The monumental marble inlay at the center of the floor of the Hall of Honor at the Palace of Sciences is one of the elements of the extensive decorative program dedicated to illustrate the stories and people behind scientific disciplines in the Palace, constructed to host the science exhibition for the 1942 Universal Exhibition in Rome (E42) and never inaugurated due to the outbreak of World War II.

Mario Tozzi (Isola di Fano, 1895 – Saint Jean du Gard, 1979), the artist who signed the inlay, was initially inspired by post-impressionism before developing a Classicist style that grew deeper in his relationship with Margherita Sarfatti, Raffaello Giolli, and the artists of the Novecento Italiano school with whom he displayed work at the first exhibition in 1926. Mediating currents between France (where he lived) and Italy, Tozzi embodied a distinctive Italian character in the School of Paris milieu that led him to share workspaces and ideas with artists such as Massimo Campigli, Giorgio De Chirico and his brother Alberto Savinio, Gino Severini, René Paresce, Filippo De Pisis, and the critic Waldemar George, an advocate of Mediterranean Classicism. Living in Italy from 1935 to 1944, Tozzi worked on several wall decoration projects that included Paradiso perduto (The Lost Paradise) frescoes for the Palace of Justice in Milan and Il marinaio (The Sailorman) for the rotunda at the entrance to the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, and the marble inlay floor at the Palace of Sciences in Rome.

In this inlay of Italian stone and marble, whose use in construction and decoration is amply documented in the ISPRA Litho-Mineralogical Collections, Tozzi composed sections dedicated to the disciplines of Cosmography, Physics, Physiology, Paleontology, and Zoology. At the center stands his portrayal of the Roman goddess Minerva who descends from a line of Etruscan divinities and the Greek goddess Athena. Minerva was the goddess of heroic virtue and war for just cause or defense for ancient Rome, but also wisdom, and was thus the patroness of the practical or applied arts (architecture, crafts, geometry, engineering, mathematics) and the sciences in general. Her attributes were her shield, helmet, and spear, which in Tozzi’s depiction are laid on the ground, while the goddess holds an open book and quill in her hands symbolizing the wish for peace, a metaphor for the exaltation of scientific culture.