The exhibition 'The colours of the
Romans. Mosaics from the Capitoline Collections', on show in
Rome's Montemartini Museum, has been expanded to include a new
section presenting 16 newly restored works dating from the late
Roman period and never before shown in public.
'The Colors of Marble' presents large marble tesserae mosaics
and mosaics made using the opus sectile technique for making
elaborate pavement decorations out of cut and shaped pieces of
coloured stone.
"Opus sectile is a technique that developed mainly from the
3rd-4th centuries AD and was mostly used in large rooms. Colored
marbles became a way of representing the lives of the patrons
and owners of residences, precisely to indulge their need to
express luxuriousness and their own possibility of possessing
precious materials," said cultural heritage superintendent
Claudio Parisi Presicce who, together with Nadia Agnoli and
Serena Guglielmi, has curated the exhibition.
The works on show include mosaics from the Baths of Diocletian
using a mix of marble and porphyry, which were found during
excavations in 1873, and a large mosaic showing plant and bird
motifs from a tomb in the Via Portuense necropolis, which came
to light in 1926 during construction of the Gianicolense ring
road, near Rome's Trastevere station.
'The colours of the Romans' is on show in the Montemartini
Museum, a former power station, until June 25.
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