CENTRALE MONTEMARTINI (ROME) - The large sailing ship points straight towards the coast. The sails are swollen, the crews ready to launch ropes and lifeboats. To mark the way, on the deep blue tiles of the sky, is the lighthouse of the port of Ostia. Most likely, made in imitation of that of Alexandria in Egypt. This is how the rich Claudius Claudianus, an illustrious character of African origin who also held numerous political positions under Septimius Severus and Caracalla, celebrated in his fruitful trades by decorating the walls of his rich Roman domus with mosaics. Today, that masterpiece, created between the end of the 2nd and the very first years of the 3rd century AD and found between 1875 and 1901 during the works for the opening of Via Nazionale, stands out in the rooms of "Colori dei Romani. Mosaics from the Capitoline Collections. ", among the first exhibitions to open in the capital after the weeks of forced closure, from 27/4 to 15/9 at the Centrale Montemartini, with a hundred works until today kept in the Capitoline deposits. "An important exhibition, with a very scenographic setting - the superintendent Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli tells ANSA - and which is part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Rome Capital, because almost all the works on display were found after 1870".ANSA the superintendent Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli - and who is part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Rome Capital, because almost all the works on display were found after 1870 ".ANSA the superintendent Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli - and who is part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Rome Capital, because almost all the works on display were found after 1870 ".
"When the Celio Antiquarium was then closed - adds Claudio Parisi Presicce, curator of the exhibition with Nadia Agnoli and Serena Gugliemi - they remained mostly closed in the warehouses".
Studied and restored, those mosaics today find frescoes and sculptures with which they furnished the buildings of origin in 4 thematic sections: The art of mosaics among the Romans; living and living in Rome between the end of the Republican age and the late ancient age, that is, luxury residences and domestic contexts; the spaces of the sacred and the Hilarian basilica; the mosaics of the funerary buildings.