Dreamy Giant

Tempus Captum – captured Time.

A Project of Photographic Analysis and Exploration held in the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum.

Dreamy Giant

by Matteo Capozza

Seemingly detached from everyday life in many ways, the Colosseum is so familiar to each of us that we can hardly grasp the beauty of having one of the seven wonders of the world in our own city. By trying to observe it with different eyes, simply sitting on the walls and watching it without doing anything, one can manage to grasp much more than by just looking at it while strolling by. The Colosseum has lived a lot and has been many things. Fantasizing, one can conclude that it is nothing more than a giant that has long finished its days of service to the city. A sleeping giant, now limited solely to being watched by the masses of distracted tourists who crowd Rome. It is absorbed in its dreams, dreams of an old life still engraved in its walls, buried in its ruins, and hidden in its underground passages. Through the reinterpretation of classical works, this project aims to tell this flow of life, exploiting the technical possibilities of post-production to create a bridge between the past and the present and imagine being able to give another life to this Dreaming Giant, which we should learn to observe and not just look at.

Credits: Christofer Wilhelm Eckersberg, “View through the three northwest arches of the third floor of the Colosseum,” 1815, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (SMK), Copenhagen Herbert Gustave Schmalz, “Faithful Unto Death,” 1888, private collection Hubert Robert, “The Colosseum in Rome,” 1780-1790, Museo del Prado Henryk Siemiradzki, “A Christian Dirce,” 1897, National Museum, Warsaw François-Leon Benouville, “The Christian Martyrs Enter the Amphitheater,” 1855, Musée d’Orsay, Paris Hubert Robert, “The Hermit of the Colosseum,” 18th century, Public domain file Ippolito Caffi, “View of the Colosseum,” 1840, Palazzo Mazzolari Mosca, Pesaro Edmund Blair Leighton, “The Gladiator’s Wife,” 1884, Public domain file José Benlliure y Gil, “The Vision of the Colosseum. The Last Martyr,” 1885, Museum of Fine Arts, Valencia