The sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (1716-1799) was perhaps the most important restorer of antiquities in Rome in the period of the Grand...

The Capitoline Museums contains the reconstruction of a polychrome terracotta temple pediment dated to the mid 2nd century BC)....

A series of Etruscan terracotta heads in the Vatican Museum come from a votive deposit in the sanctuary of Cerveteri. Dated to the 3rd...

The Proto-historical section of the Baths of Diocletian has an impressive number of hut ash urns in terracotta of the...

“Masterpieces of antique Chinese Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum” was an exhibition presented at Palazzo Venezia in 2016/17. The...

The subject of today’s post is terracotta moulds. In antiquity, moulds could be made of either terracotta or plaster. For small-scale...

The exhibition “Una nota che non c’è” at the Galleria De Crescenzo & Viesti in collaboration with Montrasio Arte (Monza e Milano) in the...

Two Panathenaic amphorae from Vulci are on display in the Vatican Museums. The earliest one is attributed to the Michigan painter and...

“Rubbish heaps” are the equivalent of treasure troves for archaeologists, with pottery providing chronological markers and also evidence...

The Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale "Giuseppe Tucci" in Rome was an extraordinary collection of Asian art founded in 1957. Until 2017,...

Several large-scale terracotta seated statues and busts of Demeter and Kore from the sanctuary of Demeter in Ariccia were treated in an...

In an earlier post, we considered the stacked amphora fragments at Monte Testaccio. Today we are looking at another reuse of storage...

The illicit antiquities trade and clandestine excavations in Italy came under intense scrutiny for an almost 30-year period in the late...

An extraordinary paradox played out in the very heart of Rome and on the Amalfi coast in Vietri. In 1929, Palazzo Venezia became the...

The Sarcophagus of the Spouses in the Villa Giulia is perhaps the best-known of Etruscan funerary monuments. Found in 1881 in the...

An exceptional terracotta bust by the early Renaissance sculptor Donatello (1386-1466) was on display for almost a year in the Museo...

Creative and multi-faceted, the conceptual artist Luigi Ontani renders himself the subject of his work. From his tableaux vivants of the...

These terracotta bas-reliefs come from the “Casa delle Terrecotte” (House of Terracotta), so named for the fictile decoration of the...

In the ‘Eco and Narcissus” exhibition at Palazzo Barberini, Kiki Smith’s 2004 installation “Large Dessert” dominated the winter audience...

For Earth Day, we focus on the significance of brickstamps for the dating of the Pantheon. The Pantheon’s architectural design is...