Tomorrow two Pompeian bronze statues will be journeying to the John Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. One is the bronze statue of Apollo the Archer, thought to have been found in the Temple of Apollo. In poor condition, the statue will undergo restoration at the Getty Museum.The other statue is the bronze figure of the Ephebe, found in 1925 in the House of the Ephebe (I.7.10 - 12, also known as the House of Publius Cornelius Tegete). Dated to 20 - 10 BC, at some point the ephebe was transformed into a lampstand. The house itself has a lovely outdoor triclinium, so there is a good chance that the ephebe was intended for use during evening meals. At the time of the eruption, however, it had been dismantled and was lying on the floor of the 'tablinum' (room 15), covered with cloth. There are different interpretations of the reason for this! For more details about the finds in this house, see P. Allison's description. The Ephebe has recently been restored by the conservators at the Naples Museum. You can compare what it looked like at the time of its excavation to its present condition in the photo above. The Ephebe will be put on display at the Getty Museum straight away, and will probably return to Naples after a year - the time estimated for the restoration of the Apollo.
2 comments:
So the B/W photo showing the statue standing in the middle of the lapilli is a SET UP! The legs show places of fracture which would not allow teh statue to stand. I wonder how many of the pictures of the excavations showing objects in the lapilli are actually forgeries ...
Very, very many of them! There is lots of evidence for the 'staging' of excavations and for the 'presentation' of finds in the history of the excavations. I have even seen in happen once, about 15 years ago. An archaeologist who shall remain nameless 'borrowed' a terracotta pan (tegame) from the deposito for a photo shoot in the kitchen of a house in Region I ...
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