ARTIST OF THE SCHOOL OF ANDREA DEL VERROCCHIO (MICHELE MARINI DA FIESOLE?). TERRACOTTA PANEL WITH GORGON FACE, 1485-1495. MUSEO DI ROMA When the medieval street called via delle Botteghe Oscure was widened in 1936, the C15 house called "of the Terracottas" fell to what Mussolini called "His Majesty the pickaxe". It stood on the edge of the neighbourhood called the Calcararia or Place of the Lime Kilns, which spread across today's largo Argentina and toward piazza Venezia as well as riverward close to the Ghetto. This was a monumental part of the ancient city, with the theatres of Pompey, Balbus, and Marcellus, the Hecatostylon, the two Porticus Minuciæ, and many temples, offering rich spoils to the scavatori or marble-diggers. The whiter the marble, the higher the lime content, and the kilns burned night and day for centuries, fed by the monuments of the ancient Campus Martius. This Medusa is sooty with the black carbon deposits from the lime kilns: no wonder she's screaming.

For #SpoliaSunday, not a piece of #spolia but a frightening terracotta Medusa from 1485-1495. It once decorated a house in the area of the #Calcararia in #Rome, and its blackened patina derives from the smoke from the constant burning of ancient marble in the #lime kilns nearby. #AncientBluesky 🏺