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Farnese Bull

2nd-century BC worksArchaeological discoveries in ItalyCattle in artCollections of the National Archaeological Museum, NaplesFarnese Collection
Hellenistic sculpture
Farnese Bull MAN Napoli Inv6002 n01
Farnese Bull MAN Napoli Inv6002 n01

The Farnese Bull (Italian: Toro Farnese), formerly in the Farnese collection in Rome, is a massive Roman elaborated copy of a Hellenistic sculpture. It is the largest single sculpture yet recovered from antiquity. Along with the rest of the Farnese antiquities, it has been since 1826 in the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli in Naples, inv. no. 6002, though in recent years sometimes displayed at the Museo di Capodimonte across the city. The sculpture in Naples is much restored, and includes around the base a child, a dog, and other animals not apparently in the original composition, which is known from versions in other media.Pliny the Elder mentions what was presumably the prime version of it as the work of the Rhodian artists Apollonius of Tralles and his brother Tauriscus, stating that it was commissioned at the end of the 2nd century BCE and carved from just one whole block of marble. It was imported from Rhodes as part of the remarkable collection of artwork and sculpture owned by Asinius Pollio, a Roman politician who lived during the years between the Republic and the Principate.This colossal marble sculptural group represents the myth of Dirce first wife of Lykos, King of Thebes. She was tied to a wild bull by Amphion and Zethus, the sons of Antiope, who wanted to punish Dirce for the ill-treatment inflicted on their mother.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Farnese Bull (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Farnese Bull
Piazza Museo Nazionale, Naples Municipalità 3

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N 40.8534 ° E 14.2505 °
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Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli

Piazza Museo Nazionale 19
80135 Naples, Municipalità 3
Campania, Italy
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museoarcheologiconapoli.it

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Farnese Bull MAN Napoli Inv6002 n01
Farnese Bull MAN Napoli Inv6002 n01
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Farnese Hercules
Farnese Hercules

The Farnese Hercules (Italian: Ercole Farnese) is an ancient statue of Hercules, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by Glykon, who is otherwise unknown; the name is Greek but he may have worked in Rome. Like many other Ancient Roman sculptures it is a copy or version of a much older Greek original that was well known, in this case a bronze by Lysippos (or one of his circle) that would have been made in the fourth century BC. This original survived for over 1500 years until it was melted down by Crusaders in 1205 during the Sack of Constantinople. The enlarged copy was made for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome (dedicated in 216 AD), where the statue was recovered in 1546, and is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. The heroically-scaled Hercules is one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity, and has fixed the image of the mythic hero in the European imagination. The Farnese Hercules is a massive marble statue, following a lost original that was cast in bronze through a method called lost wax casting. It depicts a muscular, yet weary, Hercules leaning on his club, which has the skin of the Nemean lion draped over it. In myths about Heracles, killing the lion was his first task. He has just performed one of the last of The Twelve Labours, which is suggested by the apples of the Hesperides he holds behind his back. The type was well known in antiquity, and among many other versions a Hellenistic or Roman bronze reduction, found at Foligno is in the Musée du Louvre. A small Roman marble copy can be seen over the Museum of the Ancient Agora, Athens (see illustration).

Secret Museum, Naples
Secret Museum, Naples

The Secret Museum or Secret Cabinet (Italian: Gabinetto Segreto) in Naples refers to the collection of 1st-century Roman erotic art found in Pompeii and Herculaneum, now held in separate galleries at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the former Museo Borbonico. The term "cabinet" is used in reference to the "cabinet of curiosities" - i.e. any well-presented collection of objects to admire and study. Re-opened, closed, re-opened again and then closed again for nearly 100 years, the secret room was briefly made accessible again at the end of the 1960s before being finally re-opened in 2000. Since 2005 the collection has been kept in a separate room in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. Although the excavation of Pompeii was initially an Enlightenment project, once artifacts were classified through a new method of taxonomy, those deemed obscene and unsuitable for the general public were termed pornography and in 1821 they were locked away in a Secret Museum. The doorway was bricked up in 1849. Throughout ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, erotic frescoes, depictions of the god Priapus, sexually explicit symbols and inscriptions, and household items such as phallic oil lamps were found. The ancient Roman understanding of sexuality viewed explicit material very differently from most present-day cultures. Ideas about obscenity developed from the 18th century to the present day into a modern concept of pornography. At Pompeii, locked metal cabinets were constructed over erotic frescos, which could be shown, for an additional fee, to gentlemen but not to ladies. This peep show was still in operation at Pompeii in the 1960s. The cabinet was only accessible to "people of mature age and respected morals", which in practice meant only educated men. The catalogue of the secret museum was also a form of censorship, as engravings and descriptive texts played down the content of the room.