Descrizione
Among the town’s artistic and cultural treasures.
Pergola is a treasure trove that enchants the soul and amazes the eye. Some of these precious artefacts are housed in the Museum of Gilded Bronzes and the City of Pergola. Here, in the contemporary art section, we can admire the meticulous graphic works created by the Pergola-born artist Walter Valentini, who has reinterpreted Giacomo Leopardi’s timeless works on cotton paper to mark the bicentenary of his birth. The result is indescribable, making these limited-edition volumes true gems.
Moving on to the historical-art section, among other highlights is the statue of Saint Secondo, the town’s patron saint, who holds a miniature Pergola in the palms of his hands, and the ‘Bella Pietà’ of Saint Augustine, one of the most evocative Pietàs in central Italy, in which the Virgin Mary’s grief is not depicted, but perceived by the attentive eyes of the viewer.
The work that undoubtedly attracts the most attention is the Polyptych of St James with St Augustine the Bishop, owing to its vivid, bright colours and its history: originally housed in the church of St James and St Lucy, the panels were stolen during the Napoleonic era and taken to Milan. The museum also houses a numismatic section, containing 240 coins minted at the town’s own mint.
Polittico di San Giacomo con Sant’Agostino
vescovo, Museo dei Bronzi Dorati e della
Città di Pergola
But Pergola’s most precious treasure – the one for which the town is known internationally – is housed in the museum’s archaeological section, which boasts the only surviving group of gilded bronze sculptures in the world dating from the Roman era: the Gilded Bronzes of Cartoceto in Pergola. Discovered in 1946 in a pit just over a metre deep and five metres wide by two farmers who were digging the ground, the bronzes consisted of 9 quintals of gilded fragments.
Following careful and meticulous reconstruction work, the statues forming the group were reassembled: they consist of two female figures (the intact one is nearly two metres tall) and two horsemen in military attire mounted on their lavishly adorned steeds.
There are many fascinating theories regarding the identity of the figures (one of which suggests they belonged to the family of Emperor Tiberius, of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, 1st century AD) and the reason for the destruction of their statues: according to some theories, the bronze statues were looted (bronze was extremely valuable at the time) by bandits who, upon being discovered, were forced to hastily destroy and bury them, or, according to a less likely hypothesis, the family members were victims of damnatio memoriae, having been tainted by a serious crime, so that their effigies were torn down to erase all traces of their existence, in accordance with Roman custom. In the spring of 2019, a highly evocative immersive exhibition space was set up inside the museum, well worth a visit.
