The scaffolding of a niche Round Room of the Vatican Museums hide from view the work of restorers who are removing centuries of grime from the largest known bronze statue of the ancient world: the golden Hercules Mastai Righetti.
For more than 150 years, the figure of four meters high of the Roman god of strength, half human, has remained in that niche, hardly conspicuous among other antiquities for the dark cloak it had acquired.
But only after removing a layer of wax and other materials from a 19th-century restoration did Vatican experts understand the statue’s true splendor as one of the most significant golden statues of its day. Visitors to the museum will be able to see for themselves its grandeur once the restoration is complete, scheduled for December.
“The original gilding is exceptionally well preserved, above all because of its consistency and homogeneity,” said Alice Baltera, restorer at the Vatican Museum.
He discovery of the colossal bronze statue in 1864, during construction work on a banker’s villa near Rome’s Campo dei Fiori square, he made headlines around the world.
Among the visitors drawn to the ancient wonder was Pope Pius IX, who later added the work to the papal collection. To the statue, which represents Hercules at the end of his labors, the surnames of the Pope, Mastai, and of the banker, Pietro Righetti, were added.
The statue has been dated to between the end of the 1st century and the beginning of the 3rd. Even in his day, the imposing Hercules was treated with reverence.
The FCS inscription accompanying the statue on a travertine marble slab indicates that was struck by lightning, according to Claudia Valeri, curator of the department of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Vatican Museums. As a consequence, it was buried in a marble sanctuary according to Roman rites, which considered lightning as an expression of divine forces.
FCS stands for “fulgur conditum summanium”, a Latin phrase meaning “Here is buried a lightning bolt from Summan.” Summanus was the ancient Roman god of night thunder. The ancient Romans believed that not only any struck object was imbued with divinity, but also the place where it was struck and buried.
It is said that sometimes being struck by lightning generates love, but also eternity,” explained Giandomenico Spinola, an archaeologist at the Vatican Museums. The Hercules Mastai Righetti “gained its eternity…because having been struck by lightning, it was considered a sacred object, which preserved it until about 150 years ago.”
The burial protected the gilding, but it also caused dirt to accumulate on the statue, the removal of which, according to Baltera, is very delicate and laborious. “The only way is to work with precision, with special loupes, removing all the small incrustations one by one,” she explained.
The works to remove the wax and other materials that were applied during the 19th century restoration have been completed. Later, the restorers plan to make new resin casts to replace the plaster patches that covered the missing pieces, including part of the nape and pubis.
The most surprising finding that emerged during the preliminary phase of the restoration was the skill with which the foundries they melted mercury into gold, making the golden surface more durable.
“The story of this work is told by its gilding… It is one of the most compact and solid dorados found to date.said Ulderico Santamaria, a professor at the University of Tuscia and head of the scientific research laboratory at the Vatican Museums.
(AP)
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Source-www.infobae.com