On 7 December 2017, during the Hermitage Days, the exhibition “The Fallen. The Dying Gaul and the Lesser Attalid Dedication. From the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples” opened in the Roman Courtyard of the New Hermitage.
Participating in the opening ceremony were Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage; Paolo Giulierini, Director of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale; Maurizio Cecconi, Executive Director of the company Villaggio Globale International; and Leonardo Bencini, Consul General of the Italian Republic in Saint Petersburg.
“Today we are dedicating what is such a remarkable day for us to Antiquity. We have several tremendous events. There is the reopening after a long interval of the permanent display in the halls of the Ancient World and the presentation of an amazing exhibition that has come to us from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples,” Mikhail Piotrovsky said.
The display consists of unique works, surviving Roman copies of the bronze originals that once adorned Athens: sculptures of the Dying Gaul, an Amazon, a Persian and a Giant. The ancient statues formed part of a famous monument (the Dedication) commemorating victory over the Gauls that was installed on the Acropolis in Athens around 200 BC by Attalus I, King of Pergamon.
Mikhail Piotrovsky thanked Paolo Giulierini, the Director of the National Archaeological Museum, for cooperation and assistance in the organization of the exhibition.
“We will be seeing an amazing exhibition “The Fallen”, a display of remarkable masterpieces with a fascinating history that is in itself important for the Hermitage. The amazing sculpture is in essence scholarly masterpieces, showing how history develops. It also relates to the question of what a copy is and how art is handed on,” Mikhail Piotrovsky observed. “The exhibition is taking place in a hall that has become accustomed to the presentation of masterpieces of ancient art from the world’s museums – the river god from the British Museum, the kore from the Acropolis Museum and now the statues of vanquished enemies from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.”
“There is a philosophical question contained in these sculptures,” the Hermitage Director added. “When you want to present your victory, what is it better to depict: yourself triumphant or your defeated enemies? Think about that when you view them.”
Paolo Giulierini said, “When you enter the hall, you will undoubtedly notice how splendidly the works from the Neapolitan museum have fitted in there. The thing is that all the decoration of the hall, including the columns, takes you back to that era and it seems as if the sculptures displayed in it have also been transported back to their own time.”
The exhibition’s curator is Anna Alexeyevna Trofimova, Candidate of Art Studies, head of the State Hermitage’s Department of the Ancient World.
A Russian-language brochure has been prepared for the exhibition (State Hermitage Publishing House, 2017, 32 pp., illus.). The author is Anna Trofimova.
The exhibition is taking place within the framework of the Hermitage–Italy Foundation projects through the agency of Villaggio Globale International.
