One Art Exhibition, Two EU Presidencies

An art exhibition will connect the two EU presidencies, the Greek presidency that has just started and will last until June and the Italian, which will start in the second half of 2014. The exhibition will first take place in Rome and then in Athens. This is a “symbolic exhibition, with few but important artworks from both countries and will be under the auspices of the two presidents of the Republic,” stated the Central Archaeological Council (KAS), which granted permission for the temporary borrowing of six ancient artworks and a Byzantine icon.

These seven important artworks are representative of the civilizations that characterized ancient Greece. The most famous of them is the Relief of the “Mourning Athena” from the 5th century BC, which is displayed in the Acropolis Museum. The exhibition is titled “Evropaiko Pepromeno tis Elladas kai tis Italias” (European destiny of Greece and Italy) and will be held at Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome, from March to July 2014 and in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, from August to September 2014.

The Italians will be exhibiting seven major artworks from museums in the South of Italy and Sicily, that will join the exhibition. One of these artworks is a copy of the Roman sculpture “Tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton.” Apart from the “Mourning Athena,” the Greek artworks that will join the exhibition are a 13th century BC clay tablet from Pylos, a 3rd millennium BC Cycladic figurine from Naxos, a bronze statue of a man from the early Roman period, an archaic daughter, a late Minoan bullhead-shaped rhyton (a glass type) from the palace of Zakros and a Byzantine icon of the “Mother of God Glykophilousa” of the 12th century.

KAS members however, asked the Italian side to send two more important artworks for the exhibition: a sign in the Chalcidian alphabet, from which the Latin alphabet derived, and a portrait of Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus.