Indagini archeometriche su alcuni marmi greci nelle collezioni del Museo Nazionale Romano e dei Musei Vaticani

This paper focuses on the archaeometric identification of the marbles used for nine Greek sculptures, commonly assigned to the fifth and the fourth centuries bc, that appear to have been reused in antiquity in Rome. Four of them are displayed in the National Roman Museum and five belong to the collection of the Vatican Museums. Regarding the locations and contexts where these sculptures were found, three of the first group were unearthed in the area of the Sallustian gardens and one was excavated near the gardens of Maecenas; it is less well-documented, but not unlikely, that the Vatican Museum sculptures were also discovered in Rome. As a part of a wider research project, the paper also reports the results of an examination of a Roman sculpture representing the pedagogue of the Niobids in Palazzo Massimo. Some of the sculptures are generally assigned to Greece, while others find more convincing parallels among works ascribed to the Western Greek area. Both the origin of these sculptures and their reuse is investigated. Standard minero-petrographic analyses were combined with stable-isotope ratio determination to identify the sources of the marbles. The results of the archaeometric investigation only partly confirm the previous identifications proposed on autoptic grounds, an outcome which shows the importance of verifying the results of macroscopic observation by means of laboratory analyses. A statue of a peplophoros previously believed to be made of Parian marble turns out to be Pentelic, while a votive relief traditionally considered to be carved in Pentelic marble can now be assigned to the open-pit quarries of Lakkoi in the Island of Paros. Results indicate two more examples of the same Parian marble from Lakkoi (the Ludovisi and Vatican acroliths), and two other items of Pentelic marble (two reliefs in the Vatican Museums). Other statues among those examined here were made of Parian lychnites (the wounded Niobid in Palazzo Massimo and a head in the Vatican) and Thasian dolomitic marble (a fourth-century bc head in the Vatican Museums and the Roman statue in Palazzo Massimo)