The new catalogue, born from the analyzes related to the exhibition project Tell me you don’t want to die: the myth of Niobe, intends to update the declinations of the myth in its main sites in the light of the exhibition Niobe and her children in the mirror. The sculptural complex of the VILLÆ of Tivoli at the Uffizi. The sculptural group found in Villa Adriana, recently restored, the decorations of the Grotto of Diana in Villa d’Este and the Niobid complex of the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor constitute precious testimonies for understanding, through the relevance of the tragic and mythological tradition, the immanent drama of the human condition according to an epistemic scheme projected towards the future.

Contents

Incipit

The black and white Niobid group at Villa Adriana
Benedetta Adembri

The restoration of the statuary group of a pair of reclining Niobids from Villa Adriana
Veronica Fondi, Carlo Usai

“Nourish and sate your breast from my lament”:
Niobe and Leto in the Grotto of Diana at Villa d’Este, looking at Ovid, Lodovico Dolce and Giovanni Antonio Rusconi
Davide Bertolini

Polidoro da Caravaggio and the tale of Niobe
Ercole Andrea Petrarca

Team work: The restauration of the Ciampino Niobids
Barbara Caponera

From rhetoric to melodrama: for a phenomenology of “passio”
Andrea Bruciati

Dramatisation as pathos: a post-modern action movie
Andrea Bruciati

Niobe Beyond Good and Evil. Motherly Love and ὕβρις, pain and τραγῳδία
Angela Chiaraluce

Les sculptures vivantes: the VILLÆ and Uffizis groups compared and examined
Andrea Bruciati

Entries

The Ciampino Niobids Group

Niobid, so-called Chiaramonti

Fleeing Niobid, so-called Elder Daughter

Falling Niobid, so-called Psyche

Kneeling Niobid, previously part of a group with the so-called Elder Brother

Niobid, variant of the so-called Second Son of the Florence Group

Niobid climbing a rock, variant of the so-called Diagonal Figure of the Florence Group

Group with recumbent Niobid,originally supported by a crouching brother

Head of Niobe

Head of recumbent Niobid

The minor fragments of the Ciampino Group

Pair of lying figures

Female figure in flight, Chiaramonti-type Niobid

Portion of drapery of a female figure

Fragmentary Statue of a Pedagogue

Leto and the Lycian farmers, Apollo and Diana kill the Niobids, Apollo, Artemis

Bibliography