Another reason - as if I needed one - for my going to Venice for this short visit was to visit the fabulous Palazzo Grassi ( on the Grand Canal ) to see English artist Damien Hirst’s extraordinary exhibition ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’.

This exceptional body of fantasy has been in the making for over ten years, and tells the story of the ancient wreck of a vast ship - the ‘Unbelievable’ - and presents in this exhibition what was discovered and recovered of its precious cargo: the impressive collection of Aulus Calidius Amotan – a freed slave better known as Cif Amotan II – all of which was destined for a temple dedicated to the sun.

The Fate of a Banished Man - bronze

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... NOW PLEASE READ THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

BEFORE YOU VIEW THE IMAGES ...

- otherwise the exhibition will not make much sense -

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Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable

In 2008, a vast wreckage site was discovered off the coast of East Africa. The finding lent credence to the legend of Cif Amotan II, a freed slave from Antioch (north-west Turkey) who lived between the mid-first and early-second centuries CE.

Ex-slaves were afforded ample opportunities for socio-economic advancement in the Roman Empire through involvement in the financial affairs of their patrons and past masters. The story of Amotan (who is sometimes referred to as Aulus Calidius Amotan) relates that the slave accumulated an immense fortune on the acquisition of his freedom.

Bloated with excess wealth, he proceeded to build a lavish collection of artefacts deriving from the lengths and breadths of the ancient world. The freedman’s one hundred fabled treasures – commissions, copies, fakes, purchases and plunder – were brought together on board a colossal ship, the Apistos ( translates from Koine Greek as the ‘Unbelievable’ ), which was destined for a temple purpose-built by the collector. Yet the vessel foundered, consigning its hoard to the realm of myth and spawning myriad permutations of this story of ambition and avarice, splendour and hubris.

The collection lay submerged in the Indian Ocean for some two thousand years before the site was discovered in 2008, near the ancient trading ports of Azania (south-east African coast). Almost a decade after excavations began, this exhibition brings together the works recovered in this extraordinary find.

A number of the sculptures are exhibited prior to undergoing restoration, heavily encrusted in corals and other marine life, at times rendering their forms virtually unrecognisable. A series of contemporary museum copies of the recovered artefacts are also on display, which imagine the works in their original, undamaged forms.

........... and so now to a sample of the 'rescued' art ..........