Munich Collections of Antiquities Show “New Light from Pompeii”: Enlightening!

Created: 12/19/2022 10:31 am

By: Katja Kraft

Each lamp is a work of art in itself: The exhibition "New Light from Pompeii" in the Munich State Collections of Antiquities impresses with bronze originals from Pompeii.

© Johannes Eber

The State Collections of Antiquities in Munich are showing the show "New Light from Pompeii", which is well worth seeing.

The perfect warm-up show on cold winter days.

Not that "rumoring around in the dark is good".

The candelabra wicks should flicker a little - then the lovemaking will also become more fiery.

"It spoils the pleasure if you don't see the movements.

In case you don't know, eyes are the guides in love,” writes Propertius (about 47 BC to about 2 BC).

A display board quotes him in the special exhibition “New Light from Pompeii” at the State Collections of Antiquities in Munich.

And if you look at the illuminants that are under this saying, you get the impression: the gentlemen and ladies of antiquity knew very well how to keep the flame blazing.

The oil lamps there are strikingly often in the form of gods with imposing phallos;

the oil was filled into the figurines through a hole in the neck and then ignited on the glans.

fiery masculinity,

Dumb servants were used as stands for lamps.

The show shows what it might have looked like.

© kjk

While today we just have to press the switch on the dreadful electric bedside lamp so that the whole room is lit up so brightly that love would sometimes like to close its eyes again immediately, the time of which this show worth seeing is about was one completely different relation to light and darkness.

Let us not be deceived by the modern lighting of frescoes in museums and illustrated books: At that time - the exhibited pieces date from around the period between the first century BC and the first century AD - the artificial light sources were not very radiation intensive;

and because the classical Roman house was designed as a shady oasis against the southern sun, there was little of natural daylight in it.

If you wanted to admire the fantastic wall paintings inside the house,

you had to hold the oil lamp very close to the respective spot.

How intense it must have felt, standing alone in the dark of night, with the flickering images in front of your eyes.

And anyway: what did the Romans see when they partied, worked, lived and loved at night?

Seeing is feeling with the eyes.

If this show is now for the first time devoted to the technology, aesthetics and atmosphere of Roman artificial light, it is also a sensual approach to the emotional world of the people of that time.

Ingo Maurer hovers above it all: the designer's objects add extra flair to the special exhibition.

© kjk

No other ancient city produced as many lighting devices as Pompeii, which was buried in AD 79.

The exhibition brings 180 bronze originals from Vesuvius to Munich: oil lamps, candelabra, lamp stands and figurative lamp and torch holders.

They don't just stand around in the showcases with a lot of exciting information so that we can marvel at the incredibly elaborately designed forms - the exhibition is part of a research project by the Institute for Classical Archeology at the LMU Munich under the direction of Ruth Bielfeldt.

She and her team have all the valuable pieces that have been stored for centuries unnoticed by science in depots of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli and the Parco Archeologico di Pompei,

Design art by Ingo Maurer loosens up the exhibition

They also cleverly add modern lighting art by Ingo Maurer (1932-2019) and make it clear: the desire for warming rays is as old as the invention of fire.

Where there is light, people meet, that is where communication takes place.

The sparkle of bygone times continues to shine into the present.

The last room of the show shows what it might have been like that night in a house in Pompeii.

You can then put on 3D glasses and, thanks to sophisticated technology, take a virtual stroll through antiquity for a few moments.

Enlightening.