The Chimera site - a personal note by the author

     If you have clicked your way up to here, probably you'd like to know how came that this site was set up. Well, the Chimera site owes a lot to a friend of the author, Susan Miho Nunes.  Susan bought a small replica of the Chimera of Arezzo in Firenze, back in (maybe) 1996. At that time, she asked to the author what that funny beast was supposed to mean. That was a difficult question then, and still is, although the author has, maybe, learned a bit on the subject in the meantime. Susan is a writer and she wrote, among many other things, a beautiful book about a Chinese Dragon (The Last Dragon). A Chinese Dragon is not exactly a Chimera but it may be considered as a distant cousin, perhaps. Also, Susan is Hawaiian by birth, and maybe the Mediterranean myth of the Chimera is not so unlike that of the Volcano goddess Pele. Actually, Susan was born in Hilo, not far away from Hawai'i's main volcanoes. But that could be a long story.
    This site owes a lot also to the author's much beloved wife, Grazia. She works at the Galleria Frilli in Firenze; they sell replicas of ancient statuary, a fantastic place, a whole museum with hundreds of statues concentrated in a few rooms. They have an original size copy of the Chimera of Arezzo. They sell it, unfortunately, at a price a bit outside the author's budget, no matter how much he would like to have it as a conversation piece in his living room. But, still, the gallery gives everyone a chance to see the object at short distance, actually even to touch it! That's something that the author has been fond of doing everytime he happens to be there, no signs of getting tired of that yet!
    Finally, there is the real Chimera, the original Chimera of Arezzo, now standing at the Archeological museum in Firenze. The author must admit that last time he was at the museum he didn't find the original so much more inspiring than the copy at the Galleria Frilli. It is up there, you can't touch it, and there is not much light, either. But never mind, it is the real thing, it was the work of real Etruscans, maybe remote ancestors of the author himself, who knows? It was 25 centuries ago, and then it stood buried underground for two millennia, and then it passed in the hands of the Grand-duke of Tuscany, Cosimo 1st, and then of such people as Cellini and Vasari. Well, that's concentrated history; it all stands in that chunk of bronze of that roaring lion, so angry, so desperately fighting, so alone on that tall wooden drum in a small room of the museum.

Ugo Bardi, June 1998