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THE LIGHT OF THE ROMANS - From 01/10/2007 To 28/09/2008
More than seven hundred pottery oil lamps are conserved in the Museum of Archaeology in Verona, as well as about forty made of metal dating back to the V century B.C. in the late antique age. These all come from finds both in Verona and in other parts of Italy, and they belong to the collections formed between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the Veronese historians Jacopo Muselli, Jacopo Verità and Carlo Alessandri.
130 oil lamps have been selected for this exhibition in order to illustrate the evolution over the course of the centuries of an object that was so important in the ancient world for the illumination of private and public buildings and used by all the social classes. During the Roman era the pottery lamps were the most widely used, while the bronze versions could only be afforded by the wealthier families. Apart from its usage in daily life, these oil lamps were also extremely important in the funerary rituals, helping to light the deceased in his passage towards the Afterlife. Sometimes they would be found in tombs where they had been deliberately overturned so as to represent the “overturning” of daily activities occasioned by death. The innumerable figures painted on the disc of the oil lamp, and especially during the first centuries of the Imperial era, provide us with an endless source of pictures illustrating moments and objects of worship; of domestic scenes; of games and spectacles; of animal and vegetable motifs.
Information and contacts:
Museo Archeologico del Teatro Romano
Regaste Redentore, 2
Tel: 045 8000360 – Fax: 045 8010587