#romeceramiccity

c.r.e.t.a. rome

Ceramics, Residencies, Exhibitions, Teaching & the Arts

2015 & 2020 NCECA International

Residency Award Partner

Casa Rubboli

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 30, 2021
1 min

Casa Rubboli

Casa Rubboli stands at the base of via Nazionale just before the Markets of Trajan, attached to the 13th-century Colonna tower. The late 19th-century building is named after Vincenzo Rubboli (1835-1895) who commissioned the building. Designed by the architect Pietro Carnevale (1839-1895) the neo-Renaissance palazzo is noteworthy for the rich decoration of its facade in polychrome maiolica. The extensive ceramic embellishment was executed by Paolo Rubboli (1838-1890), the brot

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2773rd Birthday of the Eternal City

Lori-Ann Touchette

Apr 22, 2021
2 min

2773rd Birthday of the Eternal City

Buon compleanno Roma. Today marks the official 2773rd birthday of the eternal city. Romulus, the first king of Rome, and his twin brother Remus were said to have been found being suckled by a she-wolf on the slopes of the Palatine hill. This 2nd century AD Campana relief found reused in the Baths of Constantine (now in Berlin) shows the shepherd Faustulus looking rather surprised at the sight. Livy (1.4) calls into question not only the identify of the twin’s father but also

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“Canova Eterna Bellezza”

Lori-Ann Touchette

Jun 23, 2020
1 min

“Canova Eterna Bellezza”

The exhibition “Canova Eterna Bellezza” unites over 170 works to celebrate the more than 40 years spent by the artist in the eternal city. Spanning the late 18th to early 19th centuries, the exhibition excels in its recreation of the artistic milieu of those decades through the display of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Canova’s contemporaries. An extraordinary exhibition presented in Palazzo Braschi, the Museo di Roma, with its emphasis on Rome in the period of the Gra

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Musei Capitolini

Lori-Ann Touchette

Jun 17, 2020
1 min

Musei Capitolini

Visiting the Musei Capitolini these days is a joy. Although reservations are necessary, the number of visitors is markedly reduced. One has the opportunity to linger over individual pieces without other. One piece that deserves a longer consideration is this fragmentary terracotta sculpture. Attributed to Greek or Magna Grecia artists, the polychrome free-standing sculpture dates to the early 5th century BC. The reclining figure is probably an Amazon as indicated by her white

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“Colours of the Etruscans: Terracotta treasures at the Centrale Montemartini”

Lori-Ann Touchette

Jun 8, 2020
2 min

“Colours of the Etruscans: Terracotta treasures at the Centrale Montemartini”

It has been exciting the past few weeks as museum after museum in Rome reopens. Our first foray was to the Centrale Montemartini, the extension of the Capitoline Museum collections, housed in the oldest electrical plant of Rome. We couldn’t have chosen better. The setting is stunning but we were blown away by the current exhibition “Colours of the Etruscans: Terracotta treasures at the Centrale Montemartini”. The extensive show presented a series of painted terracotta archite

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Late 19th/early 20th century Italian Tiles

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 27, 2020
1 min

Late 19th/early 20th century Italian Tiles

This selection of late 19th/early 20th century Italian tiles demonstrate a range of techniques, from hand-painted to stamped and stencilled in a limited colour palette. #romacittàdellaceramica #romeceramiccity #terracotta #maiolica @ Lago di Bracciano

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The Ruins of Ancient Lavinium

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 24, 2020
1 min

The Ruins of Ancient Lavinium

The ruins of ancient Lavinium, the city founded by Aeneas and precursor of Rome are situated in Pratica di Mare. The Museo civico archeologico Lavinium contains the material excavated from more than 60 years of excavations. To the east of the city was discovered a sanctuary of Minerva. An over life-size terracotta polychrome statue of the goddess is identified by her aegis and helmet. Unusual is the addition of a Triton. Of particular interest are a series of circa 70-100 ter

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“Empire”: Elisabetta Benassi

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 21, 2020
1 min

“Empire”: Elisabetta Benassi

Winner of the third edition of the Italian Council (2018), Elisabetta Benassi’s installation “EMPIRE” was displayed at Palazzo Altemps from June to September of last year. This was the second stage of the project which was first displayed in the Italian Institute of Culture in London in the form of a labyrinth. The itinerant exhibition continued to MOSTYN in Wales before being transferred to the Crypta Balbi which will be its permanent home. “EMPIRE develops in an installatio

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Bartolomeo Cavaceppi

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 19, 2020
1 min

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi

The sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (1716-1799) was perhaps the most important restorer of antiquities in Rome in the period of the Grand Tour. A strict collaboration with the Musei Capitolini and Cardinal Alessandro Algardi. He also worked with Gavin Hamilton and Thomas Jenkins, the two most important dealers of antiquities. In 1755, his encounter and long friendship with Johann Joachim Winclelmann, the “father of art history” resulted in a new conception of the restoration of

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Reconstruction of a Polychrome Terracotta Temple Pediment

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 17, 2020
2 min

Reconstruction of a Polychrome Terracotta Temple Pediment

The Capitoline Museums contains the reconstruction of a polychrome terracotta temple pediment dated to the mid 2nd century BC). Discovered in several hundred fragments in the late 19th century in via San Gregorio, the road that runs from the Circus Maximus to the Colosseum, the pediment represents the most complete example of a late Republican temple pediment found in Rome. After 10 years of restoration and study, the pediment was presented in an exhibition in 2002 and is now

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Etruscan Terracotta Heads

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 15, 2020
1 min

Etruscan Terracotta Heads

A series of Etruscan terracotta heads in the Vatican Museum come from a votive deposit in the sanctuary of Cerveteri. Dated to the 3rd centuries BC, the first four heads reflect the influence of Hellenistic portraiture with its emphasis on the characterisation of specific types, the youth, the child, the “Celt” to more identifiable portraiture in the case of the female head. The last image dates to the 2nd century BC and is in “veristic” style. This style is connected to Late

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Hut Ash Urns in Terracotta

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 13, 2020
1 min

Hut Ash Urns in Terracotta

The Proto-historical section of the Baths of Diocletian has an impressive number of hut ash urns in terracotta of the proto-Etruscan/Latium periods (9th-8th centuries BC). The urns are miniature versions of the mud and wattle huts in which the Iron Age population lived. The majority of burials were in biconical ceramic urns. It is estimated that hut urns represent only one percent of cremation burials, perhaps reserved for the highest levels of society. #romacittàdellaceramic

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“Masterpieces of Antique Chinese Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum”

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 13, 2020
1 min

“Masterpieces of Antique Chinese Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum”

“Masterpieces of antique Chinese Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum” was an exhibition presented at Palazzo Venezia in 2016/17. The fourth of five exhibitions at Palazzo Venezia as the result of an agreement between Italy and China, 74 works traced the Chinese porcelain tradition from the Song and Yuan dynasties (960 – 1368), in particular the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) works made for the imperial court in Jingdezhen, and finally the latest works of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911)

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Terracotta Moulds

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 11, 2020
1 min

Terracotta Moulds

The subject of today’s post is terracotta moulds. In antiquity, moulds could be made of either terracotta or plaster. For small-scale pieces, terracotta moulds were commonly used. The large collection of terracottas in the Villa Giulia includes the Etruscan 5th-century BC terracotta moulds presented here. They were for the production of antefixes that would have decorated the ends of roof tiles on temples as shown on the reconstruction of the Etruscan temple of Alatri (3rd-2n

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“Una Nota Che Non c’è”

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 11, 2020
1 min

“Una Nota Che Non c’è”

The exhibition “Una nota che non c’è” at the Galleria De Crescenzo & Viesti in collaboration with Montrasio Arte (Monza e Milano) in the fall of 2019 presented 15 monochrome ceramic works of the outsider artist Giacinto Cerone (1957-2004). The title, inspired by the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, was mentioned numerous times by Cerone as expressive of what he sought in sculpture and is applied here to a series of works dated from 1993-2004. A pure artist who worked in many

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Two Panathenaic Amphorae from Vulci

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 8, 2020
1 min

Two Panathenaic Amphorae from Vulci

Two Panathenaic amphorae from Vulci are on display in the Vatican Museums. The earliest one is attributed to the Michigan painter and dates to 510-500 BC, whereas the other by the Berlin Painter and dates to 480-460 BC. Filled with olive oil from the Grove of Athena in the Academia, these storage amphorae were given to the winner of the panhellenic games held in Athens every four years. On the front the Athena Promachus by Phidias on the Akropolis is represented. An inscripti

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“Rubbish Heaps”

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 6, 2020
1 min

“Rubbish Heaps”

“Rubbish heaps” are the equivalent of treasure troves for archaeologists, with pottery providing chronological markers and also evidence for local and imported wares. The “butto” of Palazzo Altemps in fact contained materials from the second half of the 14th through the early 17th centuries. Palazzo Altemps takes its name from the latinization of the surname of the Austrian Cardinal Hoenemps who in 1568 acquired the Renaissance building constructed c. 1477 for Girolamo Riario

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"Giuseppe Tucci"

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 6, 2020
1 min

"Giuseppe Tucci"

The Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale "Giuseppe Tucci" in Rome was an extraordinary collection of Asian art founded in 1957. Until 2017, its more than 40,000 objects were housed in Palazzo Braccaccio. The museum closed on 2017 and the collections was transferred to the the Museo della Civiltà in EUR. For now, there is only a temporary display of the collection, although the completed reinstalltion was slated for 2019. The Asian collection included Japanese and Chinese ceramics

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Villa Giulia Museum

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 4, 2020
1 min

Villa Giulia Museum

Several large-scale terracotta seated statues and busts of Demeter and Kore from the sanctuary of Demeter in Ariccia were treated in an earlier post. More common however were small-scale images of deities and anatomical terracottas. The Villa Giulia Museum has a number of particularly intriguing examples of wombs that were dedicated in the sanctuaries of Etruscan goddesses. The terracotta models were presented as a prayer or thank offering for female fertility and the succes

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Reuse of Storage Amphorae

Lori-Ann Touchette

May 2, 2020
1 min

Reuse of Storage Amphorae

In an earlier post, we considered the stacked amphora fragments at Monte Testaccio. Today we are looking at another reuse of storage amphorae, this time in Roman architecture. Most of the reused amphorae at Testaccio and also in Roman vaulting are olive oil containers from Souhern Spain of Dressel type 20 or 23. The earliest examples are from outside Rome. In the Magazzini Traianei at Ostia (AD 126) two Dressel 20 amphorae were placed in each corner of the cross-vaults wherea

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