From Saturday 12 November until 20 April next year, the monumental complex of the Spedale del Buon Gesù will host an important archaeological exhibition displaying finds never shown before, precious evidence of a very distant and almost entirely unknown past.
It will be set up on the ground floor of the 15th-century complex which six years ago hosted the extraordinary exhibition on Gentile da Fabriano and whose upper floor is now home to the “Bruno Molajoli” Civic Art Gallery.
The exhibition is organised by the Municipality of Fabriano in collaboration with the local branch of Archeoclub Italia and in agreement with the Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of the Marche. According to the organisers, it is a first step towards the creation of a future Civic Archaeological Museum which, linked to the National Archaeological Museum of the Marche and to the other museums spread along the upper Esino valley and within the “Camerino basin”, would fulfil an important role, able not only to add a new chapter to our knowledge of the history of the area but also to benefit the local economy, encouraging the kind of cultural tourism that is becoming increasingly important throughout the country.
The Fabriano area, devoted first mainly to craft and then to industrial development, has experienced an extraordinary economic expansion since the end of the Second World War, linked mostly to the household appliance industry, which has pushed its more distant history and many of its cultural peculiarities into the background.
AN EXTRAORDINARY HERITAGE
Through a careful selection of finds from excavations, surface collections and chance discoveries, the exhibition aims to offer, for the first time in an exhibition, an overall view of the extraordinary heritage of precious evidence found in the Fabriano area since the beginning of the last century and currently kept by the Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of the Marche and the National Archaeological Museum of the Marche.
The exhibition is dedicated in particular to the people of Fabriano and to the younger generations, often unaware of the rich past of their land, to whom it aims to offer a useful way of getting to know the most ancient cultural heritage of the town and the surrounding areas.
However, the scientific value of this evidence goes far beyond the local dimension of the discovery, placing Fabriano, in some cases, among the most important archaeological districts of peninsular Italy.
PRINCELY TOMBS
Fine examples of the wealth of the Fabriano area are the princely tombs of the Orientalising period (7th century BC) kept at the National Archaeological Museum of the Marche, discovered at Santa Maria in Campo in 1915 and still today of outstanding importance among the archaeological discoveries of the whole peninsula, on a par with the most famous princely funerary complexes of Etruria, Latium and Campania. Recent studies have also made it possible to reconstruct the original composition of the grave goods of these tombs, in particular those of a burial that has always been overlooked because of incorrect associations but is of exceptional importance: the tomb of tumulus 1.
The tomb in fact belongs to a hoplite, a Greek term meaning warrior, whose name derives from the particular type of shield called the hoplon that formed part of his armour. Thanks to the fragments of the sheets that decorated its outer surface, the find from tomb 1 is still today, almost a hundred years after its discovery, the only example in the whole Mediterranean whose entire decorative scheme can be reconstructed with a good degree of approximation.
It is precisely the exceptional nature of this find that led the Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of the Marche to produce a reconstruction model, which can be admired along the exhibition route.
But many other discoveries deserve to be known for their historical and scientific importance, such as the Picene and Celtic burials discovered in the 1970s in the Foro Boario area, or the group of bronze vessels belonging to an early 5th-century BC Picene tomb found near the hamlet of Pecorile.
As for the discoveries in the Foro Boario area, the exceptional presence of a 3rd-century BC Gaulish burial with wine amphorae, cauldrons, a saucepan and an olpe (jug) in bronze sheet bears witness to the existence of a thriving community of Senones Gauls in the Fabriano basin, and clearly recalls very well-known contexts such as the Gaulish tombs of Montefortino di Arcevia and Santa Paolina di Filottrano, famous for their lavish grave goods of metal vessels, weapons and precious objects. Moreover, the Foro Boario tomb is inevitably linked to the imposing princely funerary complex of the mid-4th century BC, also found in Fabriano at Moscano, which belonged to a chieftain of the Senones Gauls worthy of comparison with Brennus, the attacker of Rome in 360 BC. Today the grave goods of the Moscano tomb are kept at the National Archaeological Museum of the Marche.
THE EXHIBITION ROUTE
The exhibition will open with an introductory section on the Fabriano area and on the period of the Picenes and the Celts, so that visitors, with the help of the necessary educational and explanatory panels, can easily understand the themes covered. The display will be organised mainly in chronological order, starting with the earliest Picene evidence in Fabriano dating to the 8th century BC, continuing with the necropolises and settlements of the 6th-5th century BC and ending with tomb 1 of the Foro Boario and the Gaulish period in the 3rd century BC.
THE MONUMENTAL COMPLEX OF THE “SPEDALE DEL BUON GESU'”
Restored in the 1990s and in 2006 the venue of the famous exhibition Gentile da Fabriano e l’altro Rinascimento, the monumental complex of the Spedale del Buon Gesù (whose upper floor houses the “Bruno Molajoli” Civic Art Gallery) was built from 1456 onwards to bring together the hospital facilities in the town, and was later used as a foundling home for girls and then as a psycho-educational institute. The full reopening to the public and the complete rearrangement of the Art Gallery’s works date to 2007. The building is one of the finest examples of late Gothic architecture in the Marche: the original façade features a cross-vaulted portico with five pointed arches of different widths resting on cruciform pillars, while the upper storey has two-light windows with small trefoil arches set within a round arch. The adjacent church of the Sacro Cuore or del Gesù, part of the monumental complex that houses the Art Gallery, preserves the processional banner painted around 1460 by the Maestro di Staffolo, depicting the Virgin adoring the Child. The frescoes visible under the portico are by the same painter. Inside, the church preserves frescoes by the Florentine Andrea Boscoli, painted at the beginning of the 17th century. In the cloister there is an octagonal well dating from 1483.
EXHIBITION DETAILS
“PICENI E CELTI LUNGO LE RIVE DEL GIANO.”
Scientific project
Tommaso Sabbatini
Scientific coordination and direction
Maurizio Landolfi
The exhibition was promoted and organised by:
Municipality of Fabriano
Archeoclub Italia – Fabriano branch
in agreement with
Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of the Marche
Set-up and promotion
Servizi per i Beni Culturali srl – Roberto Scocco