Changsha – The exhibition "She Walks in Beauty, Women of the Han Dynasty and Roman Empire" opened on Saturday at the Hunan Provincial Museum in Changsha, China, and has sold out all reservations for the first two weeks. For the first time, 150 masterpieces from the collections of Rome's Civic Museums are displayed alongside over a hundred artworks from seven Chinese museums. Inspired by a poem by Lord Byron, the exhibition delves into the lives of women in ancient Rome and the contemporary Chinese Han dynasty (220 BC - 200 AD).

Promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capital and the Capitol Superintendency for Cultural Heritage, and organized in collaboration with the Italian company Arteficio with support from the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing, the exhibition is curated by Claudio Parisi Presicce. It celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Mawangdui tombs, one of China's most significant archaeological finds, including the mummy of the Marquis of Dai (2nd century BC).

Starting in October, the exhibition will continue to Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Shenyang. "The exhibition 'She Walks in Beauty, Women of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire,' which will tour China from June 2024 starting in Changsha, is part of a broader initiative to promote Rome's historical and artistic heritage internationally, aimed at attracting new visitors and reinforcing its role as a global cultural capital," said Miguel Gotor, Rome's Councillor for Culture. "This project, coinciding with the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo's death, highlights the crucial role of women in two great civilizations, Roman and Chinese, through a dialogue between archaeological artifacts and other artistic testimonies. Cultural collaboration is one of the most fertile tools for fostering mutual understanding between peoples with different traditions."

The exhibition opens with a statue of a veiled Roman matron from the imperial era, from the Capitoline Museum at Centrale Montemartini, introducing themes of marriage, domestic space, feminine ideals, and the funerary and devotional spheres. In the exhibition's three sections, Rome and Han interact through artifacts like the Sarcophagus of the Amazons (140-150 AD) from the Capitoline Museums, depicting a battle scene between Greeks and mythical warrior women, and the large T-shaped silk funeral banner from the inner coffin lid at Mawangdui, depicting the journey to the afterlife. Funerary steles and splendid busts of Roman women, young and old, with various hairstyles and expressions, enrich the narrative. A statue of Livia provides an opportunity to recount the story of one of Rome's most important women, whose life was both similar to and different from the consorts of Chinese emperors.

The exhibition also features numerous items from the over three thousand artifacts found in the Han dynasty tombs at Mawangdui, discovered in the early 1970s. These include perfectly preserved lacquers and silks, and bamboo strips with texts on traditional medicine, philosophy, and astrology. These objects were placed in coffins with the bodies of the deceased, which were then sealed in sarcophagi and buried several meters deep. One of the tombs contained the mummified body of a woman, preserved in a liquid that has maintained the tissues for 2,200 years since her death at around fifty years old: the Marquis of Dai, now displayed in a glass coffin in a highly dramatic setting at the Hunan Provincial Museum in Changsha. (9colonne)