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The National Archaeological Museum of Venice is a state museum
dedicated to archeology, located in Piazza San Marco, at the Procuratie
Nuove. It houses a collection of antiquities, the result of Venetian
collecting, with examples of Greek sculptures from the 5th-4th century
BC, the Galati Grimani, portraits from the Roman era, reliefs,
inscriptions, ceramics, ivories, gems and a numismatic collection.
In 2013, with the museum circuit of the museums in Piazza San Marco,
it was the nineteenth most visited Italian state site, with 265,034
visitors. It did better in 2015 with 298,380 visitors, improving further
in 2016 with 344,904 visitors, making it the 18th state site by number
of visitors.
Since December 2014, the Ministry for Cultural
Heritage and Activities has managed it through the Veneto Museum
Complex, which in December 2019 became the Regional Directorate of
Museums.
The National Archaeological Museum originated in the sixteenth
century, thanks to donations from Venetian families, thus acquiring a
collector's character.
Grimani collections
In 1523, Cardinal
Domenico Grimani (1461-1523) bequeathed a group of ancient sculptures
from his private collection to the Republic of Venice. Most of these
works came from a vineyard near the Quirinale in Rome, where the
cardinal was building his residence.
His nephew, Giovanni Grimani
(1500-1593), starting from 1563 dedicated himself to the expansion and
decoration of the rooms of the family palace in Santa Maria Formosa,
with the aim of creating a scenic setting to house his collection. This
was housed on the first floor of the building: almost two hundred Greek
and Roman sculptures were neatly placed in the central hall. The
collection included sculptures from the Roman possessions of the family,
a nucleus of marbles brought from the Venetian mainland and the Istrian
coast and ancient sculptures from Greece. In 1587 this collection was
also donated to the Republic of Venice and on 3 February the college of
senators, in agreement with Giovanni, established that all the Grimani
marbles should be housed in the anteroom of the Marciana Library.
In 1593, on the death of Giovanni Grimani without the preparation of
the collection being completed, the senators of the Republic
commissioned Federico Contarini to take care of the preparation of the
collection. The latter, counting on the Council of Ten and reaching an
agreement with some of the patriarch's nephews, decided to leave some
sculptures in the Grimani palace while others were transported to the
"public statue". This layout was completed in 1596, thanks also to some
donations from Federico Contarini himself.
Seventh and nineteenth
centuries
Other donations of works were made in 1683 (medallions by
Pietro Morosini) and in 1795 (gems and antique vases by Girolamo
Zulian). In the eighteenth century Anton Maria Zanetti drew up an
inventory, thanks to which we know the disposition of the Statuary and
its appearance.
In 1811 further donations had increased the works
of the Statuary to such an extent that some of them had to be exhibited
at the Palazzo Ducale.
Twentieth century
During the First
World War the works housed in the Doge's Palace were moved to Florence,
to then return to Venice between 1919 and 1920. In those years an
adequate arrangement of the works was carried out in the Procuratie
Nuove, where they were organized by era and for artistic currents.
Throughout the century the number of works continued to increase.
Room I houses Greek inscriptions, including some decrees belonging to
cities on the island of Crete and the funerary inscription for Sokratea
(2nd century BC), a fragment of the foot of a colossal statue, a high
relief with Mithras in the act of killing the bull and two Attic
funerary monuments (2nd century). There are also portraits and fragments
from the Roman era.
Room II, a long corridor, displays the
numismatic collection of the museum on the walls, with over 9,000
specimens of coins from the Greek to the Byzantine period.
Room
III conserves Roman copies of Greek originals from the first half of the
5th century BC, including the Roman replica of the head of Hermes
attributed to the school of the sculptor Agoracrito, a head of kore
attributed to the school of the sculptor Calamide, a statuette of
Artemis in march from the 1st century BC, whose head was reconstructed
in plaster on the model of a copy from the Pompeian age, and two
Caryatids, one of which (the one on the left) from the island of Cherso.
Room IV houses Greek originals of the Classical age (end of the
5th-first half of the 4th century BC), largely of Phidiac inspiration,
belonging to the collections of Giovanni Grimani and Federico Contarini
and coming from various locations in the Aegean Sea (Greece, Crete, Asia
Minor). Among these are the sub-scale statues of the peplophoroi
("peplos wearers"). Perhaps coming from a Greek sanctuary are two
statues of Demeter of Attic production (first half of the 4th century
BC), of the type of the statue attributed to Cephisodotus the Elder, a
kore statue of the Ionian school (beginning of the 4th century BC),
known as Abundance Grimani and restored in the Renaissance period [4]
and a statue of Athena from the Attic school (about 410 BC), with a
non-pertinent Roman head from the 2nd century recomposed with the body
in the Renaissance period.
Room V displays Roman copies of Greek
sculptures from the 5th-4th century BC, including copies of Athena by
Kresilas and Apollo Lyceum by Praxiteles, a copy of a head of Meleager
from the school of Skopas and a head of Dionysus of the school of
Lysippos. There are also two heads of Athena, both original Attic from
the 4th century BC: the first, dated to the first half of the century,
takes up the head of Phidias' Athena Parthenos, without a helmet, while
the second, made in the second half of the same century , can be traced
back to a sculptor of the Skopas school. To the left of the entrance
door is a headless statue of Athena Nike from Crete (2nd century BC).
Next to the door to the next room are votive and funerary reliefs.
Room VI is dedicated to the works of the sculptor Lisippo and to the
evidence of Hellenistic sculpture, with Greek portraits from Asia Minor
and Egypt from the 3rd-1st century BC, including that of a boy and that
of Ptolemy III Evergete). There is also a Roman copy of a Dionysus with
a satyr from the second half of the 2nd century BC. At the center of the
room is the Grimani Altar, perhaps the base of a statue, decorated with
satyrs and maenads in relief and with moldings and plant decorations
from the Augustan era.
Room VII houses bronze artefacts from the
Bronze and Iron Ages (5th century BC-3rd century), found in the Treviso
area. The showcases display gems and cameos, including the Zulian Cameo,
in onyx depicting Zeus Aegioco. There is also part of the numismatic
collection, with Greek coins from Dalmatia and Roman coins from
republican Rome; and the funerary stele of Lysander, from Smyrna,
datable around the 2nd century BC.
Room VIII houses Roman copies
of Hellenistic originals, including Ulysses, the three Galatians Grimani
(depicted in the act of falling, kneeling and dead), from originals of
the school of Pergamum dating back to the 3rd and 2nd century BC. and
statues depicting Eros and Psyche, the Hermaphrodite and satyrs. On the
right side is the statue of a muse, original from the 2nd century BC.
from Asia Minor which was transformed into Cleopatra in the Renaissance
restoration attributable to the Lombardo workshop.
Room IX houses
Roman portraits, especially of characters from the imperial family
(Pompeus, Silla, Augustus, Tiberius, Domitian, Trajan and Hadrian. Other
portraits are Renaissance replicas of Roman models, such as the
Caracalla Farnese.
The gallery of Roman portraits continues in
room X (the so-called Balbino, the young Caracalla, Philip the young and
Lucius Verus and female portraits, including two ladies of the Flavian
age and Plautilla). A showcase houses the capsella of Samagher, a 5th
century ivory and silver reliquary with scenes and symbols of a
Christian nature. On the walls there are reliefs from the Roman era.
Room XI houses a collection of sarcophagi, including part of a
garland specimen with the abduction of Proserpina, the front of another
with the massacre of the Niobids (both from the 2nd century) and a
fragment of an Attic sarcophagus with a battle scene at the ships (III
century). On the left there are two slabs belonging to the so-called
throne of Saturn (1st century), coming from Ravenna and placed in the
Venetian church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, from where they were moved
to the museum in 1812 due to the interest of Antonio Canova.
Rooms XIII and XIV house Roman funerary monuments, urns and altars.
These include a sepulchral relief depicting the story of the Argive
brothers Kleobis and Biton (mid-2nd century) and a double cinerary urn,
decorated in relief with festoons and sphinxes.
Room XV houses a
collection of Mycenaean, Cypriot and Greek ceramics with black and red
figures, produced in Attica, Magna Graecia and Lazio, as well as a
fragment of Etruscan bucchero.
Room XVII houses two bricks with
cuneiform inscriptions from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II; Assyrian
reliefs depicting court, war and hunting scenes from the 1st millennium
BC, found in present-day Iraq in nineteenth-century excavations by the
English archaeologist and discoverer of Nineveh, Austen Henry Layard and
entered the museum in 1891, previously exhibited in the Layard gallery
in Ca' Cappello; and late Egyptian sculptures (712-332 BC), including a
basalt cube-statue and two naophora. Opposite are a Roman-era
candelabrum and some depictions of Egyptian deities. In a showcase
dedicated to the theme of "religion and magic" there are finds from the
Greco-Roman era in Egyptian style, Egyptian scarabs and other amulets,
two magical stelae and a pillar supporting a small statue with a
hieroglyphic text.
Room XVIII contains headless female
statuettes, originals from the classical Greek era, male portraits,
Roman copies of Greek originals (including a head from Hermes
Propylaios). On the right wall are three heads of the Alexandrian school
in black stone (1st century BC).
Room XX contains Egyptian and
Assyro-Babylonian antiquities, with works in the funerary or Templar
sphere, including two mummies (1st-2nd century), one of which kept a
fragment of papyrus on which part of the "Book of Breathing" was
reported , statuettes of "ushabti", canopic jars and statuettes and
bronzes depicting Egyptian deities. On the left wall are funerary
reliefs from eastern Greece.