(Jazz music)
Hello.
I'm Peggy Fogelman,
the Norma Jean Calderwood Director
of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Welcome to Bank of America's Masterpiece Moment.
Today I'd like to talk about one of my favorite works
in our collection,
the Farnese Sarcophagus,
and tell you why I think
it's truly a masterpiece.
In 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner
opened the first American museum
ever established by a woman.
She rejected traditional methods
of displaying art according to time period or region
and instead prioritized a sense of intimacy and emotion,
inviting visitors to have their own personal experience
to the works of art,
just as she herself did.
She combined paintings and textiles
and furniture and antiquities
and continually rearranged them
as the collection grew;
she lived among these treasures for twenty years.
As part of her will, she stipulated
that artworks remain displayed as she left them,
and no items may be acquired or sold by the museum.
One of the largest and most important works of art
in the museum is the Farnese Sarcophagus,
made around the year 225.
Weighing over 7,500 pounds,
this rectangular marble coffin
was the last port of call
for a wealthy Roman citizen.
Hundreds of sarcophagi survive from ancient Rome,
but this one is notable for the remarkable quality
of its decoration,
its impressive history of ownership
and its amazing state of preservation.
Sarcophagi were used for burial in ancient Roman times,
so it's no surprise
that the images on this example
relate to ideas about life and death.
The balletic, graceful
and sometimes mischievous figures
on its four sides
celebrate the afterlife.
They include satyrs- mythological creatures
that were part man, part beast-and maenads,
female followers of the wine god, Dionysus.
The maenads pick grapes,
while the satyrs interrupt their work
by flirtatiously pulling at their garments
and exchanging amorous glances with them.
Their harvest of the wine
symbolizes the cycle of life,
and the joyful-rather sexy-imagery
reminds the living that they should "carpe diem,"
or seize the day, while they still can.
The reclining figure on one side
may be the sleeping Ariadne,
the mortal bride of Dionysius,
which is fitting, since sleep was a metaphor
for a peaceful death.
The Farnese Sarcophagus
takes its name from the celebrated Roman family
of Renaissance collectors and diplomats,
and its journey to the Gardner Museum
is really a fascinating one.
It was excavated around 1530
and became part of the collection
of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese,
the governor of Tivoli.
He placed it in the gardens of the family villa in Rome,
where artists were able to study it
and make drawings based on the sculpted reliefs on its sides.
Several centuries later,
it was transferred to the Vatican
and narrowly escaped the looting
of famous antiquities by Napoleon
when he invaded Rome.
When it finally returned to the Farnese family,
they decided to sell it.
In 1897, the archeologist Richard Norton,
son of writer and cultural scholar Charles Eliot Norton,
brought the sarcophagus to Mrs. Gardner's attention,
noting, quote,
"even Boston would [not] object to its frank sensuality"
and claiming that it embodied
Keats' "Ode on the Grecian Urn."
Gardner purchased the work through Norton
from an antiquities dealer in Rome.
An export license was granted
in March 1898,
and it was shipped to the United States in 1900.
Fascinated by this alluring object
with an august history,
Mrs. Gardner installed it between two columns
in the beautiful, blooming courtyard
of her new museum,
where she hoped it would continue
to inspire artists as it had in earlier times.
We've only moved this sculpture once
since the Gardner installed it.
Thanks to the support
of a Bank of America Art Conservation Project grant,
we moved it in 2017 to gain access to all four sides
in order to clean and restore it
in preparation for an exhibition.
Conservators used many different methods
to achieve the best results,
including two different laser-cleaning systems.
Their work led to new discoveries,
including the existence of original pigments and gilding.
While we tend to think of ancient sculptures
as just a sea of white marble,
they actually were often painted
with a variety of bold colors.
In this case, we discovered significant amounts
of "Egyptian Blue,"
thought to be the very first manmade pigment.
Isabella Stewart Gardner always hoped
that the works of art in her museum
would spark the imagination
and generate new creativity
long into the future.
I want to thank you for taking the time to watch today
and to learn more about the Farnese Sarcophagus
here at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
I encourage you to join the conversation
and discuss the piece with friends and family.
And please visit
the Bank of America Masterpiece Moment website
to sign up for alerts and ensure
that you never miss a single moment.
To sign up to receive notifications
about new Bank of America Masterpiece Moment videos,
please visit
www.bankofamerica.com/ masterpiecemoment.