In order to meet Cupid and Psyche, as is only right since they are two mythological figures, one has to penetrate into the ancient heart of the capital, in Trastevere. Beyond a small secret garden, crowned in the center by a citrus tree, is a room with a very high ceiling where the mortal Psyche, who in beauty equaled Venus, forever holds in her marble embrace the unknown lover Eros.

We are inside the laboratories where the 622 works of the Torlonia Collection, the most important private collection of Roman marbles in the world, are preserved and restored, and it is precisely this delicate Love and Psyche that will take on the role, in a couple of months, of representing, on the cover of a catalog and in presentation posters, the new chapter in a unique story of collecting, enhancement and protection.

In fact, along with another sixty or so works from the collection, the sculpture is about to leave for an overseas trip the likes of which are not remembered in the history of art exhibitions between America and Europe.

Promoted by the Torlonia Foundation together with the Art Institute of Chicago, and thanks to the Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio of Rome, Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection opens at the U.S. institution on March 15 through June 29. It is the first stop on a U.S. tour that will continue at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, from Sept. 13 to Jan. 25, 2025.

The exhibition will bring a major selection of the collection to North America: famous busts, monumental and mythological figures, cups, sarcophagi, and sculpted reliefs, dating from the fifth century B.C. to the second century A.D. This is a mammoth operation that puts classicism - the complexity of its imagery and mythology, the sublime beauty of its aesthetics - back at the center of cultural discourse at a time in history when, not only overseas, ancient Rome has become the playground of Silicon Valley tycoons and right-wing maître à penser.