Un gruppo di Teseo con il Minotauro dall'"Albanum Domitiani". Origine e dispersione delle antichità Barberini

• Autores: Licia Luschi
• Localización: Prospettiva: rivista di storia dell'arte antica e moderna, ISSN 0394-0802, Nº. 159-160, 2015, págs. 2-24
• Idioma: italiano
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A sculpture of Theseus and the Minotaur from the "Albanum Domitiani". Origin and dispersion of the Barberini antiquities.

    In the 18th century a marble bust representing the Minotaur was housed in Palazzo Barberini near the Quattro Fontane. It was subsequently bought and restored by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi and finally ended up in the Vatican Museums. On the basis of inventories it is possible to establish its provenance from Villa Barberini to Castel Gandolfo, which stood above the ruins of the "Albanum Domitiani". Housed in the antiquarium of the present-day papal villa in the torso of a youth, a copy from an original whose replicas have already been interpreted as parts of groups from the Flavian age representing the myth of the Minotaur (Athens, Rome). Is it possible, with these two fragments, to reconstruct a similar group in the villa of Domitian? The struggle between Theseus and the Minotaur appears to have been a subject particularly admired by Domitian, who in the "Domus Flavia" had a fountain built in the form of a labyrinth, at whose centre a group of the same subject my be hypothesized (a similar motif alluding to imperial power was used in the palace of Galerius at Gamzigrad). In Domitian propaganda a number of factors seem to support the choice of the archetypal image of the labyrinth and of Theseus as an exemplary hero: the resurgence of analogous Augustean symbols, Alexandrian models, allusions to the Athens acropolis and its patron goddess. It is therefore possible to propose the existence of a parallel between Domitian and Theseus -both favourites of Athena, the goddess of "Metis", both presented as civilizing heroes, both seeking the reappropriation and legimization of power that had initially been denied them.