"Hermes and the Journey Beyond: Family Memory in a New Funerary Painting from Ancient Apulia.” Massimo Osanna will deliver the keynote lecture for NYU’s and Columbia’s recurring event, the Larissa Bonfante Workshop of Etruscan and Italic Arts.
Welcoming Remarks:
Barbara Faedda, Italian Academy; Columbia University
Speakers:
Francesco de Angelis, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
John N. Hopkins, Department of Art History and The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Massimo Osanna, Professor of Classical Archaeology, University of Naples “Federico II”; Director General of Museums at the Italian Ministry of Culture
To register for this keynote lecture on Zoom only, please click here.
On the following day, talks are at NYU (in-person only); click here for registration link and details of the November 21 workshop, "Arts of Ancient Apulia in Dialogue."
ABOUT THE KEYNOTE LECTURE
In May 2023 the Carabinieri recovered an ancient mural painting from a London warehouse that had been illegally exported from Italy. Subsequent analyses suggest that this unique piece, datable to the third century BCE, likely decorated a tomb in Apulia, in southern Italy. The painting depicts a family gathering—a total of sixteen members, both female and male—in the presence of Hermes, the god who guides the deceased to the Underworld. Rendered in vibrant polychromy, the figures are individually identified by name through inscriptions in the local Daunian language and script.
This is the first time this exceptional piece will be presented outside of Italy. The talk will highlight its connections with coeval artistic trends both in Apulia and the wider Greek Mediterranean; it will discuss the results of the scientific analyses and the technical and conservation study carried out by the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro, focusing on the materials and pigments employed and on the painter’s working methods; and it will provide an interpretation of its iconography, contextualizing it within the social and cultural world of the ancient Daunians.
ORGANIZERS
Francesco de Angelis, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
John N. Hopkins, Department of Fine Arts, and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
This project is under the umbrella of the Academy’s International Observatory for Cultural Heritage
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Massimo Osanna is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Naples “Federico II” and, since 2020, the Director General of Museums at the Italian Ministry of Culture. He has taught at the Università della Basilicata and been a visiting professor in Paris and Heidelberg. Dr. Osanna has also served as the Archaeological Superintendent of Basilicata and has conducted archaeological excavations at various sites in southern Italy, France, and Greece.
Between 2014 and 2021 he directed the Soprintendenza Speciale di Pompei, Ercolano e Stabia (later, Parco Archeologico di Pompei). In this capacity, Dr. Osanna oversaw citywide safety measures and the restoration of major buildings, along with enhancement and accessibility projects within the Great Pompeii Project. Furthermore, he promoted extensive research in Pompeii’s sanctuaries and public spaces in collaboration with Italian and international universities and research institutes, and conducted new research in the city’s Regio V.
Dr. Osanna is the author of thirteen monographs and over 170 articles on the archaeology of Greece and Italy, ancient ritual, settlement patterns, and phenomena of mobility and cultural contact, as well as cultural heritage management and conservation. Moreover, he has edited fifteen exhibition catalogues and over twenty collective volumes.
