BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Myth and Marble

Texas exhibit explores exquisite Roman sculpture

© Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo de Masi

Through January 25, 2026
Kimbell Art Museum
Fort Worth, Texas
kimbellart.org

Highlights of the famed Torlonia Collection of ancient Roman sculpture are currently on display at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. During its first-ever North American tour, this traveling exhibit premiered at the Art Institute of Chicago earlier this year and will move to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in March 2026.

Titled Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, the exhibition features some 60 pieces of marble sculpture, many of which have not been exhibited in almost a century. They come from a collection formed in the 19th century by Prince Giovanni Torlonia and his successors. Comprising 622 works, the Torlonia Collection is the largest private assemblage of marble sculpture in Italy and the most important such collection in the world.

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The current exhibit is arranged around seven thematic sections that spotlight different sculptural types and subjects, from majestic figures of gods and goddesses to carved funerary monuments, to portraits of emperors and other nobility, including a remarkable selection of female portraits. Both intimate and monumental and ranging in date from the fifth century BCE to the second century CE, these marbles offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for museumgoers in the United States and Canada to marvel at some of the most exquisite works of ancient art.

On display is this slightly oversized statue (see image above) likely representing the Greek virgin goddess of the hearth, Hestia (Roman Vesta). It is a unique second-century CE Roman copy of an early classical Greek original in bronze.

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