The Famous Gilded Bronzes of Cartoceto di Pergola On Exhibition for the First Time Outside Italy

July 7, 2007 to February 10, 2008

The celebrated group of the Gilded Bronzes of Cartoceto di Pergola — two larger-than-life men on horseback accompanied by two standing women — are being displayed outside Italy for the first time. This is one of the very rare large sculptural groups to have survived from the Ancient Rome. For grandeur and splendour they are matched only by the Horses of Saint Mark’s in Venice and the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, both of which are also gilded. “The Museum is honoured and delighted to have these archaeological treasures under our roof,” said Nathalie Bondil, Director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. “We are also very happy about this collaboration with Montreal’s Italian community, which we hope will find the MMFA an ideal place to rediscover and admire Italian art from Antiquity to the present day that forms an important part of our permanent collection.”

These bronzes were found by chance in 1946 by two farmers working in their field near Cartoceto di Pergola in the Marches. For no known reason, the fragments had been thrown into a shallow pit, and so escaped being melted down for re-use of the metals, the usual fate of this kind of sculpture. Gian Mario Spacca, President of the region of the Marches, said, “This group of gilded bronzes conveys all the beauty and mystery of Ancient Rome… Their unknown story and accidental discovery are a remarkable demonstration of the miracle of these lands, the Marches, which can reveal superb works of art, testimony to the talent and importance of a culture recognized all over the world.”

The bronzes were taken to the National Archaeological Museum of the Marches in Ancona, where they were first restored between 1948 and 1959, and later, from 1975 to 1986, to the restoration centre of the Soprintendenza Archeologica in Tuscany, where modern scientific criteria were used. This long process of restoration and reconstruction — there were hundreds of fragments to be assembled — has enabled these sculptures to be put on public display.

The group comprises four figures, two men on horseback and two standing women, obviously persons of high rank. Since they were found with no real archaeological context, it is difficult to identify them, although a number of hypotheses have been put forward. The initial study dated the group to the beginning of the Roman Empire (early first century AD) and associated the figures with the Julio-Claudian family. The woman whose features are conserved was thought to be Livia, wife of Augustus, and the two men identified as Nero Caesar, son of Germanicus, and his brother Drusus, both executed on the orders of Sejanus, Prefect of the Emperor Tiberius. But much more plausibly, later research has dated the sculptures to the first century BC, between the reign of Caesar and the empire of Augustus (50-30 BC). A fascinating theory holds that one of the two men, or perhaps both, may have been involved in the assassination of Julius Caesar. After his adopted son Octavius (whom we know as Augustus) acceded to supreme power, the memory of the conspirators was discredited. The sculptures could then have been destroyed or hidden. It has also been suggested that they represent members of a prominent family of senatorial rank, whose origins may have been linked to the region of the Marches.

 

 

The Gilded Bronzes of Cartoceto di Pergola (detail)