Jeff's Blog - Saturday, October 4, 2014 - Capitoline Museum
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Wow do I love the Capitoline Museum. I spent all day there, from 9 till 6, after seeing a few outdoor sights in the Imperial Forums for an hour or so. The museum is loaded with sculptures from Roman history, almost all ancient, but some as young as the 18th century or so. I saw the walls where the names of the annual consuls (presidents) of the Roman Republic were recorded, the five ancient bronze statues donated in 1471 which started the museum, frescoes, paintings, and sculptures sculptures sculptures. And everything is layered, with for example, ancient friezes from some ruin embedded into the walls of the museum as a backdrop behind the art. There are hallways with more sculptures than the entire collection of the DIA. One small room where at least a hundred busts of emperors and their families are on display is called the Hall of the Emperors. Anyhow, the photo below is Marforio, a fountain statue who represents the Tiber River. He's about 30 feet long, and where he originally stood he was one of the five or so "talking statues" of Rome, where people would post notes expressing dissent from the government. Sometimes the talking statues would get into conversations with each other. The other talking statues are in pretty bad shape nowadays, having stayed outside in the elements, but Marforio is still in great shape.
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