The Torlonia Marbles Are Coming to Museums in Chicago, Texas and Montreal

Stashed away in a cavernous Roman deposit, hidden from the world for the better part of the last century, the Torlonia Collection — the largest collection of classical sculpture still in private hands — now appears to be continuing its jet-set itinerary that started in 2020.

After a glittering debut in Rome, and star turns in Milan and the Louvre Museum in Paris, 58 of the sculptures belonging to the Torlonia family, based in Rome, will be showcased at the Art Institute of Chicago in March, and will then travel to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Dating from approximately the fifth century B.C. to the early fourth century, the works on view will include highlights of the Torlonia Collection, but also 24 sculptures that were specifically selected for the North American run by the co-curators Lisa Ayla Cakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago, after “multiple trips” to the Torlonia laboratory in Rome where the collection is being restored. (“A magical, once in a lifetime experience,” Cakmak said during a video interview.)

Titled “Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture From the Torlonia Collection,” the exhibition will “feel very different from the European presentations,” Cakmak said. For the curators, it has been important to make it clear “that this is a completely new project,” not just in how it “was presented in our interpretation and storytelling but also the checklist” of works, she added.

It is “intended to be for non-specialists,” people who “might not know much about the ancient world,” but would be interested in seeing what Marcus Aurelius, known to modern audiences through the first “Gladiator” film, actually looked like, said Cakmak. She added that a scholars day limited to experts was “in the planning stages.”

In Chicago, the exhibition will be housed in the Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, which opened in 2009, an occasion “to bring this ancient material into the contemporary world,” Cakmak said.

The collection was very much a product of its time.

In the tradition of storied aristocratic Roman families like the Borghese, Barberini or Doria Pamphilj, Prince Alessandro Torlonia acquired 622 sculptures in the 19th century, which he showcased in a private museum. An 1880 catalog described the collection as “an immense treasure of erudition and art, amassed in silence over the course of many, many years.”

The sculptures were visible, off and on, until World War II. Then they fell out of sight, as the family and the Italian government struggled to find common ground on how to showcase them. An accord, in 2016, included the provision that the sculptures could tour outside Italy.

The restoration of the works, including those traveling to the United States, has been carried out at the Torlonia laboratory, a workshop set up on the site of the original museum, and sponsored by the luxury brand Bulgari. Every new exhibition was an occasion to restore and showcase new pieces from the 620-piece collection, said Carlotta Loverini Botta, director of the Torlonia Foundation, a nonprofit organization that administers the family’s assets.

She added that Cakmak and Raff had “wanted to do an exhibition that spoke to the American public so they chose a much more contemporary approach” in the presentation of works. She was speaking from Paris, where she had returned to an exhibition of the works at the Louvre before it closes on Jan. 6, having been seen already by more than 600,000 visitors, she said.

The presentation in the North American shows is organized thematically in different sections, including one on sculptures found in the family’s considerable properties in Rome and in Portugal. Another section showcases the tastes of 19th-century collectors, explaining how sculptures were reworked and restored to fit those tastes.

“One of the key points that we make is that the reason these sculptures look the way they look, is because they were lived with in these lavish, beautiful homes, and the taste was for a complete sculpture,” which may have required considerable retouching, Cakmak said.

Alessandro Poma Murialdo, president of the Torlonia Foundation, said, “An international projection has always been central to us.”

As a world-class collection, it was right, he said, that it inspire “visitors in as many countries as possible.”