Sculture di Capua antica | Sculptures from Ancient Capua is Luigi Spina’s photographic study of selected works in the National Archaeological Museum of Ancient Capua. Published by 5 Continents Editions in 2025, the bilingual Italian-English volume concentrates on four sculpted figures—Triptolemus, Aphrodite, Heracles and the Resting Satyr—using photography to reconsider how classical objects are seen today.
Spina’s black-and-white images give the project a deliberate, interpretive character. Rather than functioning simply as documentary records, they attend to the presence of the sculptures: their bodies, surfaces and expressive force. The book’s stated purpose is to bring the refined aesthetics and elaborate mythology of the classical world into relation with contemporary perception, asking how ancient art continues to shape ideas of beauty and meaning.
The volume is also a sustained institutional collaboration. Its essays by Luana Toniolo, Antonella Tomeo and Luigi Spina accompany the photographs, while the project was developed in agreement with the National Museums of Campania Regional Directorate and supported by the Terra di Lavoro San Vincenzo deì Paoli cooperative credit bank. Those contributions place the images within an archaeological and curatorial framework without reducing them to illustration.
For collectors of photographic books concerned with museums, sculpture and the afterlife of antiquity, this is a focused and clearly defined work. Its compact format—80 pages, with 40 three-colour illustrations—supports a concentrated encounter with a small group of works, while the Italian-English presentation extends its usefulness across audiences. The book deserves attention for the precision of its subject and for Spina’s insistence that classical sculpture remains not only a historical inheritance, but an active presence in contemporary visual culture.
