SALOTTO ETRUSCO

14 november 2024 – 6PM

Laura Ambrosini
The Arvid Andrén Collection at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo

The Arvid Andrén Collection, donated by his son Per Axel Andrén to the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History in 2001, consists of 84 archaeological artifacts, the result of purchases (some even gifts) made by the Swedish archaeologist from Roman art dealers, especially Vita, Fallani and Calvesi. The years of purchases seem to be concentrated to 1931, 1934, 1949-1952, the year of Arvid Andrén’s arrival in Rome and the years of his first stay in the city as director of the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies. The only documented purchase made by Andrén outside of Rome is a votive Sicilian statuette head bought in Palermo in 1931. The objects in the collection were produced in northern, inland, and southern Etruria, the Ager Faliscus, Picenum, Rome, Tibur or the Suburbium of Rome, Latium Vetus (Ariccia, Lavinium, Ardea), Campania, Magna Graecia (Taranto and perhaps Metapontum), Sicily, and Greece (Sparta). The collection also includes Roman objects from the Augustan period to the entire Imperial age, a Visigothic object, and objects of dubious authenticity or modern ones.

Laura Ambrosini is Research Director at the Istituto di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale at the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome.