Madam Lucretia and the Talking Statues

In the heart of the city lives one of the most ironic Roman women. We are writing about "Madama Lucrezia" (in English Madam Lucretia), a member of the urban Talking Statues, known as the Congragation of the Wits, which is a group of classical monuments where the Romans posted satirical verses against the politicians.
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?

 

Madama Lucrezia

The marble foot

Il saltarello (medieval dance)

 

Marforio: from the Roman Empire to the Oscar night

C'è Roma e Roma keeps on writing about the "City Talking statues" known as "The Congregation of Wits",classical monuments where the Romans posted satirical verses against  the politicians (such as nobles families).  

The best friend of Pasquino (C'è Roma e Roma wrote an article about it)  is "Marforio", a marble statue from the I B.C., today settled in the yard of  Palazzo Nuovo (in English: New Palace), a building which is part of Capitoline Museum.
The sculpture represents a reclining bearded man holding a shell on its hand; this iconography allows to identify it as a river god or the Tiber.  
According to the tradition, the name Marforio is a corruption of the Latin inscription "mare in foro" (in English: the sea in the Forum) which decorated a circular basin discovered in the Forum, near the statue.
Another theory explains that the term Marforio comes from the Marfuoli family that lived near the Forum.
In 1558 Pope Sixtus V ordered to move the sculpture to piazza San Marco, where Giacomo Della Porta planned a fountain using Marforio as a decoration; but in XVII century it was relocated in the yard of Palazzo Nuovo.
The basin was used as drinking trough until 1816 when became part of the Dioscuri Fountain, set opposite the Quirinal Palace.
One of the most famous dialogue between Marforio and Pasquino is an invective against Napoleon; indeed during the French invasion of Italy someone posted on the statue a satyric sheet about the French general, accusing him to steal Italian artworks.
(The Italian dialogue is hard to translate in English. It is a play on words in Roman dialect using the verb "steal" and the surname "Bonaparte").
Today Marforio is famed thanks to the Oscar Movie "The Great Beauty" by Paolo Sorrentino.
The international poster is a brilliant photomontage representing the colossal statue behind the main character Jep Gambardella, dressed like a perfect and bored dandy.

Marforio (Palazzo Nuovo)

International poster of "The Great Beauty"