Inaugurated on December 11, 2012, the result of a valorization agreement signed on June 22, 2012, between Mibac, the Regional Directorate for Cultural and Landscape Heritage of Lazio, Rome Capital Cultural Policies and Historic Center Department, and the Music for Rome Foundation, implementing what was agreed in the purchase agreement of the collection signed on November 30, 2010.
The Peduncle Hall, a space of over 300 sqm inside the Auditorium, permanently houses the 161 works purchased by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities from the heirs of Maestro Giuseppe Sinopoli.
The 161 works on display are mainly ceramics covering a chronological span between the 19th and 3rd centuries BC, examples of Minoan, Mycenaean, geometric, Corinthian, Laconic, Greco-Oriental, Attic black- and red-figure pottery, Italiote red-figure, and indigenous ceramic productions from Daunia (Apulia).
Also exhibited are: a marble vase of Cycladic production (3200-2700 BC), Etruscan and Magna Graecia bronze vessels, and a large series of terracottas from the Minoan and Mycenaean age to the Hellenistic period. These are mainly votive statuettes depicting deities and devotees, but also animals (cattle, a dove). Among the statuettes, a fragmentary archaic Cypriot stone kouros is also noteworthy.
Exceptional quality specimens of Attic production are present: works by the main black-figure painters including Lydos, the Lysippides Painter, members of Nikosthenes’ circle, and Attic red-figure painters such as the Syleus and Eretria Painters.
Subjects include mythological themes, particularly related to the Dionysian world with Dionysus, satyrs, and maenads; Centaurs fighting Lapiths, Nike, Zeus, Hera, and Athena fighting giants (gigantomachy) are also depicted, as well as scenes of warriors/heroes departing for battle or in athletic settings; various depictions refer to athletic competitions (jumping, foot and horse races, javelin throwing) and the heroic world (labors of Herakles, Odysseus fleeing the cave of Polyphemus).
The figurative repertoire of the Italiote red-figure production is also mainly inspired by the Dionysian world, favoring genre scenes characterized by the Dionysian entourage; another theme is the depictions of heroized deceased: these are vases intended exclusively for funerary use, sometimes highlighted by the fact that they were made without a bottom, rendering them non-functional.
Among the materials, some unusual pieces stand out, such as a painted terracotta cube with concave sides of uncertain use, perhaps a children’s toy or a small clay jug with a spout, possibly identifiable as a feeding bottle.
Each period is represented by exemplary pieces, not always and not only from an aesthetic point of view, but as testimonies of significant transitional phases that determined the birth and development of different cultures; works containing the knowledge of tradition and elements of the new.
