What is the world's best statue?
Has to be something from the Italian Renaissance, some thing by Michelangelo, David? So perfect that on our recent trip to Carrara we were told that an extremely rich American citizen has created an exact copy with the same marble used for the original.
Trouble is he might have copied the wrong one. For those in the know, the world's best statue, or statues, are the Bronzes from Riace in Reggio Calabria.
A wonderful BBC television program coincided with our return from Carrara and built a convincing argument.
Firstly, the Greek world represented their Gods in human form.
The ancient Egyptians didn't. But the Egyptians knew how to work stone on a massive scale.
The Greeks applied the techniques and created life sized human forms. Eventually perfectly.
Too perfectly in fact and they strove for an even more human representation. They managed it by exaggerating slightly the human body and pose to render it more dynamic.
Art was never the same and we've been exaggerating the human form for our own visual please ever since, including Michelangelo.
So get yourself to the National Museum of Reggio Calabria and see the Riace Bronzes close up.
After painstaking restoration, the Statue A and Statue B are now the driving force behind a campaign to encourage tourism in Calabria.
In effect, they always have been since they were discovered, but a recent television advert caused a stir. Take a look above.
RECOMMENDED LINKS
www.bronzidiriace.org/bdreng
www.museonazionalerc.it
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