| Abstrakt: |
Three sculpted Greek lions, treated in an important study by Madeleine Mertens Horn published in 1986, have been discovered in Rome in different periods. A careful investigation of the archival, literary and visual sources enables the author to reconstruct the provenances from specific topographic areas of the ancient city, and to propose a new interpretation on the basis of these contexts. In all likelihood created as funerary monuments for ancient Greek heroes and transported to Rome as war trophies or as objects for refined art collecting, the Greek lions in their changed contexts also changed roles in relation to the differing view of them on the part of the Roman world, to the sites in which they were placed, and to the overall decorative program: works of various origins, provenances and periods, collected to be exhibited with new functions and meanings. In particular, the individuation of their provenances from large residential complexes in Rome enables the author's hypothesis that the lions were placed in gardens as elements of a recreated natural landscape populated with wild animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
