IMAGINES MAIORUM

Solo exhibition of paintings. Artist and curator, Conchi Alvarez

The Roman nobles had cabinets in the atrium of each house containing “imagines maiorum”, effigies of their ancestors, from death masks made of wax, very light and therefore easy to carry in procession at funerals by relatives. It was important that each bearer of the wax effigy of their ancestor had physical similarities to the deceased family member, they even painted their faces to achieve a greater resemblance. It was an immense honour to represent an ancestor. We do not have any wax masks conserved, only masks that were made afterwards in limestone or in bronze. A sculpture of a Roman patrician from the Barberini Palace in Rome, appears carrying two “imagines maiorum”. The embalmed deceased were carried standing or sitting, never lying down, to indicate the persistence of the spirit of the deceased and their glorification. For the Romans, the worship of their ancestors was a right, and it was legislated by the “ius imaginum”, of which we do not have any knowledge, since it was never published.

Nowadays, there are those who think that each family is a perfect and invisible constellation that works with rules and principles that, if respected, ensure family harmony. One of those rules is that each member has their place, a place that must be respected always and never, never be silenced. These rules are not dictated, but they exist, and their violation always has consequences on the new generations of the family lineage.

This exhibition is the particular interpretation of the Roman “imagines maiorum” by the artist. In her childhood, in the times that she spent with her grandparents, uncles and aunts, she listened to stories about events that occurred in the family without much interest, thinking that this was something that did not go with modern times, to which she felt she belonged to and with the certainty of knowing how to capture and understand the contemporary world better than anyone else. The feeling of being the advance guard of the family to face what was to come, visualising herself as an independent astral entity, reaffirmed her conscious disinterest in family histories and the somewhat repetitive tales that were told at family gatherings.

This attitude persisted in her for many years, until certain family circumstances suddenly brought the idea that something had been left undone… and that had to be changed. Then a deep feeling of recovering lost time and the pressing need to look for photographs of her ancestors, in order to draw and paint their effigies to build their particular “imagines maiorum” appeared. In Rome, this cult was exclusive to the patricians, and not all members of the family achieved their effigy, sometimes only those who held public office, and many dreamed of achieving their place among the other family figures. In the case of the painter, there are no masks as a model to elaborate her “imagines maiorum”, only old, deteriorated and faded photographs, carefully kept by the oldest members of the family. They constitute a treasure where the men and women of the family who one day stood before the camera of a photographer. Almost always on the occasion of celebrations: their own wedding, as guests at the wedding of others, communions, baptisms, patron saint festivities of their towns, etc. Scrutinising their faces, remembering those dormant family comments, she has been discovering much about the soul of each ancestor and seems to have made up for the time lost.

Furthermore, some of those represented, still living, are there to remind us that death is inevitable, be it near or distant, thus the portraits depict the conviction that their memory will remain there forever.

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