Aart Heering
You couldn't wish for a more beautiful location. Opposite the Basilica of St. John in the Lateran and next to the Scala Sancta, the sacred staircase that brought Empress Mother Helena from Jerusalem to Rome in the 4th century, lies the TeatroBasilica, a small avant-garde theater with an adjacent exhibition space. It will be the stage of 'Emperors – Imperatori Romani in Bronzo' & 'Donne Romane', by the Limburg sculptor and painter Wil van der Laan with texts by the Amersfoort-Roman writer Rosita Steenbeek.
The weathered bronze heads of Caesar on horseback, Augustus, Nero, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius indeed make a majestic impression. They proudly look ahead under the vaults of the ancient crypt, aware of their supremacy over the colossal Roman Empire.
In the adjacent room it becomes clear that not only men were in charge, but that women also played a role in ancient Rome. Van der Laan has immortalized five of them on canvas, with the same determined expression as that of their male counterparts.
- Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and mistress of Caesar.
- Livia, renowned schemer and wife of Augustus.
- Julia, the 'free-spirited emperor's daughter', as Steenbeek characterizes her in the novel she dedicated to her. (Depicted with a big belly, because she was regularly pregnant in order to avoid exile, Van der Laan explained at the opening last Monday.)
- Messalina, the powerful and, according to the Roman historian Suetonius, also debauched third wife of Emperor Claudius.
- En Diana, the goddess of the hunt.
Wil van der Laan, who in his long artistic career has cast statues of Johan Cruyff, Jan Janssen, Anne Frank and the Angel of Maastricht, is fascinated by Roman antiquity.
For his emperor portraits he was inspired by the Bronzi Dorati, the gilded bronze sculpture group that was found 75 ago at Pergola in De Marken and now forms the pride of the local museum. Van der Laan's equestrian statue of Caesar is therefore a (reduced) counterpart of the one in Pergola.
His busts were first exhibited in Pergola and now, together with the paintings, in Rome. Dutch entrepreneur Wijnand Luttikholt, who organized the exhibition, also lives in Pergola.
Van der Laan was looking for suitable texts for the brochure in his work and he found them in Rosita's work, steeped in ancient civilization. The writer was initially surprised: 'I didn't write about all those Roman emperors and women, did I? – I thought – But when I checked it turned out to be the case.'
And so the emperors and women are now presented, in Dutch and Italian, with excerpts from her books. Like Augustus in this quote Julia: “(…) 'An inexperienced, somewhat sickly boy, who would be easy to manipulate, which turned out to be a misconception.'
Octavian was clever and had political instincts. He eliminated opponents and rivals one by one. First Brutus and Cassius, then Sextus Pompeius and then Mark Antony and Cleopatra. He became princeps, pontifex maximus, Augustus, the exalted, Father of the Fatherland and ultimately a god.
When you look at his bronze bust you can see that he had it in him.
“Emperors – Imperatori Romani in Bronzo” & “Donne Romane”, TeatroBasilica, Piazza di Porta San Giovanni 10, Rome Mon-Fri from 16-19pm. Until 9-1-2024. (The exhibition then returns to Pergola)
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