• Among the 421 pieces of the Presepe, there is a representation of a marble statue, visible in a niche in...

     

    Among the 421 pieces of the Presepe, there is a representation of a marble statue, visible in a niche in the lower right quadrant of the artwork.

     

    This statue represents Asclepius, a Graeco-Roman god of healing and medicine. Asclepius is depicted with his typical attributes: he is bearded, with a snake coiled around the staff he carries. The son of Apollo, Asclepius lived as a mortal healer of exceptional skill. As a youth he trained with the centaur Chiron, and went on to surpass both his mentor and his father, going so far as to be able to revive the dead. Consequently, Zeus struck him with a lightning bolt, either fearing that Asclepius would proliferate his talent for resurrection or at the request of Hades, who resented that his subjects, the dead, were being kept from him. Following Asclepius’ death, he himself was resurrected and joined the gods; by Ovid’s account, Asclepius revived himself by his art of healing (Fasti 6.761-2).

     

    In the context of the birth of Christ, the significance of a statue of Asclepius is readily apparent. Christ too was a healer, and to an audience familiar with Graeco-Roman mythology, Asclepius would recall many of the events of Christ’s life: the raising of Lazarus, the crucifixion, and ultimately the resurrection and ascension. In fact, scholars believe that cults such as that of Asclepius provided helpful points of syncretism for pagans converting to Christianity. Worship of hero-gods, such as Asclepius and Hercules, was particularly popular in the ancient world as the mortal lives of these deities imbued them with a level of familiarity impossible with indifferent gods such as Apollo or Zeus.

     

    Moreover, this figurine is a representation of a specific statue of Asclepius, clearly known to the artist. A monumental statue of Asclepius, the so-called Farnese Asclepius (of Giustini type), dating from the second century A.D., was discovered on Tiber Island in Rome in the sixteenth century and moved to Naples along with the rest of the Roman Farnese Collection. Ferdinand IV of Naples, grandson of Elisabetta Farnese, the sole inheritor of the collections, oversaw the relocation of the Roman collections to Naples in 1787. Since that time, the Farnese collection has constituted the heart of the collections at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. In all likelihood, it is in the museum that the creator of the Presepe first came into contact with the Farnese Asclepius.

     

    In the first place, this statue helps to fix the terminus post quem for the creation of the Presepe to 1787. Moreover, there are clear ideological implications for the inclusion of this statue, which had only recently been relocated from Rome, its home since antiquity. Just as the setting of the birth of Christ in a Neapolitan landscape makes an argument for the centrality of Naples to the history of the Christianity, so does the relocation of this colossal marble to ancient Naples assign to the city a primacy among the capital cities of antiquity, coinciding with a time in Neapolitan history where some of the greatest archaeological discoveries in Italian history were being made at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

     

    Mickal Adler, Junior Specialist, Colnaghi Antiquities

  • Asclepius of the Giustini type. Roman reworking from the late 2nd century AD after a Greek original from the beginning of the 4th century BC. Statue from the Farnese Collection, in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.