Alla Scoperta dei Musei Vaticani (2015): Season 1, Episode 4 - Il fascino dell'Arte Antica - full transcript

This large Greek cross room

is the exit of the
Pio-Clementino Museum.

On both sides these Telamons
greet us,

which are in a
Egyptian or "Egyptianizing" style.

Now we are approching

to two particolar collections:

the collections of the Gregorian
Museums,

which host Egyptian and Etruscan
finds.

Why were the Popes of the past
interested in

so far cultures
and civilizations?

It's the early nineteenth century,



Waterloo took away
Napoleon from history...

There was an atmosphere that
today we would say reactionary,

Rome, the Church feel besieged.

So it was quite singular this
openness to other cultures

which were even considered
exotic at that time.

The explanation is simple: Egypt

after all, was the setting
of Moses's feats,

of the Jews enslavement...

Moreover that was the period
in which the Western world

has fallen in love with
Egyptian culture, there

were excavations,
expeditions, discoveries

and so even the Vatican Museums
collected these masterpieces

which we are now to discover.

Gregory XVI Cappellari was
for the Italians of the Risorgimento



the emblem of the obscurantism.

Actually he was a very cultured Pope,

proved by the fact that
he was the pope who wanted

VATICAN MUSEUMS DIRECTOR

two specialized and leading edge
departments

in his Museums.
We were in the twenties

of the nineteenth century.

Under Pope Gregory XVI papacy

the archeology lived
a particular time.

In the last two, three decades
there were many excavations:

excavations in the Near East,
excavations in Egypt,

and as well
excavations in Etruria,

WRITER AND ESSAYST

in the Italic areas,
and all this also pushed the Pontiff

to the enhancement
of archeology treasures.

His attention was not directed
to those cultures

which didn't have a close connection
to the Christian faith

CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY
PONTIFICIA UNIVERSITA' LATERANENSE

nevertheless his approach shows
his intelligence and curiosity,

to whom it owes the birth of
the Gregorian-Etruscan Museum

and the Gregorian-Egyptian
Museum.

The Pope even offered all his
personal appanage

VATICAN MUSEUMS - EASTERN ANTIQUITY
DEPARTMENT

that of 1838, to purchase
all Egyptian works and

Egyptianizing ones which were
on papal territory

even ordering to buy
all those antiquities

of collectors and
antique dealers in Rome,

who had knocked many times

to the Vatican doors to offer
their objects from Egypt.

The Vatican took part in
this great "Egyptology" turmoil

because Champollion, who deciphered

the language and hieroglyphic writing,
came to Rome

to visit and observe
personally closely

the Egyptian antiquities
preserved in Rome.

HISTORY OF ANCIENT EAST,
LA SAPIENZA DI ROMA

The writing of the Egyptians is
hieroglyphic writing.

This name "hieroglyph"
already says a lot,

because it is a name that
was given by the Greek

meaning "engraved sacred signs".

When the Greeks arrived in Egypt,

the writing was primarily the domain
of the priests of the temples,

that's why they considered it sacred

but actually since its origins
the hieroglyphic writing

had a strong sacral significance.

In ancient times the stele was
a writing means,

an enduring message,
and the stone it was made

ensured its
continuity over time.

The stelae usually report the
name of the deceased,

then scenes and also the formulae

for introducing the deceased
in the world of the dead.

There is a particular type of
funerary stele

the so-called "the False Door Stele"
that represents a false door

in which it was not obviously possible
to get through because made of stone,

but for the Egyptians it had the same
valence of a real door.

It represented the
transition from the world

of the living to the
world of the dead

and it showed the place to make offerings.

In the chapel took place food
offerings for the deceased

and these food offerings
were very important

because they guaranteed the life
of the deceased in the afterlife.

It is a particular moment
in the Egyptian history,

when a woman rises to power, and she is not
the first woman, there will be four.

It was still a period
in which there is a coregency,

that is, when two characters
are accompanied on the throne,

but sooner the queen will take the
power and have the upper hand.

The queen owns all regal gifts

and she is represented as a man,

so in this stele, she has
the blue crown on her head,

which is the crown of
Pharaoh fighter.

The queen will undergo a damnatio
memoriae

when the nephew
will take the power

and he will chisel away her name
by all the monuments,

but actually in this stele
there are represented together.

The god lives as a human being,

so the god must eat, drink,

the god must be dressed,
must be changed,

the god rests and wakes up every
day as a human being.

All this was guaranteed
by a daily ritual

so the Naoforo
was leaning inside

the temple, which was
inaccessible except to Pharaoh,

to allow the official to attend.

Life on earth
is short like a breath

and there is an eternal life,
a life that allows

the individual to become a deity

in a serene and pleasant situation,
without pain

and all this, however, requires
a passage,

a step which is the funeral,

and the first of the rituals is
the embalming one.

There were mummification procedures:
more expensive, less expensive,

depending on how much money
one wanted to spend...

The brain was extracted,
then a cut was practiced in the body

to extract all the viscera,
which were preserved,

embalmed and put
in the four canopic jars,

which were then placed in a box

in the grave goods near the deceased.

Amulets had a magical value,
of course important,

they could have the Eye,
the apotropaic eye,

there was an amulet
put in the place of the heart,

they made scrabble also
with the name of the deceased,

magic formulas,
to ward off evil,

all this in order to
accompany the deceased in the afterlife.

The mirrors are part, of course, of
the grave goods.

The mirror reflected the image,
the face of the figure

therefore it had an important
magic value:

the person existed since
there was his image.

The mask was a facial coverage
but, at the same time,

it was a double of the face ensuring that
in the event of the destruction

of the face,
there was its substitute,

so a death mask was always placed
over the deceased's face,

then the body was placed
inside a sarcophagus

which represented, for the Egyptians,
a sort of microcosm,

where the lid is the Heaven,
the case is the Earth,

and magically
within this microcosm,

the deceased was transposed
in another dimension.

This wooden board was then fixed

with bandages on the mummy and
it represented the deceased.

It is very likely that
these portraits were also

carried in procession,
perhaps, during the funeral,

a bit as it is today
in the Islamic funeral,

when the portrait is brought,
in fact, on the high stakes,

where the image of the deceased is fixed.

It is definitely
a person of high rank,

as well as its jewelry
identify it, an anonymous

who wants to be represented
as an educated woman,

and we can understand this
by a series of cartoons,

of small scenes that accompany

the entire length
of the woman's body,

and among these there is
a teaching scene

where a young woman
is next to her guardian.

This is what I call
a passport to the afterlife:

it was a text, a papyrus,
a book of magic spells,

which the deceased would play
magically

to overcome all the tests,
and then get to the final round:

the so-called Final Judgement
in front of the God Osiris,

accompanied by 42 judges, who
weighed the heart of the deceased.

For the ancient Egyptians, the heart
was the seat of the truth

so the heart was weighed
on this scale

and it should have weighed as
the feather of the truth:

if it weighed as a feather, the deceased
would have been called "Right of Speech"

and he could enter the
World of the Dead

and become a deity.

The Egyptian collection in the Vatican

is important as
testimony of the Roman Egypt

and what is referred
to the Egyptianizing Period.

In Egypt, the Pharaoh was a god,
then when the Pharaoh ascended

to the throne and sat on the throne
and he was crowned,

he automatically became a deity.

The moment the Romans
entering Egypt,

which was still
an important territory,

that became the Granary of Rome,

they were fascinated
by this monarchy

and they took a series of cues
for a divine monarchy

which is the one of Nero,

of other many emperors and kings
even up to the present day.

These statues are all a little curious

and Roman aristocracy liked them.

The Roman aristocracy probably didn't grasp
all the symbology of the Egyptian statues

but surely
they recognized their force

so those statues became even
decorative elements...

And then the Nile god,
of which we do not have

any three-dimensional statue
in ancient Egypt,

it becomes a three-dimensional statue
within a Roman villa.

There is a part of the Villa Adriana
dedicated to the Egyptian Civilization,

that the Emperor Hadrian
knew very well...

and the protagonist of this
part of the Villa Adriana

is the image of the great love

of the Emperor Hadrian:
the beautiful Antinous

who died in unknown circumstances,

probably tragic, dramatic.

Antinous was deified.
This beautiful boy

is represented as the god Osiris
who died and rose again,

and all around, there are,
in black basalt,

the gods of the Egyptian Olympus.

Egypt entered the orbit of Rome

with the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC,

in fact, it became
the first province of Rome

as it was already
happened with Greece:

the losers won the winners.

The Romans were fascinated
and conquered by Egyptian art,

culture and even religion

and then in Rome you could see
the Egyptian statues,

maybe just like Secmet,
this very important goddess,

very severe, with the face of a lioness
and the body of a woman.

It was not just
an era of the past,

but it was a civilization with all
its masterpieces,

and all its charm...

And what you see in the
Vatican Museums is what

you could see in
the ancient Rome

with the obelisks
brought from Egypt

alongside extraordinary works,

as for example this bronze pinecone
that was a fountain.

In short, Rome and Egypt,
they shook hands.

But in the Vatican Museums there are many,

many other artworks and masterpieces.

Our museums welcome visitors

and bring them in a kind of time travel.

VATICAN MUSEUMs,
ETRUSCAN - ITALIC ANTIQUITY DEPARTMENT

Starting right from the
beginning of the Etruscan

civilization, Villanovan were
the first Etruscan,

at the dawn of the first millennium B.C.

There were no visual

artistic expressions yet,

but a kind of message
conveyed by symbols

and then in this whole
series of triangles,

mazes, concentric circles,
we find many symbols

that speak to us of water,
land and astral symbols.

it is a discovery that dates back
at the time of the Papal State

and the tomb was excavated
in April 1836

by a pair of discoverers

who were not professional
archaeologists:

one, Alessandro Regolini,
was the archpriest of Cerveteri

and Galassi was a retired general.

The fact of putting the cart
of the deceased in the grave

is well documented

by Egyptian and Near Eastern burials.

There were even Phoenician
vessels, certainly a result of trade,

of the contacts that the Etruscans
had with the Phoenicians.

There were also foodstuffs
placed close to the deceased,

so we know that the deceased
should live in the afterlife

ART HISTORIAN

doing best things, or doing
what he did in his previous life

or doing what he failed
to do in his life.

A person of royal lineage:
that was certainly the tomb

of one of the ruling families
in Cerveteri in the seventh century BC,

and it is literally covered by gold.

These are unique objects,

a silver breastplate covered in
gold foil of colossal dimensions,

and this tells us the relations that
the Etruscans had with the East.

The gold, in fact, as in the
Ancient Egypt,

has a magical-symbolic role.

Gold is also intended
as the flesh of the gods

and it represents a passage
to a state,

which goes from the human to the divine.

So, in this tomb we find
the vision of kingship,

which is made through
symbols and parameters

that are not so much those of Italy
or Europe, the Early History...

but those of the Ancient East courts
and Egypt.

In technical term
they are "liminal animals"

that are in defense of a border,

but what is the boundary that
they preside?

It is the boundary between
the world of humans and the world of gods.

Why are the women's graves
so rich?

In the past,
as it regards the Etruscans,

that had made us think
of a kind of matriarchy,

but in fact an authentic Etruscan
matriarchy has never existed.

The woman in that society
was involved in home management,

and therefore education and
the transfer of knowledge.

We have an incontrovertible fact

that testifies the status of women,

because from the
beginning, the epigraphy

shows us that the gentile
name of the father

and the mother's family name
appear jointly.

The transmission of the
name is the point,

the keystone of the matter,

it is not only the
transmission of a name

but we can imagine also
a trasmission of goods and whatever else.

All jewelry, sarcophagi,
and precious relics

of the Gregorian-Etruscan Museum,

are visible today thanks
also, curiously,

to a law enacted
right by the Vatican State

in the early nineteenth century.

At that time, there wasn't any
control on the excavations,

often illegal,
more or less official,

and especially on export
artworks

by antique dealers
or noble families...

And so, the Vatican,
decided to regulate the matter

and it was an idea of the Cardinal
Bartolomeo Pacca,

to establish an administration
office, called

"An administration of the excavations,
monuments

and even of art things".

It was the only one who could
authorize an excavation

or export an object, and not only this:

it requested to public offices

a list of all
archaeological finds

or sacred or profane artworks

and so did with all the
rich Roman families,

the latest was an idea of Canova.

In this way it was possible
to govern, let's say,

the excavation and the market
of these objects.

Many other States copied
immediately this law,

especially the Kingdom of Two Sicilies,

in order to govern,
the excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Let's say that it has been the first
protection law in the world

of the archaeological heritage
and general culture.

They understood that
the objects of the past

were to be protected and safeguarded
also for generations to come.

The protagonist of this part
of the Vatican Museums

is what I call
"The most ancient Italian"

the so-called Mars of Todi.

It is so called because it was discovered
around Todi

and it depicts a young warrior,

a hero of some battle,
evidently Etruscan,

offering a libation to the gods,
that he sacrifices to the gods.

We are in the fifth and sixth centuries BC,

the artist who cast in bronze
the Mars of Todi,

was a colleague of the artists
who cast the Riace Bronzes.

But the Mars of Tody is
a different typology,

that's why I say it's the First Italian,

because it has also all
the somatic Italian features.

He's small, low rear end, short legs...

Think that these little
men were the ones

who formed the Roman legions

that conquered half the world,
Mediterranean and Europe.

One is the so-called Carrara Putto,
around the fourth century,

coming from the Tarquinia area

and the other is the
so-called Graziani

Putto, instead about
the second century,

which hails from the Sanguineto area.

First of all, they express
the deep bond

between the devotees, the
worshiper, and divinity.

And what do they symbolize instead?

They symbolize the life, the
Life that continues,

the life after death,

the life which continues even
after massacres, after the war.

In the Carrara Putto, the child has
the face of an old man,

it is the representation of
the legendary Tagetes,

that is precisely the child soothsayer,

with the wisdom of
the old, the elderly...

A sage with divine powers.

A sort of little genius,
a supernatural being

coming from the ground

that had been ploughed too deeply

and he begins to dictate the precepts
of the Etruscan religion.

At that moment he is making

nearly a journey in
another dimension,

this is also confirmed
by a detail:

the action, which seems almost
sacral,

of the bare foot resting
on a rise in the ground...

that is the close contact
with the land;

in that moment, our Aruspice,

is simultaneously tied to Heaven

through the attribute of the wings,
a supernatural dimension,

and simultaneously to the Earth.

TOPOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT ITALY,
UNIVERSITA' DI FIRENZE

In general, in the Etruscan
and italic world

we find these ossuaries, these sarcophagi
of various materials and

these urns, with a representation
maybe not so realistic,

even if sometimes realist,
of the deceased.

In these sarcophagi there are also

the representation
travels to the afterlife.

In a polychrome sarcophagus we have

a representation of the deceased,

a senior official of
the Etruscan State,

followed by musicians,
a priest, dancers,

in a joyous journey
to another dimension, to the other world.

What interests us more is
the entering

of afterlife demons and then there is
an ad, a superposition

of the myth with the representation
of the underworld.

On the cover urn stands,
according to

the typically Etruscan use,
the couple of banquet spouses.

They were somehow welcomed

by the aristocracy or
Etruscan oligarchy,

who identify themselves with
the values and themes

that this culture produced.

I like to think of vessels
entrusted to the waves of the sea

as images that we
entrust to the airwaves:

it's the transmission of our
Television programs,

in some way a transmission
of images and culture,

and this happened even in antiquity.

Achilles and Ajax cast off their weapons

and they are intent on a board game.

There is also the image, like a balloon

with the words that come out
out of their mouths.

One makes a "three" and the other "four."

The myth and the drama
suspend, and then we know

that these heroes will face
a tragic end,

however, in that moment, the weight
of the looming tragedy is suspended,

even those of the narrated episodes.

The richness of the collections
of the Vatican Museums

is such that you have
literally the feeling

of changing from one era to another,
just walking to the halls

and passing through the Egyptian or
the Etruscan to the Roman civilization.

It is an extraordinary feeling

you prove especially here.

The museum collects
many artworks and artifacts

emerged in the excavations,
especially in the nineteenth century:

at Veio, Cerveteri, Ostia
and of course Rome.

This Museum wanted by Pope Gregorio XVI
in the mid-nineteenth century,

allows you
to meet historical figures,

very important people
of the past:

this was the son of an emperor,
Nero Claudius Drusus, son of Tiberius.

We do not know if he had
just this body

because in ancient times,

they often put a face
of a famous person

on a body much
athletic, almost heroic,

and this was typical in Roman times...

But we know that he died
at twenty-nine:

at that time life was short.

Beyond the beauty and
refinement of these masterpieces,

they are basically pieces
of carved stone,

marble blocks,

but they are so alive, and often
it also turns out...

details of the past life.

For example, we now find ourselves
almost surrounded by marbles,

statues which have been found

among the remains of the Theatre of Ceri,
Cerveteri.

Actually Cerveteri continued
to exist even in Roman times,

and here you can see a dignitary,
an authority of the Roman era

represented inside the theater

together the powerful figures:

here is the statue of Claudius,
Augustus and then Tiberius.

In short, there was this idea of
associate its own image

to that of the powerful, a behaviour that
has never changed over the centuries.

But if we go further we discover
another famous marble group:

that of Athena-Marsyas.

VATICAN MUSEUMS - CHRISTIAN
ANTIQUITY DEPARTMENT

In this part of the Christian
Antiquities Museum is the greater mosaic,

the athletes winners were adorned
by the symbols of victory

that is, the palm and the crown...

These symbols were
used by early Christians

who have depicted
the martyrs as those

who have won the
battle against evil,

and they deserved indeed
the Crown of Glory,

the agon of the Faith.

Today the Early Christian Museum
hosts around

three hundred sarcophagi
or fragments of sarcophagi,

an immense collection.

Some of the most beautiful
among them come from

the Roman basilicas and in primis
from St. Peter's Basilica

and from the Basilica of
St. Paul Outside the Walls.

The thing that leaves us a bit surprised
is that these rich sarcophagi,

well-decorated and
probably very expensive,

were seen by a few people

because the graves were
not open to anyone,

and they were located inside
a burial chamber,

then they were seen
by a small group;

moreover, sometimes the sarcophagi
were just closed and buried.

For us, living in a excess of
image and advertising,

so that our most intimate things

go on Facebook, that was really
incomprehensible:

it is exactly the opposite of Facebook,
we could say.

Jonah is thrown from the ship

because a great storm had burst,

the sailors are wondering who
disobeyed their God,

they were all people of different faiths.

Jonah said, "it was me,
throw me into the sea,

you will see that the
storm will calm down".

Jonah fled from God on this ship

because he did not want to
prophesy Nineveh, the pagan city,

and then, thrown into the sea,

he is swallowed by
this big fish,

symbolically engulfed by death.

Inside this big fish
the Prophet prays to God,

he understands he was wrong
and God forgives him,

and commands the fish
to reject him on the shore.

As the Sarcophagus of the three shepherds

coming from the Catacomb of Pretestato..

this wonderful
sarcophagus with these

shepherds and these
cupid grape-pickers

seems almost an embroidery.

Most of these sarcophagi

have interesting
representations,

and the most frequent theme

is that one of
the Good Shepherd,

who has sculped in
very interesting situations,

with references to Biblical scenes.

He was a pagan figure, an image

that the ancient Greeks even
had linked

to the figure of Hermes leading
the souls of the deceased in the afterlife.

And then that image became,
over the centuries before Christ,

a symbolic image

of the weak bearer's virtues,

the image of this sheep,
this lamb, this ramp

led oh the shoulders of a man
represents the philanthropy;

and here's the reason of
its amazing luck,

in the art and
in the imagination of the early Christians,

because in that image they saw
the whole mystery of Christ.

And then, what is the face given to Christ?

Well, the Christians chose the most

beautiful face: the
Apollo's face.

Look at the

Apollo's face,

for instance the beautiful one,

the Apollo Belvedere in
the Octagonal Courtyard,

while our statuette
is a bit 'more humble,

it is
a beardless face, youthful,

with flowing hair
ringlets over his shoulders:

the same figure that Michelangelo
represents in the Sistine Chapel.

Here's the new Apollo,
indeed the true Apollo,

because that was a past god,
now won.

Every civilization
has tried to reach a

dimension that could go
beyond the mundanity

as guarantee of its survival,

and this, in this place,
you can feel it.

All the Etruscan Museum is a
very interesting museum

if combined with the Egyptian, the
Greek and Roman ones

because together they open up to
a transcendent sense

which again is one
of the fundamental themes of the Museums.

This touches the heart of each one,

as the life of the trees with nests,

the mother who feeds its babies,
the life that flourishes,

the doves that eat
the fruits of the resurrection:

it is an announcement, not a catechism...

However, it is a discovery:
anyone can grasp

the beauty of this life
winning over death

and every visitor,
from all over the world,

can appreciate it
and bring it a memory.

In this stopover to explore
the Vatican Museums,

we have discovered many things:

the first artistic manifestations,
the first Christian symbols,

but in general it has been
a trip in the various stages

of human civilization,
without prejudice of any kind.

It has been a journey
which has made us discover

the creativity,
the sense of beauty of places

and people lived in different times.

It's what we will do next time

it will be something very special...

We will go beyond the works:
we will find out

the buildings whic host these masterpieces

and you'll discover a world
totally new,

little known
and full of surprises and stories.