Category Archives: Other

Map of the Mediterranean at Mediterrano

For over 20 years, this mural of the Mediterranean has overlooked Mediterrano’s main dinning area. The mural shows Odysseus’ nautical travels after the Trojan War in ancient times which span the entire Mediterranean Sea, including two continents. Fittingly, Odysseus’ routes also reflect how Mediterrano blends the food from many different cultures in order to demonstrate and share the richness of the Mediterranean diet with its customers.

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Mural of Ancient Bacchanal at Gratzi

Mural of ancient bacchanal at Gratzi.

Mural of ancient bacchanal at Gratzi.

Founded in 1987, Gratzi is an upscale Italian restaurant that is Greek owned and features a large mural as well as balcony seating. Painted by a man from Chicago when the restaurant opened, his name was forgotten through the years, but his mural lives on adding to Gratzi’s indulgent and pleasurable atmosphere. This Renaissance-style mural depicts an ancient bacchanal (gratzirestaurant.com) where men, women, satyrs, and in this case, Dionysus as well, took part in drinking wine, listening to music, dancing, and orgies. These events were called bacchanalia or Dionysia (britannica.com) and celebrated Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy. Overall, in the festivals, which had some ritual components, participants indulged in all things to the point of excess.

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Fountain of Minerva

Source: http://www.nethercraft.com/prod_sculpture.html#

Fountain of Minerva. Sculpture of a scene from the Trojan War from Homer’s Iliad. Source: nethercraft.com.

Created by sculptor Julian Baksik, a graduate of the University of Michigan art school, this fountain is a combination of the compositions of the Trevi and Triton Fountains in Rome, the waterspouts at Lake Como’s Villa d’Este and the French Renaissance sculpture Diana D’anet at the Louvre (Leblanc 2012). Located in the yard of Kevin Nickerson on Ann Arbor’s NW side, Minerva, wrathful with Ajax, beckons Neptune to raise a storm to smite the Achaean fleet in a scene taken from the Trojan War (nethercraft.com). The monumental sculpture group made of acrylic, epoxy, and fiberglass to resist weathering took two trips to Rome and more than 10,000 hours of hands-on work by Baksik as well as a team of volunteers over a span of two years to complete.

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