Chieti, Taranto & Paestum.
“Taranto has a very interesting museum. I went there with an introduction to the curator, who spared no trouble in pointing out to me all that was best worth seeing...Nothing is charged for admission, yet no one enters. Presumably, all the Tarentines who care for archaeology have already been here, and strangers are few.” George Gissing[1]
After Rome, we cross to the east coast of Italy to Chieti, one of Italy’s most ancient cities 200 kms north-east of Rome. Here in the National Museum we can find excellent examples of realistic Roman portraiture like the bust of an old man from Scoppitto. One scholar has suggested that this kind of portrait should be called “hyperrealism” in view of its “warts and all” treatment of this Roman official.[2] An example of its polar opposite can be seen further south on the toe and boot of Italy at Taranto (Roman Tarentum) whose history dates back to 706 B.C. when it was a Spartan colony. Later with the Roman expansion through Italy, Taranto fell to them; they rendered it powerless by isolating it and cutting off its trade routes. This terracotta head of a goddess with its wavy hair and acanthus- decorated diadem is an excellent example how the Greek aesthetic became appropriated by Roman art. This head should be placed in the context of heavy plundering of Taranto by members of the Roman elite like Q Fabius Maximus and M Fulvius Nobilior who acquired bronze and marble Greek sculpture from the region.[3] Heading north-west now towards the Bay of Naples we arrive at Paestum (Greek Poseidonia) which boats no less than three splendid Greek temples in the Doric order. After the Greeks, Paestum was conquered by the local Lucanians and then the Romans. According to Livy in 298, the Lucanians made a treaty with Rome, but they were generally opposed to the spread of Roman power. One of the greatest archaeological treasures in Paestum are the painted tombs done during the Lucanian period, but owing much to Etruscan images of banqueting shown last week. Found in 1968 by Mario Napoli, the aptly named “Tomb of the Diver” shows a man diving into the sea, completely unusual iconography, as well as more conventional symposium scenes. This may seem far from Roman art, but this “Italic pictorial tradition” may be present in some of the funereal imagery of Pompeii.[4] As for the Romans themselves, the area also boasts the large Arch of Trajan erected by that emperor which contains reliefs (above) with portraits of Trajan in the Decennial type, along with heads of women which recall the Greek classicism of the Taranto head.[5]
[1] George Gissing, By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy (1900).
[2] D’Ambra, Art and Identity, 26
[3] Ibid, 19. Fabius confiscated a large statue of Hercules from Taranto in 209 B.C.; Fulvius took a hoard of 785 bronze statues and 230 marble statues in 189 B.C.
[4] Eleanor Winsor Leach, The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 6.
[5] On Trajanic portraits, see Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, 208-212.
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