Odissea dalle teste del gruppo di Polifemo in terracotta, XX secolo, set di 2

PAIR OF ULYSSES HEADS IN TERRACOTTA - ODYSSEY FROM THE POLYPHEMUS GROUP 20th century Terracotta head, handmade in Tuscany. The head is part of the sculptural group found in 1957 in a cave in Tiberius' villa in Sperlonga. HEIGHT 47cm WIDTH 27 cm DEPTH 27 cm WEIGHT 8 Kg SQUARE BASE - SIDE X SIDE 17 x 17 cm MATERIAL Plaster BASE MEASUREMENTS 14x14 cm NOTE 01 from Tiberius' Villa to Sperlonga Ulysses (from the Latin Ulyssēs, but also Ulixēs) or Odysseus (pronounced [odisˈsεːo] or in the Latin [oˈdisseo]; in ancient Greek: Ὀδυσσεύς [odysˈseʊ̯s], Latinized in Odysseus, but also at the basis of the more common Ulysses) is a character of Greek mythology. Originally from Ithaca, known as the land of the sun, he is one of the Achaean heroes described and narrated by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the literary work which has him as its protagonist and which takes its name from him. The real name of Ulysses was Odysseus, a name with a formidable meaning that was assigned to him by his grandfather Autolycus, motivating him as "hated by the enemies" that his grandfather had procured for himself, from those who he will make for the primacy of his mind, "future cause of many envies." Ὀδυσσεύς Odysséus derives from the Greek verb ὀδύσσομαι odýssomai, "to hate", "to be hated", therefore it would mean "He who is hated", but among the possible meanings we must mention "choleric" or even "the little one", this last definition would fit to his stature, not very tall. Ulysses, epithet given to him by the Romans and made famous by Livy Andronicus (which means "Wounded in the hip". epithet made up of two words in reference to a wound sustained in the thigh during a wild boar hunt (in the forests of Castalia), he is the "personification" of cunning, courage, curiosity and manual skill. Son of Anticlea, wife of Laertes from whom he inherited the kingdom and of Sisyphus, on his maternal side Ulysses is the great-grandson of Penelope and father of Telemachus and according to many traditions of Telegonus, had with the sorceress Circe. Odysseus had consulted an oracle by which he had been warned that, if he went to Troy, he would return to his homeland only after twenty years and in conditions of poverty. Later, when Agamemnon, accompanied by Menelaus and Palamedes, visited the hero to summon him in honor of the solemn oath he had sworn on horse meat, Odysseus plotted to justify his reluctance to war by behaving like a madman. The three men surprised him with a farmer's hat shaped like half an egg as he plowed a field, goading a donkey and an ox yoked together and throwing handfuls of salt behind him. Palamedes, to check the man's health, tore Telemachus as a child from his mother's arms and placed him on the ground in front of the legs of the beasts yoked to the plough; Odysseus immediately pulled back, pulling the reins to spare his son by exposing his machination, and agreed to join the expedition. Source Wikipedia Sperlonga group. The sculptural group of Ulysses blinding Polyphemus, also known simply as the Polyphemus Group, is a marble work by the sculptors Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydoros, dating back to the 1st century AD. approximately and preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Sperlonga (province of Latina). The fragmentary sculptural group was found in 1957 in a cave in Tiberius' villa in Sperlonga. The vast main cavity of the cave was preceded by a large rectangular basin (fishpond) with sea water, in the center of which an artificial island had been created which housed the summer caenatio (dining room). The pool communicated with a circular internal pool (12 m diameter), where the Scylla Group was located. Two smaller rooms opened onto the main cavity: on the left a horseshoe-shaped room, with a triclinium at the end, and on the right a nymphaeum with waterfalls and water features, at the end of which there was a niche which housed the Group of blinding of Polyphemus. Two smaller sculptural groups were placed between the circular pool and the square pool: the Abduction by Palladio and the group of Ulysses dragging the body of Achilles (a mutilated and fragmentary copy of which is the current Pasquino statue in Rome). A sculpture with Ganymede kidnapped by Zeus' eagle was placed high above the opening of the cave. The sculptural group is colossal in size and has now been reconstructed in the museum with a plaster cast, complete with additions reconstructed based on the existing fragments, which allows you to get an idea of ​​the complex. To recreate the compositional aspect of the group and identify the spatial location of the individual characters who are part of it, a fragment of a Roman sarcophagus from the third century AD, with the same theme, currently kept in the Civic Museum of Castello, was used as an iconographic source. Ursinus in Catania.