Rome's she-wolf takes many forms

The Capitoline Lupa on the column in Michelangelo's piazza.  Bill took this photo, with the three Italian officials in the background. It's a classic.

Anyone who's been in Rome for more than a few minutes will have seen the iconic image of the she-wolf suckling the infant twins.  This "lupa" (she-wolf) is the overarching symbol of Rome - succinctly reminding everyone of the story of Rome's founding.  The twins, Romulus and Remus, were the sons of the God Mars (or perhaps the demi-god, Hercules, but you know how those divinity stories go) and a Vestal Virgin, sworn to chastity  (just to make the story more interesting).  They were abandoned at a river by one of their male forefathers, who tried to prevent them from obtaining their rightful inheritance as leaders of a pre-Roman state, Alba Longa.  A she-wolf found them and suckled them and, eventually (after killing his brother, ETC.!), Romulus founded the new city-state of Rome.

The most famous statue of the lupa suckling the twins is on the Capitoline Hill.  The original is in the museum there, but a darn good replica sits on a post in Michelangelo's piazza (photo above).  We've always been attracted to the statue and the image, and it turns out we're not the only ones.




The lupa sometimes can look menacing, as in this poster; she
no doubt looks more menacing here because of the rips in the poster;
 the poster is simply advertising a concert.

The lupa is the primary symbol of Rome's soccer team, A.S. Roma, founded in 1927.  Some even go so far as to have it tattooed on their arms.

stylized lupa as the soccer team's symbol

Classic lupa as part of A.S. Roma's logo.

Perhaps my favorite.  This was on a publicity poster for the 2012 summer music festival in Villa Ada, a festival that year promoting music from around the world:  the title, Roma incontro il mondo ("Rome meets the world"). Note the ethnicities of the 3 - yes 3 - infants.  And, we have a happy lupa here.

Right-wing use of the lupa, looking threatening,
showing her smashing the Euro.

close-up of the Euro being smashed; the imagery
 argues against Italy being part of the EU.

Mainstream advertising using the lupa:
the furniture store here "offers you more."
The udder is appropriately large.

Artists like the lupa too.  We especially appreciated this image of Italy's most famous film star, Anna Magnani, "walking" the lupa - by street artist Biodpi.

And the image below, well, we couldn't quite figure out what this blogger was about.  The image speaks for itself, we think.

:

Mussolini was big on the lupa.  So her image appears in many bas reliefs and statues of the Fascist era.  The one at left is from the bas relief on the once-Fiat building at the far end (coming from the train station) of Largo Susanna in central Rome.  The others appear on two public buildings of the era around Rome; for example, below left on a school.

The lupa on a contemporary, official sticker.

Dianne
More images are available on an Italian Web site:  http://lupi.difossombrone.it/storiaeoriginelupo/main001_lupacapitolina.htm

Exclusive: Sabine Women Live Happily Ever After

For millennia, disgust was the only reasonable emotion to have for what happened about 2700 years ago to the women of the Sabine, a people that occupied an area centered to the northeast of Rome, from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic. Their story of Il Ratto delle Sabine (The Rape of the Sabines) was told and retold, by Plutarch and Ovid, by Renaissance painters Bartolome di Giovanni, Ludovico Caracci, Pietro da Cortona, Tiepolo, and many others--all featuring Roman soldiers struggling and tussling with the young ladies of the Sabina, often in sexually provocative positions. Later work--Primo Conti's 1925 depiction of the event--was more explicitly sexual, with the Romans presented as dark-skinned predators. Franco Gentilini's 1934 version resembles a Victorian picnic gone bad.

Forget all that, or most it, anyway. The "true" story--in any event, another story, another "myth" one might say--was told recently in an exhibit (now closed) at the Vittoriano. This narrative, with elements of the old one, but with more historical context, begins with the founding of Rome by Romolo (Romulus), and with Romolo's plan to increase the population of his new city by scouring the countryside for brides for the oversupply of Roman men. A not unreasonable goal, and for a while the thoughtful Romolo pursued it through diplomacy; he negotiated with surrounding territories, urging them to send their young women to the big city. When that didn't work, the clever Romolo gave a huge party, big enough to attract the Sabine women (and their escorts). At a prearranged signal, the Roman soldiers pounced on the Sabine entourage, scaring the men off and taking the women--only the unmarried ones, of course, so no families were split up, and everything should have been fine. Not so. Inexplicably, the Sabine men were furious, and they made war on Rome. BUT--and here we get another twist to the new story--the war was ended by the Sabine women themselves, who brought the two sides to the bargaining table. Perhaps they realized that despite that inauspicious beginning, life with the boys of Rome wasn't so bad after all.

More recently, we learned from the exhibit, the story of the Sabine women has found its way onto the silver screen. An early effort was Il Ratto delle Sabine (1945), dir. Mario Bonnard, then, by the same title, a 1961 film directed by Richard Poitier, featuring a young Roger Moore as Romolo. The Taviani Brothers took up theme in 1969 with Sotto Il Segno delle Scorpione (Under the Sign of the Scorpion).

But the real gem, from which we offer you a brief excerpt, is Stanley's Donen's frantic musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), starring Jane Powell, Russ Tamblyn, and Howard Keel. The film was influenced by a 1938 Stephen Vincent Benet novel, The Sobbin' Women, and it is set in Oregon Territory in 1850, with the Romans transposed into a family of horny but genial mountain men. Bill