Renee Stein, conservator of the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, unpacks the body of a Roman marble statue of Venus to be scanned in the X-ray room at Delta Air Lines Technical Operations Center in Atlanta on Thursday. (Ric Feld / AP)
Posted on 11/05/2006 6:59:46 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Delta Air Lines maintainance inspectors moved the hulking engine case of a Boeing 757 from beneath the giant scanner in a lead-enclosed X-ray room and gingerly replaced it with the head of a 1,900-year-old Roman marble statue of Venus. Thursday's X-ray scans at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport are the first step in a months-long process to reunite the late first-century statue of the goddess of love with its head. Conservators at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, which bought both pieces in June, will study the X-rays to see just in how many points — besides the neck — the statue has been broken before, and how the old repairs are holding up... Conservators will look for rusting metal pins that might have been inserted to fix cracks in the Venus' thigh, her calf, even the bundle of hair drooping on her neck... Re-attaching the head, which was last documented on the body in 1836, will be the hardest part in the restoration of this marble copy of an earlier Greek bronze sculpture that many scholars argue is the most widely reproduced female statue in antiquity... The statue probably stood next to a fountain or pool in the gardens of a luxurious villa somewhere in the Roman Empire, possibly in today's France, where it was first documented in the collection of Napoleon's art adviser in the 1830s, said Jasper Gaunt, curator of Greek and Roman Art at the Carlos.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Renee Stein, conservator of the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, unpacks the body of a Roman marble statue of Venus to be scanned in the X-ray room at Delta Air Lines Technical Operations Center in Atlanta on Thursday. (Ric Feld / AP)
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"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
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Maybe this is worthy of an aviation ping? It's a neat use of aviation-related equipment, at least.
Gorilla glue seems in order.
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