Interpretation
In the Medici collections the villano was reinterpreted as a Scythian, or divorced of its genre associations entirely by becoming a royal barber or butler overhearing treasonous plotting against the state, raising it to the level of moralised history, which ranked higher in the contemporary hierarchy of genres. Only since the seventeenth century has it been recognized as having formed one part of a Hellenistic group of "Apollo flaying Marsyas" (akin to the better-known multiple figures of Laocoön and his Sons , the Odyssean groups at Sperlonga, or the Pergamene group of which the Dying Gaul was once a part). The identification with a Marsyas group was introduced in 1669, in a publication by Leonardo Agostini, who recognized the theme in antique engraved hardstones. [4]
The Arrotino was also for a long time thought to be an original Greek sculpture, and one of the finest such sculptures to have survived. As such, plaster copies were made for show and for art instruction (one made for the Royal Academy is now on view at the Courtauld). The original was often displayed beside one of the variants of the other great ancient sculpture of a crouching figure, the Crouching Venus also in the Uffizi collection. [5] However, the Arrotino is now recognised simply as a first-century BC copy from a Hellenistic original.
It is on display in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, alongside Old Master paintings, as it has been since the 18th century.
The Uffizi Gallery is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best-known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the period of the Italian Renaissance.
In Greek mythology, the satyr Marsyas is a central figure in two stories involving music: in one, he picked up the double oboe (aulos) that had been abandoned by Athena and played it; in the other, he challenged Apollo to a contest of music and lost his hide and life. Literary sources from antiquity often emphasize the hubris of Marsyas and the justice of his punishment.
The Gardens of Lucullus were the setting for an ancient villa on the Pincian Hill on the edge of Rome; they were laid out by Lucius Licinius Lucullus about 60 BC. The Villa Borghese gardens still cover 17 acres (6.9 ha) of green on the site, now in the heart of Rome, above the Spanish Steps.
The Loggia dei Lanzi, also called the Loggia della Signoria, is a building on a corner of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy, adjoining the Uffizi Gallery. It consists of wide arches open to the street. The arches rest on clustered pilasters with Corinthian capitals. The wide arches appealed so much to the Florentines that Michelangelo proposed that they should be continued all around the Piazza della Signoria.
The Aphrodite of Knidos was an Ancient Greek sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite created by Praxiteles of Athens around the 4th century BC. It was one of the first life-sized representations of the nude female form in Greek history, displaying an alternative idea to male heroic nudity. Praxiteles' Aphrodite was shown nude, reaching for a bath towel while covering her pubis, which, in turn leaves her breasts exposed. Up until this point, Greek sculpture had been dominated by male nude figures. The original Greek sculpture is no longer in existence; however, many Roman copies survive of this influential work of art. Variants of the Venus Pudica are the Venus de' Medici and the Capitoline Venus.
Cardinal Andrea della Valle was an Italian clergyman and art collector.
The Villa Medici is a Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the more extensive Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French State, has housed the French Academy in Rome since 1803. A musical evocation of its garden fountains features in Ottorino Respighi's Fountains of Rome.
The Venus de' Medici or Medici Venus is a 1.53 m tall Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. It is a 1st-century BC marble copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculpture, following the type of the Aphrodite of Knidos, which would have been made by a sculptor in the immediate Praxitelean tradition, perhaps at the end of the century. It has become one of the navigation points by which the progress of the Western classical tradition is traced, the references to it outline the changes of taste and the process of classical scholarship. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
The Borghese Gladiator is a Hellenistic life-size marble sculpture portraying a swordsman, created at Ephesus about 100 BC, now on display at the Louvre.
The Crouching Venus is a Hellenistic model of Venus surprised at her bath. Venus crouches with her right knee close to the ground, turns her head to the right and, in most versions, reaches her right arm over to her left shoulder to cover her breasts. To judge by the number of copies that have been excavated on Roman sites in Italy and France, this variant on Venus seems to have been popular.
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772–1778) by Johan Zoffany is a painting of the north-east section of the Tribuna room in the Uffizi in Florence, Italy. The painting is part of the United Kingdom's Royal Collection.
The Apollino or Medici Apollo is a Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture of the adolescent god Apollo of the Apollo Lykeios type. It is now in the Uffizi, Florence.
The National Archaeological Museum of Florence is an archaeological museum in Florence, Italy. It is located at 1 piazza Santissima Annunziata, in the Palazzo della Crocetta.
The Pasquino Group is a group of marble sculptures that copy a Hellenistic bronze original, dating to ca. 200–150 BCE. At least fifteen Roman marble copies of this sculpture are known. Many of these marble copies have complex artistic and social histories that illustrate the degree to which improvisatory "restorations" were made to fragments of ancient Roman sculpture during the 16th and 17th centuries, in which contemporary Italian sculptors made original and often arbitrary and destructive additions in an effort to replace lost fragments of the ancient sculptures.
The Wrestlers is a Roman marble sculpture after a lost Greek original of the third century BCE. It is now in the Uffizi collection in Florence, Italy.
The marble Gaddi Torso displayed in the Classical Sculpture Room of the Uffizi, Florence, is a Hellenistic sculpture of the 2nd century BCE.
The Sleeping Ariadne, housed in the Vatican Museums in Vatican City, is a Roman Hadrianic copy of a Hellenistic sculpture of the Pergamene school of the 2nd century BC, and is one of the most renowned sculptures of Antiquity. The reclining figure in a chiton bound under her breasts half lies, half sits, her extended legs crossed at the calves, her head pillowed on her left arm, her right thrown over her head. Other Roman copies of this model exist: one, the "Wilton House Ariadne", is substantially unrestored, while another, the "Medici Ariadne" found in Rome, has been "seriously reworked in modern times", according to Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway. Two surviving statuettes attest to a Roman trade in reductions of this familiar figure. A variant Sleeping Ariadne is in the Prado Museum, Madrid. A later Roman variant found in the Villa Borghese gardens, Rome, is at the Louvre Museum.
The Flaying of Marsyas is a painting by the Italian late Renaissance artist Titian, probably painted between about 1570 and his death in 1576, when in his eighties. It is now in the Archbishop's Palace in Kroměříž, Czech Republic and belongs to the Archbishopric of Olomouc. It is one of Titian's last works, and may be unfinished, although there is a partial signature on the stone in the foreground.
The Old Drunkard is a female seated statue from the Hellenistic period, which survives in two Roman marble copies. The original was probably also made of marble. This genre sculpture is notable for its stark realism.
The Temple of Aesculapius located in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, in Rome, was built in the ionic style between 1785 and 1792 by Antonio Asprucci and his son Mario Asprucci, with help from Cristoforo Unterperger. The temple was perhaps built in memory of the destroyed ancient temple to the god of Medicine on the Tiber Island.
Detail from the Tribuna of the Uffizi by Johann Zoffany:The Arrotino is staged as if in the Tribuna in the 1770s, with the Chimera of Arezzo behind it; such an imaginary assembly of antiquities was a feature of the painting genre called a capriccio.
The Royal Academy cast (Courtauld Gallery), London
