The British Museum will present an exhibition on Sicily, opening in April, with major loans from the island’s museums. The show, with 200 objects, will focus on two key periods: the arrival of the Greeks in the late seventh century BC and Norman rule from 1100-1250 AD. Loans include a painted terracotta altar with three fertility goddesses (around 500 BC), which was excavated in 1999 and is now at Gela’s Museo Archeologico Regionale. Nearly half the loans will be from Sicily, with most of the remaining objects from the British Museum, as well as some from other collections. Among treasures in the British Museum is an unusual gold libation bowl decorated with six bulls (around 600 BC). Peter Higgs, the exhibition’s co-curator, admits that he is still “puzzling over whether it was made by a Greek or Phoenician craftsman”. The show will conclude with Antonello da Messina’s Virgin and Child (1460s), coming from London’s National Gallery. The British Museum is making reciprocal loans to Sicily, and last autumn the libation bowl was lent to museums in Siracusa, Agrigento and Sant’Angelo Muxaro.
Sicily: Culture and Conquest, British Museum, 21 April-14 August
