Exhibition "VIVAT ANTIQUITAS“

From 22 June, 2018

Ancient monuments in 18th-century European graphic art

Ancient ceramic works from the collections of the Lithuanian art museum

 

In the broader sense, the French word antique or the Latin word antiquitas describes all ancient culture up to the fall of the Roman Empire (475 AD), yet it also refers to an ancient work or architectural monument created in Ancient Greece, in the territory of the Roman Empire, or in other lands of the Old World that experienced the strong influence of ancient civilisations. The concept of ancient art, or art from the times of Antiquity, was born in the Renaissance and encompassed the ancient Greek and Roman cultural heritage, considered to be classical, an exemplary and mandatory canon, and quintessentially European.

 

This exhibition presents the collection of ancient ceramic works kept in the collections of the Museum of Applied Art and Design. A total of 32 works are on display from Attica and Southern Italy which date to the 5th century BC and 4th century AD. An example from the ancient Greek region of Attica, which is representative of the early Attic school of ceramics, is a unique alabastron used for storing fragrant oils which was created in 480 BC by a master from those times, Syriskos. The work is decorated with black-figure painting and is attributed to the group of alabastrons with black-skinned figures known world-wide. Highly ornate vessels decorated in red-figure painting belong to the art schools of the Southern Italy, Apulia and Campagna regions which flourished in the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The artistic features of these regions formed under the effects of not only Greek and Etruscian, but also local traditions, making the ceramic works’ decor more free, painterly, somewhat more manneristic, in contrast to the grandness of the classic Greek style. Various vessels are decorated with mythological figures (Aphrodite, the winged Eros), characters from comedies, satyrs, masks, animal images, in addition to the favourite palmette, wave, acanthus leaf and rosette ornament motifs.

 

The function of the different vessel types presented at the exhibition, their varieties having formed back in the Classical Greek period (5th–4th centuries BC), dictated their shape. Kraters and skyphoi were vases for storing wine and diluting it with water, the kilyx and kotyle were used to drink wine from, while cosmetics and perfumes were kept in differently shaped containers (alabastron, askos, various flasks, lekythos, lekane), and seafood was eaten from special, round-shaped trays – fish plates and bowls. Smaller dishes – gutas – were used for feeding children. In the early 2nd century as red-figure vase painting slowly fell out of popularity, solely red slip glazed vessels, which were no longer as artistic, started to predominate; oil lamps started being mass-produced to be used as a form of lighting and in rituals.

 

Also on display as part of this exhibition are 18th-century European graphic art works from the collections of the Lithuanian Art Museum which have captured monuments from the times of Antiquity. Themes and motifs from Antiquity became deeply entrenched in the works of Italian, French and German graphic artists from the 18th century. Art and architectural masterpieces from the past proved to be a fine source for copying and reproducing using other art methods – a true benchmark and example to be followed when creating new artistic images. Echoes of the myths and literature of Antiquity are strongly felt in the graphic art of earlier masters (B. Pinelli, illustrations for Virgil’s poem The Aeneid, 1819). The idyllic genre grew widespread (J. Ph. Le Bas, Series of images of Sparta and Athens, mid-18th century), as did landscapes with ruins (A. Campanella, Frescoes at the Negroni Villa in Rome, 1778; F. Piranesi, Images of Ancient Pompeii, 1789). Greek or Roman gods of the Areopage were often chosen to feature in works (G. M. Preissler, Sculptures of the Gods at the Pantheon, 1730), as well as mythical heroes, legendary figures, buildings from the glorious past, monuments from the grand city of Rome (L. Rossini, Column of Phocas, 1822), applied art works unearthed during excavation of Herculaneum (Ercolano) and Pompeii, and frescoes and mosaics dating to these times. Ancient motifs had a strong impact on the Baroque, Classicist and Empire styles that were just in the making.

 

Compiled by Ilona Mažeikienė and Jūratė Meilūnienė

Radvila Palace Museum of Art,
24 Vilniaus st, LT-01402, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 250 5824