The largest private collection of ancient sculpturespreserved to date, and restored by Fondazione Torlonia with the support ofBvlgari, will be housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris, as the firstinternational stage of a world tour.

The largest private collection of ancient sculptures preserved to date, and restored by Fondazione Torlonia with the support of Bvlgari, will be housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris, as the first international stage of a world tour.

The world's most important private collections of ancient sculptures preserved to this day is on public view outside Italy - for the first time after its restoration by Fondazione Torlonia with the support of the Roman Maison Bvlgari - for the exhibition Masterpieces from the Torlonia Collection on display from June 26 to November 11, 2024 in the Denon Wing at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The exhibition is sponsored by Bvlgari, in the frame of the Maison’s patronage initiatives to preserve the unrivalled artistic legacy of its cradle and first source of inspiration: Rome. An enduring commitment which already inspired its collaboration with Fondazione Torlonia.

Brought together by the Torlonia princely family during the nineteenth century in Rome, the superb collection of marbles was restored to its original splendor in recent years. The result of the agreement signed between Bvlgari and Fondazione Torlonia, saw the Roman Maison as the main sponsor of the restauration of a selection of over 100 statues from the collection.

This cultural heritage has been brought back to light for the first time since mid-19th century in a series of exhibition-events, which started in Rome with the first exhibition at Capitoline Museums in 2020, Galleria d’Italia in 2022 and which now marks its first international stage with the Paris exhibition.

In the splendid setting of the recently restored Anne of Austria’s summer royal apartments, the Torlonia Marbles establish an unprecedented dialogue with the permanent collection of ancient sculptures of the Louvre, which have been located in Denon Wing since the museum’s birth in the eighteenth century.

The exhibition will not only reveal the emblematic genres of Roman sculpture with its diverse themes and styles, through quality busts, reliefs, statues and sarcophagi. It will also represent “a collection of historical collections”, which crystallizes, in the different phases of its constitution, the very history and cultural process of antiquities collecting in private spaces and beyond.

Bvlgari's support, first for the restoration and now for the exhibition, is part of a wider commitment to cultural projects and artistic patronage, that has taken shape across numerous initiatives over the years, contributing to preserve Rome’s infinite creative heritage for future generations. Furthermore, this sponsorship also represents an homage to the Maison’s Greek-Roman roots and to the classic concept of beauty, that Bvlgari pursues through its magnificent creations.

The exhibition was organized by the Louvre Museum in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Culture (Special Superintendency of Archaeology Fine Arts and Landscape of Rome) and the Fondazione Torlonia, with the support of Bvlgari as main sponsor.