Ancient Colored Marbles Collection

ANCIENT COLORED MARBLES COLLECTION

The collection was donated by the Augustinian Fathers of the Church of SS. Trinity of Viterbo at
the then Faculty of Cultural Heritage Conservation. It includes about 100 samples of coloured
marble and was collected by the General Prior of the Augustinian Fathers Tommaso Rodriguez in
the years between 1898 and 1920. In those years the Prior was not only dedicated to the religious
and organizational problems of his Order but also cultivated significant mineralogical and
archaeological interests. Hence this large collection of samples of coloured marble, in many cases
of ancient and almost certainly Roman origin.
Description
The samples, mostly of ancient provenance, represent most of the coloured marbles which, in
particular in the imperial era, were widely used within ancient Roman architectures. These are
marbles whose quarries are located in various areas of the Mediterranean (Italy, Greece, Asia
Minor, northern Africa, Egypt, etc.). Apart from some marble samples, probably acquired by
Roman marble workshops, many of them are related to architectural cladding slabs of ancient
buildings, probably collected in Rome or the Roman suburbium.
The collection is a typical testimony of that encounter between humanistic and scientific
knowledge, typical of the late nineteenth-century positivistic culture, to which evidently the General
Prior Tommaso Rodriguez, despite his religious background, was not to be a stranger.

Scientific Coordinator: Stefano De Angeli

Tel. 0761 357120

deangeli@unitus.it