The Boxer and the Victory

This ambitious project marks another valuable milestone in the programme of enhancement and requalification that Fondazione Brescia Musei is developing in the Roman Brixia archaeological area.

Fondazione Brescia Musei with The Boxer and the Victory explores the territory of the foundational art of European culture, celebrating the relation the Brescian Winged Victory enjoys with Hellenistic and Roman culture.

The abstract concept connecting these two extraordinary bronzes, in its absence and personification, is that of success, of a positive outcome, of victory.
The Boxer and the Victory, displayed in the Capitolium in Brescia with a new and spectacular setup curated by the architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg, who is also the author of the captivating showcase of the Winged Victory, provides an occasion to shorten the distance that kept these two artworks apart in antiquity, with a triangulation of elements that will allow us to understand this distance, while also appreciating the many elements connecting these two masterpieces. The limited space of the display is to contain a conceptual narrative with a harmonic counterpoint illustrating the absolute values these pieces still represent for us today.

The two works date to different periods .

The Boxer, datable to the fourth–first century BCE, was certainly originally displayed in a public space – perhaps in Greece – and was the object of great admiration, as the surfaces worn by the touch of its admirers attest. The Winged Victory dates back to mid first century CE and was probably displayed in the temple in Brescia as a votive offering donated by the Emperor Vespasian. The two statues were both discovered during nineteenth-century archaeological excavations, and since then have been the object of care and attention and included in public museum collections.