How a famous Greek bronze ended up in the Vatican

(melodic jazz music)

- [Steven] We're in the Vatican Museums

looking at one of the most famous works

in the entire Western tradition.

This is a sculpture known
as the "Apoxyomenos,"

the "Scraper."

- [Beth] By a very famous
ancient Greek sculptor

named Lysippos, we're actually looking

at an ancient Roman copy.

- [Steven] So what we're
gonna try to answer

in this video is how a major sculpture

by a famous ancient Greek
ended up as a Roman copy

in the Vatican in the
city of Rome in the third,

the second and even the
first centuries, BCE.

The Romans not only conquered Greece,

but also its many territories and colonies

and triumphant Roman generals

brought back enormous
numbers of Greek sculptures

and to a lesser extent,
ancient Greek paintings

and even architectural fragments.

- [Beth] Now the Romans were not unique

in making off with booty during war,

there was an age old precedent for that,

but when the Romans confronted Greek art

and brought it back to Rome,

that was a transformational experience.

In fact, Horace wrote

that although the Romans
had conquered Greece,

Greece through its culture conquered Rome,

- [Steven] It symbolized a
great intellectual tradition,

that Rome saw itself as
becoming the inheritor of.

- [Beth] It signified a kind of luxury,

a life of educated cultural refinement,

that seemed very different

than the current life of ancient Romans.

- [Steven] So let's just walk
through how this would work.

Rome would conquer an area,
perhaps a Greek city state,

or perhaps simply an area that
had been allied with Greece

and soon after objects that
were deemed worthy of import

would be packed onto ships
and brought back to Rome,

where they would often be
paraded through the city

during a triumph.

- [Beth] A triumph was
essentially an opportunity

for a victorious general
to exhibit the booty

that they had brought back

and to celebrate their military victory

and it would have given the agent Romans,

who lived here in Rome

and hadn't traveled to
these distant places,

a sense of the wealth and
power of these places,

that were being conquered
by the great Roman army.

- [Steven] And then after the triumph,

an enormous number of objects
would be put on public display

in various parts of the city,

but most famously in the Temple of Peace,

just beside the Roman Forum.

Now ancient Rome didn't have museums,

but in a way places
like the Temple of Peace

become a kind of proto-museum.

So many of these Greek objects
had been used originally

in religious or civic environments,

but the Romans ripped them
out of their original context

and made them aesthetic objects,

made them objects of luxury.

- [Beth] When objects are looted,

whether we're talking
about the ancient world

or the modern world, they often
lose that original meaning.

- [Steven] And the "Apoxyomenos"
is a perfect case in point,

we don't have its original location,

we don't know from literature
or from any evidence,

where this originally
would have been placed,

the Romans took it and now it's here.

- [Beth] But let's be careful,

when we say the Romans took it,

the Romans took the bronze original

and because of this
developing love of Greek art,

ultimately many copies were made of it,

one of the most beautiful is
here in the Vatican Museums.

So the "Apoxyomenos" is
brought to the city of Rome

as war booty and it's set up by Agrippa

in front of the baths that he built

for the public here in Rome.

- [Steven] And it was
in the Baths of Agrippa,

that the Roman public really fell in love

with this sculpture.

The baths were essentially a public place

and a place where the average Roman

could see ancient Greek sculpture.

- [Beth] So what Agrippa did
was considered to be generous,

he was giving this to the people

the way that a private collector today

might donate a work to a museum,

so it could be shared with the public.

- [Steven] So you can imagine
how upset that public was,

when the emperor Tiberius
took the sculpture

from the Baths of Agrippa and
brought it to his own house,

put it in his own bed chambers.

- [Beth] Pliny says Lysippos
was most prolific in his works

and made more statues
than any other artist.

Among these is the man
using the body scraper,

which Marcus Agrippa had erected
in front of his warm baths

and which wonderfully
pleased the emperor Tiberius.

This emperor could not
resist the temptation

and had this statue
removed to his bed chamber,

having substituted another
for it at the baths.

The people however were so
resolutely opposed to this,

that at the theater,
they clamorously demanded

the "Apoxyomenos" to be replaced

and the emperor not withstanding
his attachment to it

was obliged to restore it.

- [Steven] So the court of
public opinion was so loud,

that the emperor actually
gave it back to the people,

it speaks to the power of images,

in a way the sculpture became a way

of differentiating public
good from private greed.

- [Beth] And this was part of
a long standing conversation

in Rome among those like Cato and Cicero,

who believed that this
booty that was taken

should be available to the public

versus those who took the booty
and kept it for themselves

to decorate their private villas.

- [Steven] And all of these
issues remain important today,

our museums are filled with objects,

that come from different places

and many of those objects were looted.

Museums are looking at
their collections now

and wondering whether some of
them should be repatriated,

that is returned to
their country of origin

and in any case how their
meaning has been transformed

by being taken out of
their original context

and put into a museum,

where their meaning is
completely transformed.

- [Beth] The Romans were
not without sympathy

for the conquered peoples, in fact,

Livy wrote very sympathetically
about the King of Syracuse.

If this King were to rise
from the realms below,

with what words could we show
him either Syracuse or Rome,

when after he looked back

on his half-destroyed
and despoiled fatherland,

he would see as he entered Rome

in the vestibule of the
city, almost in the gates,

the spoils of his own fatherland.

- [Steven] So when we
look at the "Apoxyomenos"

now on display in the
Vatican in the 21st century,

we generally look at it as an
exemplar of ancient Greek art

and too often, we forget the complex story

of how this sculpture was
looted, how it was loved,

how it was adopted by the Roman people,

how it was copied and
ultimately ended up here.

(melodic jazz music)