Camelopardalis
(Head of Michelangelo), by Elisabetta Benassi

On 10 June, a site-specific work was inaugurated in the Chiostro di Michelangelo at the Terme di Diocleziano, donated to the Museo Nazionale Romano by the Associazione Mecenati Roman Heritage. The initiative is part of the project «L’ottava testa», promoted by the aforementioned Association, chaired by Ugo Pierucci, and by the Museo Nazionale Romano, directed by Stéphane Verger.

«L’ottava testa» originated from the restoration process supported by the Associazione Mecenati Roman Heritage to return to their original splendor seven marble sculptures that, since the end of the nineteenth century, have inhabited the spaces of the Chiostro di Michelangelo, inside the Terme di Diocleziano, home of the Museo Nazionale Romano.

The work appears as a single whole placed on the pre-existing base, which became part of the work. Its upper part consists of a giraffe skull, reproduced through the 3D scan of an original head (the scan was carried out on the skull of a young giraffe from the Collection of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy of La Sapienza University of Rome), subsequently enlarged with a PLA printer (at a scale of 2:1 compared with the real object), and its lower part consists of an industrial stool printed in PLA. The two elements are bronze casts, then assembled together and mounted as a single element on the plinth; both elements (skull and stool) constitute the work and cannot be separated.

The cost of the project was 40,000 euro, supported with Association funds.