A destruição dos restos da destruição: Pompeia e Herculano no Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Belonging to the Teresa Cristina Collection, pieces from Pompeii and Herculaneum were part of the permanent exhibition at the National Museum when the institution was destroyed by a devastating fire in September 2018. Those material remains of Roman cities buried by Vesuvius in 79 CE - frescoes, bronze jewelry, amulets, glass, lamps, and other objects of everyday life - remained under thick layers of eruptive material for almost two thousand years. Rescued in successive archeological excavations throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and, finally, made into a museum, they returned to the ashes, this time from fire. The history of the formation of this collection is linked to the second reign by close political links. Thus, what we intend to do is look at the long trajectory of these pieces, seeking to examine the symbolic uses to which they were subject in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro.