Stolen from Death
Exhibit design by Francesco Venezia at the Amphitheater of Pompeii.
A great exhibition project to recount the evocative power exerted by the archaeological site of Pompeii over artists and the European imagination, from the beginning of the excavations in 1748 to the dramatic air raid in 1943. Pompeii and Europe. 1748 – 1943 is an exhibition curated by Massimo Osanna, Maria Teresa Caracciolo and Luigi Gallo which opens to the public on May 27 at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples and simultaneously at the Amphitheater in Pompeii, joining the program of events planned for Expo Milano 2015.
Promoted by the Special Superintendency for Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae and the General Direction of the Grand Project Pompeii, with The Naples National Archeological Museum and organized by Electa, this exhibition is devised as a true journey, in which Antiquity engages in a dialogue with Modernity, and nature with the arts and archeology.
Evoking Egypt, a completely removable pyramid was built in this ancient space to present the casts of the bodies of the victims of the eruption, together with archival photographs documenting the work in the excavations in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The pyramidal form is intended as a twofold evocation: the volcano whose overwhelming eruption buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, but also the temple of Isis in Pompeii. One of the first buildings to be brought to light, it helped disseminate an Egyptian taste through Europe even before the Napoleonic campaigns.
The pyramid is 12 meters high, built almost wholly out of wood with an inner dome made of fiberboard. Visitors pass through it along a ring-shaped path. At the center are placed the plaster casts, and the photographs, partly broken down into fragments and then reassembled in pastiches, are exhibited along the walls illuminated by diffused light.
The exhibition will be open until November 2, 2015.
