Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Man + Machine


A gearhead's dream? We visited Centrale Montemartini years ago when they moved some of the contents of the Capitoline Museum down there while the more centralized digs were remodeled. We made a return visit recently.


Some don't "get it" and we heard from a few of the Academy folks who said so, while most thought it's a wonderful idea to combine these ancient sculpted images of man with massive machines created by men.



Larry had sort of forgotten how much he enjoys this combination. While the machines don't really qualify as ancient, in technological terms they probably are, though there might still be some massive, 10 cylinder diesel engines like these in use somewhere? Just like the sculptures, the pride of the artisans who created these machines is evident. The names of the company who made them are proudly cast into the massive iron covers, printed on the gauges on the control panels and highlighted here in the museum. Truly a gearhead's dream

Mille grazie to Lindsay Harris, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor-in-Charge here at the Academy for organizing the visit.

No comments:

Post a Comment