Diego Cibelli’s Il cielo si ricorda degli Etruschi (The Sky Remembers the Etruscans) offers a new encounter with Etruscan history and art: ancient forms are infused with an unexpected vitality, transforming the past into a material that remains open and available for reinterpretation. The work consists of a constellation of elements suspended beneath the entrance vault of the Villa Giulia complex: leaves, bunches of grapes, floral ribbons, and anthropomorphic sculptures, freely inspired by Etruscan iconography, evoke an imaginary landscape that redefines the villa’s space-time as an ecosystem in which the boundaries between past and present, as well as between architecture and landscape, oscillate until they become points of convergence and synergy. These become matrices for multiple interpretations and experiences, suggesting the possibility of an interspecies and intercultural co-creation that is at once human and non-human, realistic and dreamlike, historical and mythical, Etruscan and contemporary.

This acquisition expands Villa Giulia’s new contemporary art collection, reaffirming the profound influence that the memory of Etruscan art has exerted on modern art, beginning in the 1920s. The work thus becomes an interactive and imaginative paradigm for the Museum’s new strategies and narratives: a collection of ancient and contemporary art that traverses and reinvents time and space, transforming the past into a material presence and the Museum into a dynamic opportunity for accessing and reconsidering knowledge.