The image of this post is the Triade Capitolina dell’Inviolata a precious roman sculpture showing the three main protectors of the city of Rome Jupiter, Juno (in the likeness of Iuno Regina) and Minerva. They were worshipped traditionally on a temple on the Capitolium, the so called aedes Iovis Optimi Maximi Capitolini.This sculpture was discovered in private villa, and it’s believed to be a copy the original sculpture located in that temple, so you can easily understand its importance.
I will not go on details, there is a lot material you can find on the triad and on this particular sculpture, I will tell you more about its discovery.
Unfortunately, the discovery of this masterpiece was done, in 1992, during an illegal dig near Rome in an area ironically called “inviolata” (Untouched), that was a well known playground for illegal diggers.
The sculpture was sold to a Swiss art merchant for a sum equivalent to 2 millions euros, and was ready to be resold to an American collector (for double that price).
Luckily Italian Police worked well, they had news of this exceptional discovery and they were able to track down the sculpture and to find, in the home of one of the original diggers, a broken arm of Minerva.
That was enough, the piece was clearly fitting the sculpture and that was demonstrating that the documents used by the swiss merchant to sell it were falsified. The sculpture was confiscated and, in the 1994, was returned to Italy, one of the most important success of the police in defending the archeological treasures of Italy.
The Triad arrived In Italy with a prime-time service on the national television and was exposed in the museum of Palestrina near Rome.
Now another battle started… The sculpture was not discovered near Palestrina, but near another pretty little town of the Roman countryside: Montecelio.
Well, a legend said that in the middle age Modena and Bologna fought a war for a stolen bucket, and we Italian are not very much changed.
If for a bucket you can make a war, for this masterpiece potentially bringing tourists and money you can fight too. And fight was.
In 2012, finally with much pump and circumstances, and a lot of politicians making noble speeches a new archeological museum was open, in Montecelio. The central piece the Triad, of course, surrounded by a collection of other findings from prehistorical times to the early middle age passing for the roman empire. Nothing exceptional for Italian standard, but worth a small national archeological museum in another country.
Happy end? Not really, because Italy is Italy, we fight for a bucket, we are able to recover our stolen treasures, our politicians speak very sweetly, and we were even able to find the money to open a museum… but unfortunately not to manage it.
So if you happen to go to Montecelio do not trust the opening time written on google or on the museum site and before starting the long climb to reach it through the picturesque little medieval streets, make a call because usually it is closed, for lack of personnel and money and will, and you will never know it in advance.
And so, this masterpiece now it’s safe at home. Locked down and invisible.
A typical Italian story.
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