Historical research attempted, over the course of the last decades, to close some of the gaps created between artworks and their provenance, often enabling a complete sense of the original context, which new 3D technology allows us to visualize, going well beyond written description or simple graphic recreation, leaving future generations with an effective memory of culturally complex systems, now fragmented and no longer accessible, while the interaction between the Humanities and Digital Heritage continues to solicit deeper reflections and new knowledge. Among the 438 artworks presented by Lionello Venturi in “Pitture italiane in America” (1931), are two detached frescoes preserved at the Worcester Art Museum, originally part of a series of sacred frescoes painted around 1295-1300 in a Clarissan monastery located very close to Spoleto. The work of complex and articulated iconography was created entirely by an anonymous Maestro. It is of such high quality that Roberto Longhi described it as “the splendid series of the Palazze in Spoleto” (1957). In the 1920s, the majority of the frescoes were removed and between 1924 and 1931 some fragments and entire scenes were purchased by five museums of the American cities of Boston, Bryn Athin, Cambridge, Hartford and Worcester, where they remain to this day. In 1964, one of the scenes and five of the remaining sinopias were detached. The latter, together with other fragments found at a later stage, are now exhibited in the National Museum of the Duchy of Spoleto. This paper aims to present the results of a project (started from a preliminary survey of artworks uprooted from Medieval religious buildings in central Italy, by Fachechi and Giometti), that aimed to piece together virtually a cultural heritage which has split and restore its overall physiognomy by putting it into its historic and historic-artistic context and by creating suitable traditional and multi-media tools, which will enable the works to be enjoyed as though they were still all together in the same place in their original layout.
To the Museum and Back: a virtual arrangement of ‘scattered flowers’
Grazia Maria Fachechi;Cristiano Giometti
2022
Abstract
Historical research attempted, over the course of the last decades, to close some of the gaps created between artworks and their provenance, often enabling a complete sense of the original context, which new 3D technology allows us to visualize, going well beyond written description or simple graphic recreation, leaving future generations with an effective memory of culturally complex systems, now fragmented and no longer accessible, while the interaction between the Humanities and Digital Heritage continues to solicit deeper reflections and new knowledge. Among the 438 artworks presented by Lionello Venturi in “Pitture italiane in America” (1931), are two detached frescoes preserved at the Worcester Art Museum, originally part of a series of sacred frescoes painted around 1295-1300 in a Clarissan monastery located very close to Spoleto. The work of complex and articulated iconography was created entirely by an anonymous Maestro. It is of such high quality that Roberto Longhi described it as “the splendid series of the Palazze in Spoleto” (1957). In the 1920s, the majority of the frescoes were removed and between 1924 and 1931 some fragments and entire scenes were purchased by five museums of the American cities of Boston, Bryn Athin, Cambridge, Hartford and Worcester, where they remain to this day. In 1964, one of the scenes and five of the remaining sinopias were detached. The latter, together with other fragments found at a later stage, are now exhibited in the National Museum of the Duchy of Spoleto. This paper aims to present the results of a project (started from a preliminary survey of artworks uprooted from Medieval religious buildings in central Italy, by Fachechi and Giometti), that aimed to piece together virtually a cultural heritage which has split and restore its overall physiognomy by putting it into its historic and historic-artistic context and by creating suitable traditional and multi-media tools, which will enable the works to be enjoyed as though they were still all together in the same place in their original layout.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
