Lucrezia is a colossal Roman marble torso from the 2nd century A.D, about 3 meters high and settled near the Basilica of Saint Mark.
The work is disfigured but its clothes allow to identify it as Isis (in Italian: Iside), the Egyptian goodness of the fecundity, venerated also in Rome
Indeed the torso may be a part of a colossal statue dedicated to Isis settled in Campo Marzio and moved to the current location in 1500, thanks to cardinal Lorenzo Cybo.
According to the legend, the name Madama Lucrezia comes from "Lucrezia D'Alagno", the lover of Naples king Alfonso V d'Aragona; when the king died, she was forced to run away to Rome, due to Palace hostility.
Throughout the centuries the statue was the protagonist of a carnival ceremony, called "cerimonia dei guitti" (in English: mummer's ceremony). During the rite, every man (usually artists and odd men) chose a woman and showed her to the statue, which was decorated with a necklace made up of garlic and ribbons. The couples started to move around Madama Lucrezia, dancing the "saltarello", a medieval leaping dance coming its name from the Italian verb "saltare" (in English: to jump).
In the centuries the people attached only few satirical verses to the statue, one of them in 1799, when the torso was dropped and someone attached this sheet to her back: "I just can not stand it any longer, about the failed try to establish a Roman Republic.
A last curiosity about Lucrezia! According to a popular tradition, the enormous marble foot, which is located near Palazzo Grazioli, could be a part of the original Madama Lucrezia (goddness Isis) colossal statue. Cinderella lost her shoe?
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| Madama Lucrezia |
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| The marble foot |
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| Il saltarello (medieval dance) |
