Face to Face with Co-Curator Laura Vigo | The Torlonia Collection

For the first time in North America, 57 masterpieces from the iconic Torlonia Collection—an extraordinary assemblage of over 600 Roman sculptures assembled in the 19th century—are on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, on display only until July 19.

​In connection with this major exhibition, co-curator Laura Vigo will be at our institute in Toronto to deliver a dynamic 60-minute lecture exploring the many lives of these works. More than an exhibition, the Torlonia sculptures offer a powerful encounter with antiquity, revealing how images shaped identity, power, taste, and belief in Roman society, and how they were later rediscovered and transformed into “masterpieces” that helped define the Western artistic canon from the Renaissance to today.

​Tracing their shifting meanings across time, Vigo examines their origins as instruments of Roman propaganda and devotion, their revival by Baroque masters such as Gian Lorenzo and Pietro Bernini, and their later collecting in the 19th century. Through conservation stories and new archaeological discoveries, she reveals how these works continue to shape our understanding of the classical past.

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Host or Publisher Istituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto