Those who had power and wealth in Rome at the end of the 15th century and wanted to increase both ennobled their family origins.

Late medieval imposture followed a recurring pattern.

First, a collection of ancient artefacts was procured: reliefs, coins, statues, which could be presented to doubters as proof of the millennia-old family connection to ancient Rome.

After that, it was announced that they were descendants of an important patrician line.

In this way, for example, the humanist and legal scholar Andrea Santacroce declared himself the descendant of a consul from the early days of the Roman Republic.

As a testament to his credibility, he kept at home a marble relief from the first century BC.

It shows a man, a woman and a boy - father, mother, son.

Santacroce had carved the inscription "Fidei Simulacrum: Honor, Veritas, Amor" (Image of Faith: Honour, Truth, Love) above their heads in Roman style.

The inscription allegorically interpreted the three figures and made the relief the political and ethical manifesto of the Santacroce family.

Karen Krueger

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Today we know that the relief originally decorated a family grave and that the couple and child were former slaves.

What would they have said if they had known that a Roman surreptitiously obtained a noble lineage with their help?

Once the new family tree of the Santacroces was established, the family prominently displayed the relief on the facade of their house and turned to new strategic projects.

Two hundred years later, restorers removed the relief and it was sold to the Vatican Museums at the end of the 19th century.

It has been on display at the Fondazione Prada in Milan since Thursday.

In order to look straight in the face of the family of three, you have to sit down: on a desk chair at a table that is as sober as the workplace in an open-plan office.

It is an invitation to study the characters extensively, their implied smiles, the individual shape of the ears, and perhaps to empathize with Santacroce and his comrades-in-arms.

For them, the relief was not just a legacy of the past.

It was an object of opportunity, suitable for recycling with the aim of influencing the present and the future.

Greek original, Roman copy

The interventions that they finally undertook overturned the previous meaning of the work of art and gave it a new one adapted to current needs.

And it is precisely this creative moment in which an antique object is breathed into new, albeit different, life that the Fondazione Prada is focusing on in its magnificent show “Recycling Beauty”.

For the third time she is devoting herself to ancient art and the narratives through which we perceive, appreciate or punish it with carelessness.

And once again she succeeds in bringing the works of art into a dialogue with the present.

In 2015 she celebrated the opening of her new art residence designed by Rem Koolhaas on the site of a former spirits factory with “Serial Classic”, a show about the relationship between the Greek original and the Roman copy.

At the same time, the old parent company in Venice dedicated itself to reducing life-size antique statues to manageable souvenir size with “Portable Classic”.

Both exhibitions were curated by Salvatore Settis.

The archaeologist and art historian was at work again, this time together with Anna Anguissola and Denise La Monica, while Rem Koolhaas designed the show again.

With thematic continuity and the simultaneous use of proven actors, the Fondazione, whose impulses for contemporary art can be felt far beyond the borders of Italy, shows that it lives the core idea of ​​its show itself.

“Recycling Beauty” also means the recycling and creative further development of traditional ideas.