|
COUNT OF LAGUNILLAS COLLECTION OF
ANCIENT ART
Exquisite pieces from great
cultures of humanity
• A stroll through five rooms at the
Museum of Fine Arts in Havana • Tablets with
cuneiform writing • Funereal chalices • Sculpted
head of Amon • Bust of Alexander the Great •
Pan-Athenian amphora and Tanagra figures • Fayum
portraits • Over 600 exhibits bring visitors closer
to several millennia of civilization • Mesopotamia,
Egypt, Greece, Etruria and Rome, vistas of life and
death through history and art
BY MIREYA CASTAÑEDA —Granma International staff
writer—
THE
dilemma of visiting museums or galleries such as the
Hermitage in St. Petersburg or that of the Uffizi
family in Florence is in trying to appreciate all
their great treasures. Rafael’s “Madonna and Child”?
Botticelli’s “Three Graces”? The difference if it is
located in your native city is that you can return
at will. Such is the case with Havana’s Museum of
Fine Arts, and doubly so, because its collections
are housed in two separate buildings, one for Cuban
Art and the other for Universal Art.
The
Universal Art museum, which includes the collection
on which this article is based, was inaugurated in
2001 in the former building of the Asturian Center
of Havana, a luxurious example of eclectic
architecture possessing a natural Spanish
inspiration.
A
specific date has provoked this new tour around one
of its splendid salons, transformed into exhibition
spaces: 50 years since Dr. Joaquín Gumá (Havana,
1909-1980), Count of Lagunillas, donated his
extraordinary collection of ancient art to the Fine
Arts Museum.
In
order to celebrate the event, a colloquium was held
in which, during one of the conferences, City
Historian Eusebio Leal described the collection as
“one of the most important in the Western
hemisphere” and affirmed that Dr. Gumá is a “patron
of Cuban culture for his act of altruism and
solidarity.”
A
stroll through the five halls in which the
collection is displayed, the Lagunillas Collection
imposes a similar dilemma when facing the splendor
of each of its pieces: it is impossible to pass any
of them by.
SOME
3,500 YEARS BEFORE OUR TIME
Aymée Chicuri, a graduate in Art History with 15
years’ experience as a specialist at the Museum of
Fine Arts, proposes that we carry out the same tour
that a visitor would. “So, we’ll go in chronological
order, stopping at the most important pieces in each
hall.”
The
tour begins with Ancient Asia where the oldest
exhibits in the collection are on display,
Mesopotamian pieces dating back to 3,500 AD. “We
have some Sumerian pieces, including tablets
inscribed with cuneiform writing, others from the
Babylonian and neo-Babylonian cultures, plus a group
of five works of art from Phoenicia, those great
navigators of antiquity, those that unified the
Mediterranean against the Roman Empire.”
Chicuri points out that almost all the objects in
this group – numbering 45 – are made from clay or
earthenware; just two are made of bronze and, with
the exception of the two large ceramic containers
from Tell-el-Obeid, part of the Lagunillas
collection, they arrived at the Museum in 1993 from
the Academy of Science, and are on permanent display
(thanks to funds from the La Salle College).
EGYPT: LIFE AND DEATH
“We
have divided the Egyptian display into two large
halls; one dedicated to life and the other to death.
This is basically because our 113 exhibits do not
cover the whole chronology of the period, and by way
of thematic grouping, we can provide visitors with
the best possibility of communication with and
understanding of the country, its history, daily
life, the state, administration and religion.”
The
vast majority of the exhibits belonged to Lagunillas,
seven came from the Academy’s collection, and there
has also been one recent donation – specifically for
the scientific event celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the Lagunillas Collection – from
Christian Loeber, principal curator at the Museum of
Hanover: a vase from the Neolithic culture of Nagada.
Nor
did the multi-colored wooden sarcophagus belong to
Lagunillas: this was donated by Egypt in recognition
of Cuba’s assistance in the salvage and rescue of
the Abu-Simbel temples in 1974.
The
group of funereal artifacts, dating back to distinct
eras, includes four exquisitely-made chalices to
guard the internal organs of the deceased, votive
steles, scarabs of the heart, and a papyrus from the
Book of the Dead.
A
specialist in Ancient Asia and Egypt, Chicuri
affirms that the most beautifully crafted piece in
the collection is the singular Head of Amon in black
basalt, “small in size, it is exquisitely made, on
which one can see the differences of texture, on the
smooth finish of the face with its soft expression,
and on the rough crown, in order to support the gold
in which it is covered; still, if one looks at it in
the light, you can see the reflection of the gold.”
An
interesting fact. The body of this sculpture of Amon
is found in the Louvre Museum and “we are thinking
that at some point, we can bring together the head
and the body and mount an exhibition both here and
in Paris although, unfortunately, they will be
separated again afterwards.”
GREECE: THE COUNT’S GREAT PASSION
The
most relevant section of the collection – in terms
of the quality and quantity of exhibits – is Grecian
art, which was also the great passion of the Count
and is displayed over three halls, situated in what
was once the grand ballroom.
The
Ceramics Hall distinguishes itself in terms of
wealth and beauty and this is where we find
top-quality pieces, representing every period,
technique and almost every description. “These are
not any old vases, they are luxury items, and this
collection is truly marvelous.”
The
iconography of Grecian ceramics is significant
because, unlike other cultures, particularly
Oriental culture, the Greeks represented human
beings at the centre of life and thus, the vases are
like open volumes representing the life of the
Greeks.
We
can see a variety of subjects depicted on the vases:
sports, life in the gynaeceum, war, myths. But
besides this, each vase has its own particular use:
there are vessels used for drinking wine, others for
mixing wine with water, as well as
amphoras and goblets.
The sculptures are positioned in chronological
order, and busts from different periods – archaic,
classic and Hellenistic – can be enjoyed. Here, says
the specialist, it is worth stopping to observe
three busts displaying the evident influence of
Praxiteles, and also undeniably the remarkable and
imposing head of Alexander the Great, “a piece from
an international catalogue.”
ETRURIA, THE ROAD TO ROME
The collection contains just eight works from the
Etruscan period, marvelous if we take into account
how little is known about the region’s history and
the fact that few pieces exist outside of Tuscany,
the region where the Etruscan kingdom – with a
tremendously significant culture and a predecessor
to Rome - was situated. The most outstanding object?
A large amphora and the bronze mirrors.
THE ROMAN HOME AND FUNERAL ART
The Roman exhibition – 174 pieces – like that of
Egypt, is displayed thematically: the Roman home,
the Gods, and funeral art. It is presented in this
way, says Chicuri, because the chronology is
unbalanced, “almost all of it is from the imperial
period. There are just three busts from the
Republic.”
Amongst the most essential works that the specialist
invites us to observe are two large scale mosaics,
and one small impluvium: “a kind of cistern
in the atrium of a Roman house which collected rain
water.”
Illustrating Roman funeral rites, the collection
includes fragments from two sarcophagi, a stone
catalogue, the lid of a tomb, and the Bust of a
Lady, an exquisite relief found in Palmira, in
current day Syria.
It would be inconceivable to miss the Portraits of
Fayum, the most important in the collection. Nine
portraits, painted on wood, showing the life and
death of the subject and placed at the head of the
coffin.”
Fayum is a town in Egypt, but the style of the
exhibits is Greek and they were undertaken during
the Roman Empire, explains Chicuri, thus it is a
very interesting phenomenon linking the three
cultures.
It must have been this trilateral link that
possessed the curators to place the spectacular
Portraits of Fayum in a small corridor, reached by
way of a bridge (from Rome, one can return to
Ancient Asia), that unites the whole of the
Lagunillas collection.
SCALING THE GREAT MARBLE STAIRCASES
Just by walking up the great staircases that
nowadays provide access to the Ceramics Hall of the
Lagunillas, visitors – be they foreign or Cuban –
will be impressively surprised. They begin their
stroll through more than 600 pieces dating back
millennia, 500 of which were acquired by Dr. Gumá
himself.
The Count purchased the pieces at prestigious
auction houses. He had read well and was a
connoisseur. A lawyer, he was a collector with a
marked interest in the authenticity of his works and
his main pride was to ensure there was nothing false
in his collection.
After he presented his collection to the museum in
1956, Dr. Gumá always remained in contact with the
specialists and curators.
The Count of Lagunillas is now a legend far beyond
the collection which, quite rightly, bore his name.
They say that he would go at night to see the
collection, to which he had devoted his life and his
fortune and, with such an altruistic gesture, left
on permanent loan to the Museum of Fine Arts in
Havana.
Some questions. The bust of Amon or Alexander? The
Sumerian tablets or the fragment from the Book of
the Dead? The Pan-Athenian amphora or the Tanagra
figure? Which of the nine Fayum portraits? And
although the poet Eliseo Diego bequeaths us “the
whole of time”, it is, almost always, insufficient. |
