The Colours of Antiquity. The Santarelli Marbles at the Capitoline Museums

The Colours of Ancient times, Catalogue Santarelli Marbles at the Capitoline Museums

This catalogue celebrates a major act of patronage intended to make an extraordinary archaeological heritage available to the general public, in the exceptional setting of Rome’s Capitoline Museums. It shows how polychrome marbles, and their shapes, colours and patterns, make it possible to retrace the age-old history of the city of Rome from an artistic but also social, cultural, political and economic points of view. Studying the creation, circulation, use and symbolic value of marble artefacts tells us a lot about the civilizations of that period. Their popularity in modern and also contemporary society is above all a testimony of how much the historical master craftsmen of Italian and international art copied and were inspired by the legacy of the ancient world. Thanks to the contributions of Paola Santarelli, Andrea De Marchi, Eugenio La Rocca, Alessandro Viscogliosi, Sandro Fiorentini and Vittoria Bonifati, this catalogue examines and describes the history of the Santarelli Foundation and its collections. Previously unpublished essays and a dense collection of illustrations create a broad overview on coloured marble, from distant origins to the twentieth century: reflections on various ancient and contemporary arts, the difficulties and practices of marble processing, and the use and influence of coloured marble in relation to the customs of Rome.