture and its traditions in relation to female identity. In this new work, the characteristic and sophisticated play of light and shadow, black and white, of her photographs encounters the narrative power of the gesture which gradually expresses itself as prayer, offering, revelation. In her hands emerge the verses of Persian poet Omar Khayyam, who lived around the year 1000, reciting "Without pure wine I cannot exist". A recurring theme in Khayyam's controversial and extraordinary output, oscillating between scepticism and mysticism, wine is celebrated as a symbol of earthly pleasure, enjoyment of life and at the same time as a tool, one of the simplest and oldest, to allow man to enter into a direct relationship with the divine.

YOKO ONO (1933, Tokyo) Add Color (Refugee Boat), 1960/2016 - 2019 participation piece; three boats, paint and brushes Collection of the artist A multitalented artist and a leading figure on the contemporary art scene, in the 1960s Yoko Ono was among the first exponents of Fluxus and also one of the first to experiment with performance. This installation exhibited is part of a series of works, conceived in 1960, a few years after Ono’s arrival in the United States. By inviting the visitor to “add colour” on the surfaces of the work, Add Color explores the human sensibility and diversity in regard to universal concepts such as freedom and hope, peace and love. The work thus becomes a rite in the hands of this artist-shaman, and rituality that is shared by the public is a moment of collective reflection on major contemporary questions. A case in point is the variant Refugee Boat, where migrant boats are a metaphor for salvation, division, and at the same time journey to the unknown. By arranging jars of blue paint in the exhibition space, Ono lets the public draw a ‘sea’ that is favorable for these boats, with waves of words and shared gestures.

MICHAL ROVNER (1957, Tel Aviv) Nilus, 2018 2 LCD screens and video Courtesy:the artist and Pace Gallery The photographs and videos of the Israeli artist Michal Rovner harken back to the dramatic events of recent history which the artist re-elaborates in forms with ambiguous, mysterious, fleeting contours. Hovering between metaphysical contemplation and an analysis of the human condition, Rovner’s shapes are divested of details, and the figures in miniature present in her works become the anonymous ranks of men who together form a sign alphabet, a reference to hieroglyphics and the Hebrew alphabet. In Nilus, at the heart of this moving narrative one can glimpse a jackal slowly turning its head toward the viewer: the sacred animal of Egyptian iconography, the jackal identified Anubis, the god of death and tombs, represented as a man with the head of a canid. In the enigmatic nature of works such as this one Rovner expresses her deep existential interest in duality, in what is true and what is fake, in the rational and the irrational, in life and in death.

REMO SALVADORI (1947, Cerreto Guidi) Alfabeto, 2019 lead, tin, iron, copper, mercury, silver, gold Courtesy: the artist Metal is a recurring material in the works of Remo Salvadori, an artist who has been studying the alchemical properties of the elements since the 1970s, calling into play the energetic forces that characterize them. The large-scale installation Alfabeto encompasses the thinking of the inventor of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner with regards to primary geometric figures (the square as the symbol of the Earth, and the circle as a metaphor for celestial geometry), the seven metals (lead, tin, iron, copper, mercury, silver, gold), and their process of transformation. Hence, on the wall is a sign grammar made up of lines, planes, and shapes that the artist has worked by hand. The combination of forces and materiality produces harmony that is both geometric and metaphysical. In Salvadori’s oeuvre, the author’s insight and the viewer’s contemplation are alchemically bound; they are intimate, inseparable, and consequential aspects of the creative process.

TOMÁS SARACENO (1973, San Miguel de Tucumán) Floating Nephila Ensemble, 2016 computer, camera, mixer, stands, Dedolight, carbon sticks, spidersilk Collection Fondazione MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Arts Acquired thanks to the contribution by AMICI del MAXXI Arachnomancy Cards, 2019 deck of 33 cards printed on carbon footprint neutral paper Card’s drawings and reinterpretation based on Duncan, W., Webs In The Wind, The Ronald Press Company, New York 1949 and Bristowe, W. S., The World of Spiders, Collins, London 1959; William Curtis, 1746-1799; Elizabeth Marbury, 1856-1933, donor; Vollrath, F., “Untangling the spider’s web”, in: Trends Ecol. Evol. 3(12), 1988, pp. 331–335. Courtesy: the artist and Arachnophilia; Andersen's, Copenhagen; Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles; Pinksummer contemporary art, Genoa; Esther Schipper, Berlin Fluctuating sculptures, community projects, and interactive installations distinguish the work of Tomás Saraceno, whose research brings together art, architecture, science, astrophysics, and engineering to explore new sustainable ways to inhabit the Earth. The two works on display tell of the artist’s interest in arachnology, the scientific and social study of spiders and the webs they weave. Floating Nephila Ensemble is a wind instrument that captures in real time the movement of the threads of a spider’s web produced by the Nephila inaurata species, translating it into sonic frequencies. The work is a collective performance, produced by an ensemble of forces and bodies. In this immersive environment, every subtle change alters the compositional whole, where the visitors and aerial elements (dust, wind, heat and electrostatic forces) influence the rhythms of the fluctuating silk threads. In conversation with this work are the Arachnomancy Cards, a set of cards, taking inspiration from different divinatory practices. They are an instrument of mediation, messengers between the perceptive worlds, and one of the many ways to consult spider/web oracles. In the divinatory practice of arachnomancy the prophecy is written in the silk threads, and their different interpretations articulate interdisciplinary ways of

understanding and perceiving the interconnection between different species, between the living and the non- living, in the current era of geo-environmental crisis.

SEAN SCULLY (1945, Dublin) Window Diptych Green, 2018 oil and acrylic on aluminum Courtesy: the artist After a rigorous and minimal debut, in the past four decades the poetics of Sean Scully have opened up more to colour and light, representing on the canvas the relationship between the abstract gesture and the everyday visual experience. The paint the artist applies to surfaces made of aluminum, felt, glass, to sculptures and architectures becomes fluid and reflects an idea he especially cherishes, that of a “universal personal”. The colour fields, previously geometric patterns, are transformed into rhythmical narratives that are kindled in empathy with the viewer: vibrant and restless like the brushstrokes they are “places of expectation and. revelation, seismographs capable of capturing the uncertainty of the human heart”. Held down on the surface are everyday elements, windows that open onto the interior of the architectural line of the work: the geometry of Window Diptych Green, a square characterized by coloured stripes inside a square with black and white stripes -and vice versa- introduce to an exploration of depths. It is a pictorial threshold that lead to another level of perception and sensitivity, a point of passage that, like the mundus, connects the immanent world with the transcendent one.

JEREMY SHAW (1977, Vancouver) Liminals, 2017 video Realised in part with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canadian Embassy in Rome and KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin, for the 57th Venice Biennale Courtesy: the artist and KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin Jeremy Shaw's work explores the concept of transcendence through the use of different media and a psychedelic aesthetic in which science and mysticism overlap. Liminals is the second chapter of the Quantification Trilogy, a science fiction series that narrates revolutionary solutions devised by clandestine groups to avert extinction of the human species. The video takes the form of an old documentary filmed in 16 mm, in which a hypnotic voice-over describes the experience of eight characters trying to save humanity by strengthening their brain with cybernetic DNA and rediscovering at the same time spiritual practices of the past. The goal of this syncretic ritual, which combines dance, yoga and headbanging, is to reach The Liminal, a dimension halfway between the physical and the virtual world, through which it will be possible to access a new evolutionary phase. The symbolic use of colour indicates the catharsis of the protagonists who, from a world in black and white, finally reach a technicolour dimension.

NAMSAL SIEDLECKI (1986, United States) Trevis, 2019 methacrylate basin, brass, electric motor, electronic unit, cables, copper anodes, copper plating acid liquid (300l), copper sculpture, wax, coins Courtesy: the artist and Magazzino Inspired by the famous Trevi Fountain, Trevis is the title of the galvanic bathtub on show, where the encounter between contemporary rituals and the past is expressed through a process of transformation under the viewer's eye. In the galvanic bath, coins and medals from the waters of the Roman monument that the artist has recovered from among those that Caritas is not able to convert back into money are dissolved. The copper of this strange treasure made of suspended desires is slowly deposited on the wax copy of the sculpture of a wayfarer, an ex-voto from the French city of Clermont-Ferrand. Here, in the 1960s, an extraordinary collection of wooden artefacts was found, ex-votos that the Gauls threw into a spring to pay homage to the deity Maponos. The gesture of throwing objects into water as a magic and propitiatory rite celebrates man's innate need to connect with the supernatural that links him beyond centuries and cultural differences, resisting scientific and technological progress.

on the spiritual matter of art

17 october 2019 – 8 march 2020

RELICS

Necklace with Chrismon end IV - early decades V century AD gold National Roman Museum, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme by permission of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism, National Roman Museum A masterpiece of late antique jewellery, this necklace comes from a female trousseau of one of the floor graves of the basilica of Pope Mark, on Via Ardeatina in Rome. The chain consists of links in gold wire and has two small but detailed embossed lamina heads at its ends. The central element of the necklace consists of a disc in open gold work, with the Constantinian monogram or Christogram (Chrismon) between the Greek apocalyptic letters alpha and omega. This type of precious object, in which devotion and the search for prestige converge, bears witness to how the easily reproducible and immediately comprehensible Chrismon had an extraordinary diffusion not only as a symbol of faith adopted in the victorious insignia of Constantine but also as one of the most universal and popular of the Christian religion.

Pair of hands second quarter of VII century BC bronze and gold provenance: Vulci, Italy Vatican Museums, Vatican City Consisting of a single bronze sheet, closed on the wrist and folded at the edges of the long schematic fingers, the hands have the back adorned with small gold studs. Attributable to the first experiments in rendering the human figure in Etruscan bronzing, the pair had to belong to a metal statue hammered onto a wooden core, then richly dressed, created with the aim of preserving the physicality of the cremated deceased, as well as his social identity.The preciousness of the metal of these and other hands found in Vulci around the 7th century BC highlights the importance they played in the Etruscan funerary context as protagonists of the ritual practice through a codified language that incorporated and expressed the distinctive signs of belonging to a specific social and religious group, as could have been that of Vulci’s aristocracy.

Pair of peacocks Hadrianic Age (117-138 AD) gilded bronze Braccio Nuovo (originals); Cortile della Pigna (copies) Vatican Museums, Vatican City The two peacocks originally decorated the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian, today Castel Sant'Angelo, as an allegory of immortality. This was in fact the symbolism attributed to the peacock in the Roman world, where it was deputed to accompany the souls of empresses in the underworld. Early Christian art adopted its image as an emblem of resurrection and it is with this value that the two sculptures were reused in the fountain for the ablutions of pilgrims in the portico of the Basilica of St. Peter, at the centre of which was placed the great bronze pine cone, now flanked by peacocks on the balustrade of the homonymous courtyard of the Vatican Museums. Considered a representation of the cosmos in the ancient East, the peacock also embodies the completeness of things: combining all the colours of the iris, sky and earth on its feathers, the totality to which this bird alludes is well suited to represent the Etruscan and Roman concept of mundus.

Crown offered to Fortuna Primigenia late III century – early II century BC Limestone (marble) Provenance: Palestrina, Italy National Roman Museum, Baths of Diocletian By permission of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, National Roman Museum

Inscription: Fortuna Prim(i)g(enia) / L(ucius) D(e)cumius M(arci) f(ilius / don (um) ded (it) [Lucius Decumius son of Marco gave as a gift to Fortuna Primigenia]

A certain Lucius Decumius offered this votive gift to Fortuna Primigenia, titular deity of the sanctuary of Praeneste (today Palestrina). It is a stone object that reproduces a plant crown, where the inner ring with an orderly row of leaves intertwines with the floral motif of the outer face. The inscription therefore expresses the gratitude of the offerer towards the goddess, mother who generates the cosmos and protector of motherhood, perhaps following a favourable response from the oracle of the sanctuary. In addition to the custom of offering this type of ex-voto to the divinity, plant crowns also adorned the heads of the offerers themselves and worshippers: in the perfection of its circular form it combined the values of what was under it and what was above it, thus creating a transcendental connection between the human and the divine.

Gem with rising moon and stars II-III century AD carving on chalcedony Rome, Capitoline Museums, Glittica Collection of Dino and Ernesta Santarelli Inscription: CῶθιC [Sothis] The carving on chalcedony depicting the rising moon surrounded by seven stars is charged with suggestions. These are the brightest stars that make up the constellation of Ursa, indicator of the north. The Latins called this asterism Septemtrio – from which today's settentrione [‘of the north’ in English] derives – the union of septem (seven) and triones (plough oxen), thus describing their slow movement around the pole star, a meaning that refers to the other name of the constellation: the Chariot. On the back, again in an astrological reference, the gem bears an inscription in Greek characters with the name of Sothis, an Egyptian divinity personifying Sirius, the brightest star of the night belonging to the Canis Major constellation.

Liver of Piacenza end of II century BC – mid I century BC bronze (copy in resin) National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia; original preserved in Piacenza, Museo Civico It is an anatomical model of a sheep's liver. The upper surface shows the processus papillaris (papillary process), the vescica fellea (gallbladder) and the processus pyramidalis (pyramidal process), while the lower part is convex and divided into two lobes by the incisura umbelicalis (umbilical incisure). On the main face the outer band is divided into 16 regions that correspond to the geometries of the celestial templum, residence of the divine: three of these are occupied by Tinia, the Etruscan Jupiter, followed by the other gods. Inside there are a further 24 regions, each with the name of a deity engraved on it. On the convex surface, on one side the Etruscan name of the sun - Usil - is marked, to indicate the left and favourable part, on the other that of the moon - Tivr - or the right and unfavourable part. During the ritual practice, if scars or anomalous signs appeared on the examined liver, their position was compared by the haruspex with the bronze model, in order to understand which divinity had sent that sign, interpreting its meaning in relation to events.

Terracotta liver 310-300 BC terracotta Provenance: Temple known as Lo Scasato, Falerii Veteres (Civita Castellana, Italy) National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia

In its days offered as a votive gift in the sanctuary of Falerii Veteres, this model of a liver has two crescent- shaped grooves in the left lobe that can be interpreted as the Padānu (path of the divine) and the Manzāzu (presence of the divine), common signs in Babylonian hepatoscopy. The importance of the liver in the Etruscan world as in that of the Near East, was given above all by the centrality within the body of this organ which, through the umbilical vein, is first to receive maternal nourishment during embryonic development. The ancients in fact believed that every evolution in the universe

came about starting from an analogous central point. This analogy would also have a special significance in the foundation of the city of Rome, the ritual of which called for the presence of an Etruscan priest to examine the animal liver: it is around a centre in which germinative potential is developed, identified with mundus and in fact also called umbilicus urbi, with which Romulus traces the sacred perimeter circumscribing the city.

Gorgon of Lo Scasato IV-III century BC terracotta Provenance: Temple known as Lo Scasato, Falerii Veteres (Civita Castellana) National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia The terrifying archetypal power of the Gorgon is rendered visually in this large terracotta antefix, part of the temple known as the Lo Scasato of Falerii Veteres, perhaps dedicated to Apollo. The large and barred eyes, the mouth marked on the sides by deep wrinkles and the scarlet tongue that flickers between the fangs reiterate the monstrosity of the mythological subject, although this gorgoneion falls into the so-called 'beautiful' type, with more humanised features, established in the fourth century BC. The head of the Gorgon, positioned as a covering for the ridge of the roof, takes on the value of an apotropaic mask aimed at averting evil. Its function was to dissuade the unwary visitor with its horrifying grimace from entering the forbidden place of the temple, thus becoming a protector of the threshold, of the limit between the known and the unknown, the human and the superhuman, ready to petrify anyone who catches its eye.

Gem with the goddess Rome I-II century AD carving on carnelian Capitoline Museums, Glittica Collection of Dino and Ernesta Santarelli Rome is portrayed with the usual pose and attributes: sitting on armour on which the shield is placed, the sword held in the right hand, while the left supports a winged Victory offering her a garland. The cult of the goddess Rome, glorious personification of the city, spread from the second century BC to Greece and the Hellenic East. The non-Romans began to give the Roman dominion divine attributes, instituting festivities, the Romee, and erecting dedicated temples. Although the concept of deification of a city belonged to the Hellenistic-Oriental culture, the cult was also present in Rome itself, where Hadrian built a temple dedicated to Venus and Rome on the Via Sacra, joining Venus, progenitor of the Empire, to the greatness of Rome, which became guide of the world, thus encouraging osmosis between traditional Roman culture and Hellenistic ideals.

Slab with Luperci Augustan age ceramic (terracotta) National Roman Museum, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme By permission of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, National Roman Museum The subject of the slab has been identified with the race of the Luperci, young priests protagonists of the Lupercalia. This was a festival in honour of the god Faunus, protector of cattle, which took place in the Lupercale, the sanctuary cave where Romulus and Remus were nursed. After the initiation of two young men into adult life following an animal sacrifice, numerous Luperci ran naked around the Palatine Hill, striking women with strips of goatskin as a sign of fertility. Their race, purifier of people, evoked the ritual originally performed by shepherds who moved around the flock to create a magic circle as protection from wolves: a festivity which, in its wantonness and purification, celebrated a wild condition, prior to the formation of laws, thus emphasising the link between the birth of Roman civilisation and the eternal cycle of life.

Leontocefala statue II - III century AD marble National Roman Museum, Baths of Diocletian By permission of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, National Roman Museum On this marble statue, albeit with mutilated head, the enigmatic god Leontocephalus was recognised as one of the divinities of the cult of Mithra, widely spread in the Roman world between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. All its iconographic elements allude to a cosmic dimension: the lion's head is the Sun, the wings are the expression of the rapid flow of time, the coils of the serpent refer to the sinuous course of celestial motions;

with the keys he opens the doors of the annual cycle while the sceptre refers to the power of time over all things. In Mithraic mysteries, the god Leontocephalus would symbolise the spiritual journey that the initiate must make through the planetary spheres, represented by the serpentine coils. Crossing the gates of cosmic time, the follower will thus be projected into an eternal present, without past or future, proper to the divine dimension.

Gem with she-wolf and twins late I century BC - early I century AD carving on cornelian Capitoline Museums, Glittica Collection of Dino and Ernesta Santarelli The famous theme of the she-wolf suckling the twins occurs in the founding myths of various cities with the main meaning of romanitas, the set of identity values radiated by Rome. Driven out of Alba Longa but miraculously spared by the Tiber that entrusts them to the she-wolf, during this first phase of life Romulus and Remus are indissoluble; then it will be their very object of desire, to found the Urbs and become its king, which will lead them to differentiation. The auspices drawn from the flight of birds are the discriminating moment between the two: the favour of the gods in fact hangs on the side of Romulus and Remus will instead play the role of subverter. The final splitting of their identities is accomplished with the extreme provocation of Remus, who crosses the sacred and impassable threshold of the walls. The sacrifice of the twin by Romulus will become inescapable who, thanks to this ritual, will purify himself and the kingdom.

Fragment of group with pair of terracotta statues 480 BC terracotta Provenance: Temple of Mater Matuta, Satricum (Borgo Le Ferriere, Latina, Italy) National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia On the acropolis of the ancient Latin city of Satricum, frequented since the Iron Age, stood the sanctuary dedicated to Mater Matuta, the initial phase of construction of which dates back to the last quarter of the eighth century BC. The exhibit in question is the partial reconstruction of a group of life-size clay statues that surmounted the roof ridge of late-archaic phase, depicting giants and pairs of gods. In particular, Athena and her protege Heracles were recognised in the fragment. A second pair represents Dionysus and his nurse Ino- Leucotea, a Greek divinity comparable to Mater Matuta, both goddesses of dawn and birth. In close connection with the cult of the prehistoric Great Mother, Mater Matuta embodied a generating power linked to the earth, the body and the natural and cosmic cycles, configuring the feminine as a necessary mediating element between the human and the divine world, between the finite and the infinite, between life and death.

Relief with representation of the twelve zodiac signs early Imperial age white marble National Roman Museum, Baths of Diocletian, already in the Kircherian Museum collection By permission of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, National Roman Museum A sundial is an archaic scientific instrument that uses the shadow of the sun to indicate the passage of time and the movements of the stars. This relief in white marble, dating back to the early Imperial age, can be considered as such, even if the fine manufacture tends towards a value that is more ornamental than practical. The frame, housing the twelve zodiac signs, has a concave surface inside on which is carved a circular sundial, a representation of the inverted celestial vault. Besides the extreme attention to detail, the fascination of this object lies in its being a representation of the profound union between earth and sky, able to satisfy that cosmic feeling present in the soul of ancient man who, observing a projected shadow, perceived the biological and planetary cycles.

Oscillum with footprint I-II century AD marble Capitoline Museums, Palazzo Nuovo, Sala Colombe

Inscription: Isidi Frugifer(a)e n(ostrae?) Genio vasabi (!) (---) (---) (---) sae domum posuit. [To Iside Frugifera, our patroness (...) placed this gift.] This oscillum is characterised by the footprint motif and an inscription that recalls the dedication of the object to the Egyptian goddess Isis Frugifera. It is an ex-voto in thanksgiving for a successful journey: in Roman times it was in fact the custom of pilgrims who visited the sanctuaries, or of those who faced a long journey, to offer to a deity objects with dedications of itus et reditus, of outward journey and safe return. Found inside the Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, where it was kept from the 16th century because it was believed that the footprints were those of the angel that appeared on the mausoleum of Hadrian at the time of Pope Gregory the Great, it also constitutes an epigraphic testimony of the existence of an Isiac sanctuary on the Campidoglio. It is thus an object that gives us back the traces of a journey that is first physical and then spiritual, through centuries of religious syncretism, in an itus without a return towards the new Christian sensitivity..

Architectural fragment decorated with winged scarab I century AD white marble Capitoline Museums, Palazzo Nuovo, Sala Egizia A scarab with spread hawk wings is carved at the centre of the slab. The front legs are carried forward, the median and posterior legs collected along the body while the head is rendered with a segmented profile. The winged scarab is the depiction of the Egyptian god Khepri, the one who picks up the Sun rising from the night sea. Just as the dung beetle rolls its ball of dung, Khepri pushes consciousness towards awakening, becoming a symbol of movement and resurrection. Given its size, this fragment of Roman age may have formed part of a frieze of a small sanctuary dedicated to Egyptian gods. The motif then returns symbolically to the helmet of Domitian in the guise of a pharaoh on the Obeliscus Pamphilius today in Piazza Navona, bearing witness to how these 'foreign' beliefs even had emperors among their most faithful disciples.

Bronze cinerary urn in the shape of a house mid-VII century BC bronze Provenance: Falerii Veteres (Civita Castellana, Italy), Necropolis of Montarano, tomb 30 National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia Finely crafted, this hut-shaped Etruscan urn was used to contain the ashes of the deceased. The double sloping cover with the series of crossed slats reminiscent the wooden framework of house roofs. This object substantiates the spiritual belief of life beyond death: in the incineration ritual, the body lost its physicality, which was transferred to the urn, the shape of which represented the dwelling, thus allowing the deceased to perpetuate the link between previous life and the next one. This symbolic transposition therefore had the function of recalling the essence, position and status symbol of the person in relation to their home, this latter being understood as an important nucleus of social belonging, stability and freedom where he/she could fully assert their personality.

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