The Bronzes Revive at Librixia 2024: The Boxer and the Victory

On Saturday, October 5, 2024, at 5:00 PM, in the Renaissance Cloister of the Santa Giulia Museum (via dei Musei 81/b, Brescia), Stefano Karadjov, Director of the Brescia Musei Foundation, architect Camillo Botticini, and Francesca Morandini, Head of Archaeological Collections at the Brescia Musei Foundation, will discuss the catalog of the exhibition The Boxer and the Victory (Skira).

The event is part of the extensive program of Librixia 24, Brescia’s annual book fair that showcases literature, authors, and figures from the world of culture, entertainment, and media.

The exhibition, held in the summer of 2023, brought together the Winged Victory from Brescia’s Capitolium and the Boxer at Rest from the Quirinale, two great masterpieces of antiquity, miraculously saved from the frequent and tragic fate of Greek and Roman bronze statues—melting for metal recycling. The volume offers a unique cultural comparison between these two universal masterpieces, presenting a dialogue between two distant worlds: the Boxer, fully embodying the tension toward sporting success, and the Winged Victory, representing the value of victory on the battlefield, to which Roman art gave a distinctive form that has been celebrated through time. The book offers an original cultural comparison between these two universal masterpieces, engaging in a dialogue between two distant worlds.

The discussion will then shift to the Unesco Corridor project, which connects the Santa Giulia Museum and the Roman Capitolium into a single, majestic, free-access tour. This pathway allows all visitors to be fully immersed, both visually and physically, in historical monumental architecture, from the Roman era to the early Middle Ages and the Renaissance, without the aura of these ancient places being affected by the proximity of the modern city.