On the 25th of September 2023, the exhibition Love, Luxury and Beauty in Antiquity opened in China in collaboration with one of the most prestigious archaeological museums in the world, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN).
The project, under the curatorship of the MANN, was conceived with the aim of building a journey through the theme of beauty and love in the classical age, which permeates the entire Greco-Roman culture and comes to life in the vicissitudes of Pompeii and Herculaneum through the precious finds of the excavations.
The structure of this tale, through 127 masterpieces housed in the prestigious Italian museum, is twofold: on the one hand it refers to the poignant story of Pompeii, which ‘had to die to become eternal’, and on the other it reflects on the eternal beauty revealed by the archaeological excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were a source of inspiration for generations of artists to come.
The exhibition winds its way through symbols, myths and gods of classical times around the theme of love and beauty, highlighting the universe of meanings from the classical era found in the splendid exhibits presented. Masterpieces such as the Pothos statue from the 2nd century A.D. and 25 vases from Magna Graecia are exhibited in China for the first time.
The story begins with the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum and the House of the Faun in Pompeii, two mythical sites that show us the high level reached by Roman statuary and Greek reference models. The exhibition continues in three other sections following the themes of love, beauty and luxury, presenting various characters integral to the narrative including: Aphrodite, Eros and Pothos, symbols of the complexity of love; Dionysus, representative of the joy of life and human energy; Helena and Ganymede, points of contact between the gods and the human, figures symbolising human beauty.
The narrative closes with an immersive room built around a cast of a Pompeian body, a symbolic representation of the transience of beauty linked to the events of the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii.
The meaning of the exhibition is an invitation to think and understand beauty as the result of a continuous process of redescription, to observe beauty and love as the mirrors of humanity.
Love, Luxury and Beauty in Antiquity is the second project that continues the story of Western classical culture built in collaboration with the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The exhibition was inaugurated with an opening ceremony attended by Massimo Ambrosetti, Italian Ambassador to China. The event was also attended by Federico Antonelli, Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Embassy in China, and Gaetano di Gesu, architect and artistic director of the exhibition.
The exhibition will be on display at the National Library in Beijing until 17 December 2023, after which it will continue its tour for a stop in Seoul, South Korea.