Art at the Villa

Last week I had a post about Venice because it was in the news with all its recent flooding.  This week I'm posting about the Getty Villa because it was in the news this last week.  It seems they have an ancient bronze statue that the Italian government wants returned.  So much so that the government recently won a judgment that the museum must give it back.  After reading the news story, I scoured my photos from my 2015 visit to the Getty Villa to see if I had a photo of the prized statue.  I don't.
(You can see the article about the bronze statue and how it came to be reclaimed by the Italians by clicking the link above.)

So, instead I'll show some other scenes from the museum and some of the other artworks that can be found there.

The statue to the left was one of J. Paul Getty's most prized possessions and inspired him to build this museum in the form of a Roman Villa.  It's a statue representing the Greek hero Herakles.

Another piece that I happened to photograph was this storage jar.  It is decorated with Diomedes and Odysseus.  Clearly the artist was familiar with "The Iliad".

Some of the smaller pieces also caught my eye like this familiar looking statue of a boy riding on his parent's shoulders.  It's somehow comforting to know that parents have been lifting their children this way for many centuries.

While at the villa, I spent quite a lot of time in the outdoors areas because the gardens and fountains were all so beautiful.  The photo at the top of this post shows the front of the villa and the second photo one of the many courtyards.  I spent even more time in small patio pictured above.  I liked this space with the fountain in the center because it was so quiet and peaceful.  I enjoyed listening to the water in the fountain and finding water lilies blooming at its base.

And I watched this dragonfly buzzing around the water and plants and was determine to catch a photo of it.  That bright orange insect became one more beautiful piece of art from my Getty Villa collection of photos.

I posted about the Getty Villa once before back in 2015.  If you would like to see that post you can find it here.