Displaying items by tag: frescoes

A group of ancient frescoed stone slabs have gone on display in Italy for the first time since they were looted by an infamous antiquities trafficker known as “The Captain."

According to Reuters, the artworks, dating from 400 BC, were illegally excavated from the ancient Greek site of Paestum, located near Naples.

At first glance the 25 artifacts displayed in the courtyard of a former convent just off the Tiber River here on Tuesday seemed to have little in common: three first-century B.C. fresco fragments from Pompeii were exhibited alongside fifth- and sixth-century B.C. Etruscan and Attic vases, a 17th-century Venetian cannon, a 12th-century mural fragment depicting Christ and three rare 17th-century books. What they shared was a nefarious past.

This weekend marked the reopening of Pompeii's Villa of Mysteries after two years and €900,000 ($973,600) worth of careful restorations to the building's ancient frescoes and mosaics.

The villa is one of the best-preserved homes in Pompeii, which was buried in the ashes of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79, and remained lost until its excavation in 1748. The Villa of Mysteries is best-known for its brightly-colored red and orange paintings of life-size figures, believed to depict the initiation rights of the cult of Dionysus, the wine god.

The Detroit Institute of Arts, renowned for its Diego Rivera murals, is set to open a public exhibition of his works and those of his wife, Frida Kahlo, this month, the biggest since the museum's collection was threatened in the city's bankruptcy.

"Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit" will feature nearly 70 works by the Mexican artists and is the first to focus on the 11 months they spent in Detroit in 1932 and 1933, when Rivera worked mainly on the "Detroit Industry" murals.

Rivera's preparatory drawings for the 27-panel "Detroit Industry" frescoes, which have not been shown in nearly 30 years, will be part of the exhibit opening on Sunday.

A leading Italian art restorer has denied his team has permanently damaged a series of medieval frescoes by Giotto and other artists.

Sergio Fusetti, lead restorer at the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, said claims by an expert reported in the Italian press over damage to the frescoes were completely unfounded.

“The problem doesn’t exist. We carry out regular checks and maintenance, taking off the hard dust that’s been deposited on the frescoes. We have never done anything without the authorisation from the superintendency, which is the culture ministry in the territory,” he told the Guardian.

The Italian government on Wednesday said police had seized more than 5,000 ancient artifacts in a record 45-million-euro haul after dismantling a Swiss-Italian trafficking ring. Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said it was the country's "largest discovery yet" of looted works and consisted of 5,361 pieces, including vases, jewelry, frescoes and bronze statues, all dating from the 8th century BC to the 3rd century AD. The archaeological treasures came from illegal digs across Italy and "will be returned to where they were found," the minister told reporters.

Lavishly frescoed rooms in the houses of the Roman Emperor Augustus and his wife Livia are opening for the first time to the public Thursday, after years of painstaking restoration.

The houses on Rome's Palatine hill where the emperor lived with his family are re-opening after a 2.5 million euro ($3.22 million) restoration to mark the 2,000 anniversary of Augustus's death -- with previously off-limit chambers on show for the first time.

From garlands of flowers on Pompeian red backgrounds to majestic temples and scenes of rural bliss, the rooms are adorned with vividly coloured frescoes, many in an exceptional condition.

Padua’s celebrated Scrovegni Chapel, which houses exceptional frescoes by trecento painter and architect Giotto, was struck by a bolt of lightning on August 9.

The iron cross on the facade was seriously damaged and subsequently removed. The entire electrical system was temporarily knocked offline. The Gazetta del Sud also reports the damage of outside stones.

According to Il Secolo XIX, the news was broken almost three weeks after the event by the local association “the Amissi Piovego.” The group raised the alarm before any statement from city hall was released.

German heritage advocates have accused the Russian Orthodox Church of causing irreversible damage to the 14th-century Brick Gothic church of St Catherine at Arnau near Kaliningrad, especially to its frescoes.

“The… iconography of the painting[s] in St Catherine’s Church in Arnau from the 14th century had not yet been thoroughly researched [and they] are irretrievably lost,” wrote Nicole Riedl, an expert in Medieval wall paintings at Hawk University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hildesheim, Germany in her report, after she visited the church in July with a group of activists from the German-based Kuratorium Arnau.

Thanks to a grant from Bank of America’s Art Conservation Project, the Detroit Institute of Arts has embarked on a research endeavor focused on examining and digitally photographing 13 full-scale preparatory drawings by Diego Rivera for his Detroit Industry murals. The drawings have not been viewed since 1986 and have never been photographed. The project, which started on July 22, 2013, will last through August 2, 2013 and will include any necessary conservation work on the drawings.

Rivera gave the drawings, which are housed in a climate-controlled custom storage in the museum, to the DIA after he completed his monumental Detroit Industry murals in 1933. The series of frescoes, which features 27 panels surrounding the museum’s Rivera Court, depict the then state-of-the-art Ford Motor Company River Rouge Plant. The murals stirred up controversy following their completion and critics deemed the works blasphemous, vulgar, un-American and Marxist propaganda. While members of the Detroit community called for the destruction of the murals, commissioner Edsel Ford and DIA Director Wilhelm Valentiner defended the murals’ right to exist.

Following the research project, 5 of the 13 panels will be go on view at DIA as part of an exhibition of works by Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo created during their time in Detroit.