The kouros of Lentini reassembled

The work of reassembling the torso of the kouros of Lentini and Testa Biscari, which belonged to a single Greek archaic statue and which were reunited thanks to the support of Fondazione Sicilia, has been successfully completed.

The kouros was presented in Palermo, at the Palazzo Branciforte, where it can be viewed until January 13 as part of the exhibition "Il kouros ritrovato", promoted and curated by the Regional Councillor for Cultural Heritage, Sebastiano Tusa, and was born from a proposal launched last year by the art critic Vittorio Sgarbi and the City of Catania.

The two parts of the statue were discovered at different times (between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries) in Lentini (ancient Lentinoi), one of the oldest Greek colonies in Sicily, and exhibited separately in Syracuse, at the Museo Archeologico Paolo Orsi, and in Catania, at the Museo Civico di Castello Ursino.

The kouros, is a type of Hellenic statue depicting a young man in a static position, with funerary or votive function very widespread in the archaic and classical periods, between the seventh and fifth centuries before Christ. The Lentini kouros dates to the late archaic period (c.530-490 BC) and is made from a single block of white marble almost certainly coming from the Cycladic Islands.

A team of experts from various disciplines, who jointly studied the torso and the head found that the two parts did indeed belong to a single statue, completing the meticulous conservation work and the union of the two parts, which now rests on a base of grey Billiemi marble fashioned by the sculptor Giacomo Rizzo. The president of the Sicily Foundation, Raffaele Bonsignore, "

"With the support of this initiative. We have helped to bring back to life a work of extraordinary beauty. Promoting a valuable testimony of the past like the kouros, which has finally been restored, is part of our mission to promote art and culture, through the support of scientific initiatives like this."