The bust is the result of the reworking and union of ancient elements from the Roman Republican age (head) in the Renaissance period (bust and helmet). The original sculpture must have belonged to an acrolith, that is a particular type of statue, mainly religious, with the head and limbs in marble fixed to a wooden scaffolding covered with fabric or metal sheets. On the basis of particular technical characteristics and precise stylistic aspects, in which the classicist imprint is influenced by the developments of Hellenistic art, it is possible to hypothesize that the bust was made in one of the workshops of Athenian sculptors who worked for the wealthy classes in Rome. of republican age. The Renaissance additions, on the other hand, were made with extreme skill by reworking ancient parts of other statues in Greek marbles, probably by Tommaso Della Porta the Elder, who already Giorgio Vasari, architect and art historian of Renaissance Florence, considered the most talented "imitator of ancient things ". The bust arrived in the Savoy collections very early, between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and was placed, as a representation of the goddess of wisdom and the arts, in a dominant position in the Grand Gallery of the Doge's Palace in Turin: here the Duke Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy had in fact collected its rich library and its precious collection of art and antiquities.

The sculpture consists of a portrait head of an illustrious Greek or Roman of the late Hellenistic period, mounted on a bust of the Renaissance period. In Hellenistic antiquity, the portraits of eminent private citizens were inspired by models of illustrious statuary: some characteristic signs then made it possible to identify the subject represented. In this case the type of hairstyle and the square shape of the face refer to late classical models, in particular to the type of Hermes tying the sandal, created by the Greek sculptor Lysippos in the second half of the 4th century BC, but other features appear typical of the face of Menander, the famous Greek playwright, who in late Hellenism was taken as a model for private portraiture. The signs of age, visible above all in the area around the eyes, and a certain characterization of the face, however, refer to a real portrait and not to an image of a divinity or an idealized famous person. The Renaissance bust in ancient polychrome marble appears exquisitely made and was probably made by Roman or Florentine workshops of the highest level. It was performed with the 'salesman' technique: the decorative motif is in fact created through the composition of thin marble slabs of different colors, sizes and shapes, fixed on a Parian marble base. The perfect continuity of the neck muscles between the ancient head and the Renaissance chest confirms that the military-style bust, with cloak and cuirass, was made specifically for this head: at the time of this integration, the portrayed character was therefore interpreted as an illustrious Roman general, perhaps Pompey the Great, seeing that between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the very face of Menander was mistakenly identified with that of the leader.

Rare and exclusive form of vase used during banquets by the aristocracy of Athens between the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth century BC: filled with snow or ice water it was placed to float to cool it in the wine already diluted inside a large crater. Its uniqueness is reinforced by the presence on both sides of the signature of the painter Euthymides (ie "of good spirit"): an established artist, he is one of the absolute protagonists between 525 and 500 BC. of the new red-figure style, which experiments with the rendering of foreshortening and the use of diluted paint to enhance the sculptural anatomy of the bodies. On one side two wrestlers are represented: on the left the hero Theseus, on the right, identified by an incomplete word, Klytios (?). On the opposite side, two other athletes are depicted using the strigil, the curved instrument with which the body was cleaned from sweat and dust after the competition: the name Faillo identifies the young man on the right in the famous athlete from Crotone who won three times to the Pythian games of Delphi. Between the legs of Theseus there is also a comment to the scene: Bravo, yes of course!

The lenticular shape of the plate derives from Hellenistic types produced in the Syrian-Palestinian area and intended for high-class clients, which are not widespread in the Piedmont area and more generally in the Cisalpine area. The specimen is placed side by side with another similar plate, now lost, from the nearby Roman necropolis of Trofarello (Turin), while a fragment from Pollenzo (Bra, Cuneo), coming from a tomb dating back to the end of the 1st century BC. and the beginning of the 1st century AD, documents the variant with the insertion of small mosaic squares. The glass manufacturing of these complex products has not yet been identified, the location of which has been hypothesized in north-western Italy and Rome, in the latter case recognized on the basis of the discovery of semi-finished products. The plate was found in 1879, reused as a lid for a vase in the tomb of a male figure dating back to between the end of the sixth and the first half of the seventh century AD.

It is decorated in the cavetto by a pinwheel of petals that surrounds an oak leaf with a symbolic value (strength, family), while geometric motifs alternating with the trellis decorate the brim. On the external surface there are vertical bands highlighted by strokes of color. It presents the peculiar characteristics of the archaic Po Valley graffito ceramics that originates in the Lombard and Emilian area productions. The shape and the decorative motif are compared with the ceramics produced by the factories of the Piedmontese localities of Alessandria and Tortonese under the dominion of the Visconti, but some characteristics, in particular the vertical bands graphed on the external surface, indicate their local production by of potters arrived in Vercelli and attested by written documents especially after the mid-fourteenth century.

The grave goods come from a rich burial belonging to a high-ranking Lombard woman discovered in 1910, during the excavation of a well in the courtyard of a "recently built" building in the Lingotto suburb, then outside the city and still heavily ruralized. The exceptional funeral kit consists of a pair of gold "basket" type earrings, with long mobile pendants and amethyst drops, a chain necklace with gold links, a refined circular cloisonné brooch (fibula) with garnets of the almandine type and colored glass pastes, which cannot be ruled out being an older artifact (5th century), perhaps an heirloom found or handed down. Two prestigious "stirrup" fibulae in gilded silver and niello decorated, with animalistic interlacing of Germanic taste that once had to be pinned to ribbons suspended from the belt, appear worn for a long time. This is proved by the degree of wear of the surfaces, the loss of the knobs of the semicircular plates and the repair carried out in antiquity, visible on the back of one of the two specimens. The cross in gold foil, probably sewn to the funeral veil placed on the face, was made up of a major element and two minor ones (one missing). The decoration, printed with a rectangular mold, sees a repeated interweaving of two animals with ribbon-like bodies that are knotted in the center and ending with a head with an eye on one side and a paw on the other. The symmetrical and harmonious zoomorphic weave (II animalistic style) represents the most mature phase of development that can be followed on the Italian Longobard grave goods: it does not appear to date back to the end of the sixth century. The cross is therefore the most recent find in the trousseau, in line with the most widespread opinion, according to which the precious symbols were offerings specially made for the funeral ceremony. Together with the precious jewels, "a hemispherical basin of copper foil, well preserved, devoid of ornaments, with a diameter of 0.31 m", of which no trace has been lost and which does not seem recognizable in the bronze pottery of uncertain origin of the Turin Antiquity Museum.

The scene is permeated by an idyllic atmosphere and takes place in a mountainous landscape. The sacred character of the context is defined by the architectural element of a small temple decorated with fluttering pearl ribbons, within which a statue with a short chiton and a naos decorated in relief surrounded by ribbons, placed a little further down, is visible on an altar. The two main characters, interpreted as the Cyclops Polyphemus and the sea nymph Galatea, occupy a large part of the figurative field and are presented in three quarters, half naked, sitting on a rocky spur covered by the skin of a lion, while they flirt. At the center of the scene stands a sacred tree with fronds laden with inflorescences, perhaps a sycamore tree, from whose twisted trunk a large cut branch branches off to which a bundle full of fruit is tied. The landscape is completed by two female goats (Mambrina breed?) With long hanging ears and twisted horns, a thick curly fleece, intent on grazing shrubs and flowers, while a crouching male with spiral horns rests. The relief, of high artistic quality, expresses the erotic theme of the myth according to iconographic patterns and models that derive from the figurative repertoires of the Hellenistic sphere elaborated in the Alexandrian area.

The dove-shaped thin glass ointment is a container for perfumes, ointments and balms. In order to consume the contents it was necessary to break the tail: this specimen is the only one still sealed that is known, and it is half filled with a clear liquid, with a slight pink sediment deposited on the bottom. These refined containers, often in bright colors, were made with the free blowing technique, which allowed them to be modeled in the shape of a dove; after the insertion of the ointment they were sealed. The origin of free blowing has been identified in the Syrian area around the middle of the 1st century BC: from here it spreads rapidly throughout the Roman world, where it allows the affirmation of glass containers for various uses in daily life already starting from the very early imperial age. Attested above all in northern Italy and very frequent in Piedmontese burial contexts, the colombina ointment is present with few specimens in the other regions of the Empire, so much so that its production area was identified in the western Cisalpina, during the first century AD. , in particular in the active furnaces along the Ticino river basin and the Verbano lake. Similar ointments are often found, even in several examples, in the grave goods of women's tombs, together with others of a spherical shape, also typical of Piedmont.

The serpentinite pebble, interpreted as a funerary marker, was found in an area on the edge of the rich Golasecchian necropolis of San Bernardino-Cascina Pierina (NO), where some burial mounds had been destroyed by agricultural work. In the center we recognize a schematic human figure made with small tapping strokes: it is a warrior who wields a spear with his right hand, while his left arm, raised behind his head, carries a small shield. The inscription "quormsklp" or "quormskla" is arranged around the figure following the shape of an inverted U, as in the horseshoe-shaped stele of northern Etruria and the Golasecca culture of the same time. The inscription is in an alphabet known as the "Lugano alphabet": these are alphabetic signs of Etruscan origin used to write the Celtic dialect of the area between Lake Maggiore and Lake Como starting from the end of the 7th century BC. It is likely that the inscription bears, abbreviated, the name of a person in the genitive (quorm [oi] s [o]), while klp or kla could be the abbreviation of * klappa, pebble: in this case it could translate with " pebble of Quormoiso ".

The Museum of Antiquities preserves numerous protohistoric brooches (fibulae) with disc stirrup, coming from the nineteenth-century collection of Giovanni Battista Assi. The whole makes it possible to observe all the steps in the evolution of the production technique of the stirrup thus conformed, from the final Bronze Age (11th century BC) to the early Iron Age (8th century BC). The most significant step is the change in the preparation of the pre-finished product and the procedure for making the spiral. Initially it is a simple winding for decorative purposes of the end of the circular section wire with which the fibula is made. The specimens in which a hammering action performed vertically on the already wound wire spiral still dates back to the final Bronze Age. In the immediately following specimens, the hammering will instead be carried out during the winding phases, so that the characteristic spiral shape with an asymmetrical spiral results. The end from which the disc is obtained, at the pre-processed level, consists of a rod obtained by casting in the shape of a flattened cigar, gradually wound and repeatedly hammered, with annealing steps. This new typology had to meet particular favor due to the possibility of exploiting the smooth surface to accommodate decorative elements engraved with a metal punch or engraved with a metal stylus tip or hand-grained stone. This aesthetic requirement finds further development with the choice of creating a solid disc without discontinuity, obtained by the crushing of a ball-like enlargement, on which the compositional schemes can be enriched and diversified since they are now freed from a spiral-shaped support. At this point the disc can also be made separately and then fixed to the fibula with rivets, probably to obviate the frequent breakages in the hammering phase of the attachment area between the bracket and the pin holder.