Veleia’s bronzes collection. New archaeological and scientific data and interpretations

Cavalieri, Marco [UCL] et al.

Three bronze statuettes belonging to the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale at Parma, have recently been re-examined. They all come from the old excavations of Veleia, a small Roman town in the Apennines, South of Piacenza and Parma. The archaeological researches on the site were promoted in 1760 by the Duke of Parma, don Filippo di Borbone, in the area next to the church of Sant’Antonino di Macinesso, after the discovery - in 1746 - of the bronze fragments of the well-known Tabula alimentaria.This find brought eventually to the identification of the area as the long lost municipium Veleiatium. Remarkable artifacts, such as the statuette of the so-called “drunken Hercules”, came to light already during the first excavation campaign. After the discovery, the three items - Hercules, Dionysos and Alexander (all around 25 cm high) – underwent several restorations and were exhibited to the public in different ways. The most recent exhibition dates to 2012. The three statuettes are well known to scholars. The collaboration between the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Emilia Romagna, the Centre d’étude des Mondes Antiques of the Université catholique de Louvain and AGM Archeoanalisi allows now to reconstruct the context of the finds through a thorough documentary study of the old excavation, to discuss the historical and artistic peculiarities, and to present the compositional data, the production stages and the ancient restorations, determined by XRF analyses and microscopy.