Articles by: Emily Hayes

Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, covering the ancient Roman town-city Pompeii in a layer of over 30 feet of volcanic ash and pumice. Because no air or moisture could reach the objects that lay beneath the destruction, they were well preserved. These artifacts give insight into the life of a city that existed over a thousand years ago.

The Villa of the Mysteries, or Villa dei Misteri, is a well preserved ruin of a suburban Roman Villa that lies northwest of Pompeii. Most of the walls, ceilings, and frescoes survived. The villa is named after the vibrant paintings in the triclinium, or formal dining room.

The most prominent interpretation of these frescoes is the initiation of a woman into the cult of Dionysus, a mystery cult that required rituals to become a member. Mystery religions never revealed the details of their initiations or practices, so most of the information about them is taken from images and descriptions. 

The Villa of the Mysteries had rooms for dining and entertaining. There were also areas for pressing grapes into wine, several large kitchens, baths, shrines, and marble statues. When the Villa was excavated in 1909, a wine-press was found and restored.

Other artifacts seem to suggest the possible owner of the Villa. Scholars have proposed that L. Istacidius Zosimus, a member of the powerful Istacidii family, was the owner, because a bronze seal was found in the Villa with his name on it. However, a statue of Livia, wife of Augustus, was also found there, and some historians claim her to be the owner.

By 79 AD, however, the house was already 200 years old and probably had several different owners. The Villa of the Mysteries had already been heavily restored after a large earthquake hit Pompeii in 62 AD, damaging many buildings.

Similarly to Pompeii, many bodies were found in the Villa of the Mysteries, and plaster-of-Paris casts were made of them. It took archeologists two decades to completely excavate the property.

During the 1930s, there were efforts to restore the villa’s floors, walls, and frescoes. However, the restoration techniques applied to the frescoes inflicted damage over the years. Wax was used to preserve the frescoes, but it faded the colors of the images.

New restoration work began in May of 2013 with teams of archeologists, architects, chemists, and physicists to remedy damage done by earlier conservators and time. The new technique first identifies the nature of the chromatic alterations and other damage done over time on the frescoes, and then performs the restoration. The detailed mosaic floor decorations were also restored.

The Villa of the Mysteries is set to fully reopen on March 20, after two years of restoration. The restoration was funded by the Special Superintendency for the Archeological Heritage of Naples and Pompeii (SANP). The work was done gradually in the 70 rooms so that parts of the Villa of the Mysteries were still open to the public.

“The Art Show,” an annual fair of the Art Dealer’s Association of America, just ended last weekend. It took place March 4 - March 8 at the historic Park Avenue Armory. The art fair included multiple artworks by Italian Impressionists and Futurists. Many other works draw clear inspiration and influence from these Italian artists. 

An example of Italian influence is manifested in Barry X Ball’s sculptures at Sperone Westwater. His machine-carved and hand-finished works reflect those of the early twentieth century, whose innovation and experimentalism saw a brighter future.

The sculptures of Belgian black marble and bright gold are copies of Umberto Boccioni’s Futurist sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), a man surrounded by flame-like-shapes striding towards a promising future.

The Futurists wanted to break away from the Classical and Renaissance styles that were still prevalent in Italy in the beginning of the twentieth century. Boccioni’s statue is representative of this desire for change; the surface of the statue seems to be transforming constantly, and the powerful strides charge forward towards an unfaltering destiny.

The immediate environment is also carved around the figure. Shapes similar to flames lap at the figure’s legs and give the idea of motion. This idea to sculpt the immediate environment around a figure is voiced in Boccioni’s “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture” (1912). The influence came from another Italian sculptor, Medardo Rosso, who made impressionistic plaster or bronze busts covered in wax of people in Paris. These figures merge into the space around them.

At the entrance of the fair is Luhring Augustine’s booth “Cords,” by Italian conceptualist Michelangelo Pistoletto. It has four panels of mirror with photographic cutouts of stanchions connected by ropes. In a review of the fair by The New York Times, the ropes were interpreted as “an atmosphere of exclusivity fostered by high end galleries like the 72 convened there.” Yet the mirrors incorporate the viewers into the artwork, and set the tone for the rest of the fair. The art invites viewers to find reflections of themselves and their cultural identity.

As the focus moves to the rise of Modernism in the 19th century, viewers do not see Manet and Paris, but James McNeil Whistler and England in “Whistler and His Influence” at Thomas Colville. The seven small paintings and drawings are impressionistic images of people on beaches viewed from far away. Whistler attempts to represent perceptual experiences in his paintings.

This section includes small works by Giorgio Morandi, an Italian painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.

Morandi attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna and was inspired by the contemporary art in books on Impressionism, along with articles by Ardengo Soffici in La Voce. He was able to connect with other artists in Bologna who embraced these new ideas. Morandi often went to Florence to study the works of Giotto, Masaccio, and Paolo Uccello, where he met Umberto Boccioni at the Futurist exhibition Lacerba. Soon after he met Boccioni, Morandi showed his first paintings at the Albergo Baglioni in Bologna and the Galleria Sprovieri in Rome.

The Italian artists represented in “The Art Show” step away from mainstream art to produce something with lasting impact, and continue to influence newer works by current artists. 

“Mater, Maternity in Art” is an exhibition designed to symbolize a journey through the awareness and understanding of the maternal figure not only biologically, but in cultural, societal, and religious aspects as well. The project also looks at the role of motherhood in Mediterranean culture.

The exhibition is to be shown in the Parma Governor’s Palace from March 8 to June 28. It will include 170 works from important Italian artists, such as Pinturicchio, Veronese, Moretto, Giacometti, Pistoletto, and Bill Viola.

The idea to create an exhibition demonstrating the archetypal and ancestral maternal figure began with Elena Fontanella, an Italian archeologist and journalist. She also helped curate the exhibition, alongside Annamaria Andreoli and Cosimo Damiano Fonseca. The project is promoted by the Parma municipality.

“Mater, Maternity in Art” explores the mysteries of life and procreation as it has been represented in art. Art is a form of perception and interpretation, and the works chosen for this exhibition represent human understanding of motherhood and the creation of life, separated into four different sections.

The first section displays prehistoric figurines, including Paleolithic Venus figurines. Sometimes referred to as “steatopygian Venus” figures, these women have accumulated adipose tissue in the buttock region. Among the Khoisan, a tribe from Africa, it is considered a sign of beauty. Women are more likely to form this characteristic than men. It begins in infancy and fully develops at the first pregnancy. These figurines are considered mother-goddesses. The other prehistoric figurines include those from Greek and Roman mythology. The Venus of Savignano, from Rome’s Pigorini Museum, will be showcased at the exhibit.

Viewers of “Mater, Maternity in Art” will also have the privilege of seeing the Ephesian Artemis from the Vatican Museums, frescoes from Pompeii, a tablet with a birth scene from the first century AD from the Naples Archeology Museum and a basalt bust of the goddess Isis from Florence’s Egyptian Museum. Isis was worshipped as the ideal wife and mother. Finally, there will be a third century statue of Persephone from the Lucera Civic Museum.

The second section begins to look at the religious, spiritual, and transcendent aspects of maternity. This section is inspired by the Council of Nicea, convened by Emperor Constantine I in 325 AD, when Christian bishops officially recognized Mary as the mother of God. It showcases Byzantine icons, and the artworks span from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Most important are the Virgin and Child works by Rosso Fiorentino, Filippo Lippi, Andrea Mantegna, Pinturicchio, Tiepolo, and Veronese.

In the third section, there is a shift from Holy to Bourgeois Motherhood and how the family changed in the nineteenth century.

The fourth section covers the 20th century. The figure of the mother is no longer held back by the purity and piety of the past. She is now a woman freed from representations as solely mother, and is facing daily life as a human being. Artists have been searching for a new female archetype, such as Mimmo Rotella, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Max Kuatty, Bill Viola and Matt Collishaw.

This beautiful exhibition not only demonstrates the mother figure’s importance at the beginning of life, but in the internal growth of the individual and humanity. The symbol and sacredness of maternity has existed in the minds of human beings since their beginning, and is still present today, both consciously and unconsciously. This is true in civilizations all over the world.

In today’s society, the figure of maternity and motherhood represents a strong and incorruptible connection. The mother is always depicted as an essential role model. Both ancient and modern works of art address the miracle of life. “Mater, Maternity in Art” brings up important questions for future generations regarding what family means and will continue to mean in the future. 

According to a recent report by Censis, high levels of unemployment and underemployment among today’s youth will lead to poverty in their old age. Continuing economic recession hit Italy especially hard. Young Italians are struggling to save for the future and contribute to their pension plans because of this. They can’t look forward to a comfortable retirement, because they will most likely be just as impoverished.

Young adults are having enough trouble trying to begin a career, let alone save for the future. Only 35% of Italians are concerned about their income in their old age, and only 43% worried about illness. 41% are concerned about long-term care. Even now, 2.5 million seniors are living in places that do not meet their needs, such as not being able to walk. Getting older means paying for more, such as pensions, health care, and nursing homes.

Out of workers ages 25 to 34, 40% earn a monthly net salary of under 1,000 euros. Only 3.4 million young people feel secure in the labor market with contracts that guarantee a reasonable pension.

Another 890,000 young people aged 24-35 are barely living on less formal contracts and are even more likely to be impoverished in their old age.

Even worse off are the 2.3 million youth under 34, the highest level in Europe, who are unemployed and not at school studying. About 4 in 10 people under 25 are not in the workforce. Conditions only get worse as underemployment and unemployment continue. Another cause of this problem is the contributory plan system where young workers put money into their retirement funds sporadically, which does not build up.

Monthly additions will be useless if young workers stay unemployed. Young people who can’t contribute in their early working life will have suffering retirement incomes.