SHARRYLAND
Tomb of the Diver
The extraordinary beauty of an invisible plunge into the beyond
Where is
What it is and where it is
The Paestum National Museum houses the Tomb of the Diver: five travertine marble slabs painted in fresco. The monument owes its name to the image on the cover slab: a naked young man jumps off the diving board and into the water. The plunge here represents the symbolic passage from life to death, a "metaphysical" leap into the waters of the great Father Ocean. In contrast, the side slabs depict typical scenes from a Greek symposium.
Why it is special
The Tomb of the Diver is the only example of large-scale figurative Greek painting (length 220 cm; height 110 cm). Few hues, essential lines, yet an extraordinary expressive force. Intended only for those who had made the 'great leap,' the images were painted on the inner sides of the tomb and were therefore meant to remain invisible. Even today they retain the charm of that secrecy.
A bit of history
It was the Italian archaeologist Mario Napoli who discovered the Tomb of the Diver in 1968, after two years of excavations, in a necropolis not far from Paestum. Analyses performed allowed the funerary artifact to be dated between 480 and 470 BC.
Curiosity
Sometimes art stimulates cinema. The diver's slab exerted such a fascination on Federico Francioni and Yan Cheng that the two filmmakers decided to make a short film inspired by it. Selected in 2016 among the 10 best audiovisual works at the Pesaro Film Festival, "Tomb of the Diver" investigates the mysteries of that immersion in the contemporary world.
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