Award-winning Italian poet Gabriele Tinti presents his new poems, inspired by the museum’s ancient Roman sculpture, The Bateman Mercury. Currently on view in the galleries of To Rome and Back: Individualism and Authority in Art, 1500—1800, the sculpture harkens back to a time when the ancient Roman world’s pantheon of deities represented important human qualities relating both to everyday life and the afterlife. Mercury (whose identity overlapped with Hermes from ancient Greece) was one of the ancient world’s most popular Roman gods, the embodiment of commerce, travel, and trade; thus he is often depicted with wings on his feet and helmet. Tinti, who has collaborated with the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, as well as LACMA, presents this group of poems as part of his The Nostalgia of the Poet series, in which he has gathered writings, verses, fragments, and short essays.