iFondazione PradaPorta Romana / Largo Isarco
Global Antiquity
150+ artworks tracing links between the Mediterranean and Asia from c. 700 BC to 1000 AD, curated by Salvatore Settis and team in a Podium set by Rem Koolhaas and AMO/OMA.
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Preview: written before the show opened
Before Vesuvius buried Pompeii in AD 79, an ivory statuette of a woman had already made the trip there from the Indian subcontinent. She is lent by Naples' archaeological museum, one of more than 150 objects here that ended up a very long way from where they were made.
The span is roughly 700 BC to AD 1000, with loans from the Met, the Getty, the Prado, the Louvre and the Vatican. Rem Koolhaas and AMO/OMA built the metal and fibreglass displays on the Podium's ground floor. You start between a Roman marble "Indian Priest", a meditating Buddha from Gandhara and a Roman bust said to show Apollonius of Tyana, a philosopher who went to India to learn. The lion on the column by the Doge's Palace, star of every Venice day-trip photo, may have a Chinese head.
This is a preview: it opens on 5 November and runs to 1 March. The textiles sit in a separate container off the Podium.
Editor's pick
An ivory statuette from the Indian subcontinent reached Pompeii before Vesuvius buried it. Salvatore Settis's show gathers 150-plus travellers like her, from 700 BC to AD 1000, in Koolhaas-built displays; the lion by the Doge's Palace may have a Chinese head.
Look for
The Belmonte Piceno casket
An ivory box made around 550 BC in the Marche, inlaid with amber figures: the ivory came from Africa or Asia, the amber from the Baltic.
The Scythian gorytos
The gold cover of a nomad warrior's bow-and-arrow case, found at Melitopol in Ukraine and hammered with scenes from the life of Achilles.
Two kings, two defeated rivals
A silver coin of Alexander facing the Indian king Porus, and a sardonyx cameo of the Persian Shapur I beating the Roman emperor Valerian, made six centuries apart to say the same thing.
The Buddha who became a saint
At the end of the route, a standing Gandharan Buddha, a 13th-century Ferrara marble of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat and a 1799 icon of the same pair show the Buddha's story turning into a Christian legend.
Good for
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
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Image credits
5
- Global AntiquityCourtesy Fondazione Prada
- Pina Bausch, Le Sacre du printempsCourtesy of Museo Teatrale alla Scala
- Photo Grant Deloitte 2026Courtesy of Triennale Milano
- Piero Portaluppi: l'arte del disegnoCourtesy of Villa Necchi Campiglio
- Fondazione PradaSailko / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0