For our latest ‘one-stop Uffizi’ venture [1] Lois and I went neither to the Uffizi, nor concentrated on one of the 15th and 16th century masterpieces gathered together in that treasure trove of art. Instead, we ventured to the Museo Archaeologico, to see a sculptural masterpiece that is not 500, nor 600, but the best part of 2,500 years old. It is extraordinary not only in the artistic achievement, but it in the technical skill of its anonymous creator(s) in the fourth century BCE.
And as luck would have it, just inside the front door of the museum, there it was, heralding an exhibition of Etruscan treasures. And there was no one else there! Uninterrupted, we walked around the bronze sculpture, admiring its vibrancy, marvelling at the details. And, given that our aim is to look at just one item per ‘one-stop’ visit, we were able 10 minutes later to walk right out of the door again, carrying lingering memories of this ancient capolavoro, to discuss over coffee and a brioche.
The Chimera of Arezzo is an Etruscan bronze, a votive offering to a pagan god, a belligerent two-headed monster (three if you count the snake’s head on the end of her sinuous tail) baying defiance to the world in general, and Greek heroes in paricular. “Her breath came out in terrible blasts of burning flame,” said Homer in The Iliad. Her nemesis was Bellerophon, on his wingéd horse Pegasus. Because of her scorching breath, he was unable to defeat the chimera in normal combat so, like all good Greek heroes, Bellerophon resorted to a trick: loading the tip of his spear with a lump of lead, he thrust it into the monster’s mouth. The chimera’s fiery breath melted the lead and she suffocated.
Her bronze incarnation is majestically alive. One can be amazed at its dynamism from every angle. Slightly less than six feet long and a little more the four feet tall, the chimera has the face of a lion, with a  horned goat’s head growing out of her back. Although she has apparently already been injured by Bellerophon (a hole in her left rump may be a wound from his spear), she is still defiant. Her bronze main bristles with belligerence and we can see beneath the skin’s surface the sinews stiffened for action. Her spiky claws have emerged from their pads and her jaw is opened wide in an aggressive snarl.
This chimera was discovered, in bits, in 1553 in Arezzo, an ancient Etruscan and Roman city, part of a larger collection of sculptural items representing her fight with Bellerophon. The group was apparently a votive offering to the Etruscan god Tinia. But before you could say ‘ I’m in charge,’ all the bronzes were seized by Cosimo I, the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany. Because it was in pieces, and bits were missing, the chimera was originally thought to be a lion and as a representation of ducal power it was displayed in the Palazzo Vecchio. The smaller bits and pieces went to Cosimo’s studiolo in the Palazzo Pitti, where, as reported in Benvento Cellini’s autobiography, the Grand Duke delighted in cleaning them himself with goldsmiths’ tools. After a little detective work, the Renaissance polymath Giorgio Vasari correctly identified the main sculpture as a chimera.
The tail was not restored until the 1780s, when the serpent’s head was incorrectly placed biting one of the goat’s horns. It is much more likely that it, too, was hissing defiance at Bellerophon.
Any interpretations we may put on the meaning of the sculpture, either in Greek iconography or in representation of Medici power, the fact remains that this is a stunning piece of art, both aesthetically and technically. It was created by unknown hands some 1800 years before the Renaissance, but it is a worthy companion to the works of genius that were made in Florence from the 15th century onwards — and a more-than-worthy addition to our ‘one-stop’ adventures.
[1] You may recollect that Lois and I are working on an idea to avoid the cultural overload that comes with trying to look at too many painting masterpieces in a short space of time. We call it the ‘One-Stop Uffizi.’
The idea is simple: one of us chooses a picture before we go to the gallery; we enter and walk briskly, glancing neither to left or right, until arrive at the picture we have chosen. Then we spend 10 minutes really looking at the picture. (We will have done some previous research so as well enjoying the artistry, we will know something of the back story.) Then we leave briskly, glancing neither to left nor to right, resisting the temptations as we pass.