What were two masterpieces from Naples' MANN doing at a Bottega Veneta fashion show?

What were two famous statues from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples doing at Milan Fashion Week? It seems indeed that two statues from the first century B.C. went on loan to compose the setting for Bottega Veneta’s fall-winter 2023-2024 fashion show, which was held last Feb. 25 in Milan during Milan Fashion Week. The news, which passed very quietly, was not communicated by the MANN, which also has a very active press office and a very diligent communication via social media: in fact, on the official channels there is no trace of the presence of the two Herculaneum Runners, bronze statues that are among the masterpieces and among the most well-known works of the Neapolitan museum, at the Bottega Veneta fashion show.

According to reports in newspapers such as the New York Times and Milano Finanza Fashion, the two sculptures (“lent exceptionally” by the MANN) arrived in Milan, along with a fusion of Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity of Space lent by the National Gallery of Cosenza, to serve as the backdrop for the show conceived by Matthieu Blazy, creative director of Bottega Veneta, in order to emphasize the concept of “timelessness” of its clothes. “The sculptures,” Vanessa Friedmann writes in the article, “stood on a carpet imitating stracciatella, Blazy’s favorite ice cream flavor (or so he said before the show), which like the artwork was there to reflect the idea conveyed by his clothes, namely the fact that it is not the price of something that matters, nor hierarchy or aesthetics, but it is personal taste that matters.”

Evidently on the part of the museum there is confidentiality about the operation: however, it would be very interesting if the public could know, as someone is asking on social media, whether the two statues were the originals or were reproductions, what the motivations were that, in the case of original sculptures, led the MANN to agree to the loan, and what the terms of the operation were (thus whether there was a loan fee from the fashion house to have the privilege of ennobling the fashion show with two very important ancient sculptures). All questions that are unanswered for now.

What were two masterpieces from Naples' MANN doing at a Bottega Veneta fashion show?

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