Camerino hosts first exhibition after 2016 earthquake. At Palazzo Castelli the recovered works

After five years, a municipality in the crater of the earthquake that struck central Italy in 2016 is returning to host an exhibition of ancient art. It is Camerino Outside the Walls: perspectives of art from the 15th to the 18th century, being held in Camerino’s Palazzo Castelli from June 25 to Sept. 19, 2021, promoted and supported by the Marche Region and the Municipality of Camerino. The exhibition aims to highlight works of art recovered in the Camerino area and saved from the earthquake, from uninhabitable churches and museums. Some of them are going back on display for the public for the first time since the fateful date of the earthquake, others after restoration, while for others it is about reviving them through new technologies. The aim, then, is to reclaim an extraordinary heritage that has never been forgotten.

The exhibition will come to life in one of the city’s historic buildings, thanks to the collaboration of the University of Camerino, whose Rector, Claudio Pettinari, is also a member of the Scientific Committee. The exhibition will also make use of ultra-high-definition videos that allow visitors to walk through the Vision of St. Philip Neri with the Madonna and Child, created by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo between 1739 and 1740, to discover every last detail thanks to the collaboration with Haltadefinizione. The work is the only evidence of the Venetian painter in central Italy. Also on display are the Portrait of Giulia da Varano attributed to Dosso Dossi, Giovanni Angelo d’Antonio’sAnnunciation (an astonishing manifesto of the 15th century in the Marche region, created by an interpreter who in many ways was a precursor of the cultured and refined painting of Piero della Francesca: this work has also been digitized by Haltadefinizione), and other important works. Moreover, the portrait of Giulia da Varano as a child, which shows the last duchess of Camerino seated on a red brocade cushion and immersed in a landscape with a view of the city, has been specially restored: after a campaign of diagnostic investigations prior to the intervention itself and an adequate photographic kit documenting the various stages of the restoration, full legibility has been restored to this work attributed to Dosso Dossi and dated around 1524. The painting, acquired by the municipality in 1860, stolen in 1980 had been recovered in 2019 by the Carabinieri’s Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Culturale.

The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the works underwent diagnostic investigations curated by Unicam spin-off Art & Co srl and valorization through digitization performed by the company Haltadefinizione, the results of which will be available to the public through special multimedia tools. There is no single curator of the exhibition: in fact, it was a collegial work of a scientific committee composed of Pier Luigi Falaschi, Marina Massa, Barbara Mastrocola, Claudio Pettinari, Matteo Mazzalupi, Francesco Orsolini, and Alessandra Pattanaro. The most representative, important and valuable works present in the city of Camerino and its territory were selected, emphasizing the work attributed to Dosso Dossi (recently restored and never exhibited), the altarpiece by Tiepolo and theAnnunciation by Giovanni Angelo d’Antonio.

After the seismic events of 2016, the municipality worked tenaciously to safeguard its artistic heritage, and most of the works it owned, thanks also to the availability obtained from the Archdiocese of Camerino-San Severino Marche, were transferred and sheltered in the basement rooms of the Episcopio, in the Venanzina Pennesi storage room in Camerino and in the Episcopal Palace in San Severino Marche. Thanks to the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio of the Marche, various equipment systems, display cases and racks were designed, and the damaged goods were catalogued, photographed and secured. The exhibition is therefore also the result of this work. The total cost of the project is 90,000 euros, 80,000 of which were allocated by the Marche Region and 10,000 as cost-sharing by the Municipality of Camerino.

“It is a symbolic exhibition,” stressed Regional Councillor Giorgia Latini, “for several reasons: for the great teamwork and the excellent institutional collaboration between all those involved and whom I want to thank, for the love of cultural heritage, aimed at making it shareable to as many people as possible, and because it is a true restart of this wounded territory, which has always shown that it knows how to rise from difficulties, as the people of Marche know how to do. With this exhibition event we are giving a strong signal of hope by continuing a broader path of valorizing the works of art in which the Marche region is rich. Our goal is that of economic revitalization through culture, an essential flywheel for the growth of the territories.”

“Camerino does not forget its origins,” said Mayor Sandro Sborgia, “it is a city by vocation of art and culture, and it is precisely the latter that we want to be the engine of the restart, of an economic and social revitalization of our territory wounded by the earthquake and then grappling with Covid. We start from the Renaissance, among the periods explored in the exhibition, to arrive at a rebirth that must undoubtedly pass through many factors and sectors, and culture for us is one of the main ones to focus on through communities, territories, and technologi”

“With the exhibition,” explains Culture Councillor Giovanna Sartori, “we wanted to exhibit something never done before: the visitor is literally captured by the splendors that for us have the strong symbolic value of rebirth. These are art perspectives that see the Camerino identity at the center, but which are projected to a much broader perspective and which, for this earthquake-wounded land, also want to represent a new beginning by restarting from a historical space that becomes something else, an installation that wins the union between ancient and contemporary. Camerino thus manifests the will to restart from art and culture, and the fact that it is promoting the first exhibition in the crater is a metaphor for true and collective rebirth.”

“We all have in our eyes that tragic November of 2016,” pointed out Rector Claudio Pettinari, “when those same works saved by the Superintendence, by Legambiente, left our city , wounded and by truck. In the soul the pain and the worry of perhaps never being able to see them again. And instead we are here today celebrating this return to splendor for a long-awaited exhibition, a good five years. The beauty and importance of these works of art stand as proof of Camerino’s prestigious historical tradition, and the University is ready to continue together with the institutions on this path of enhancing the cultural heritage of both the Camerino territory and the region, supporting the actions with our expertise , research and study applied to the promotion and protection of cultural heritage, through architecture, computer science, chemistry and digital communication.”

Pictured is a detail of Tiepolo’s altarpiece

Camerino hosts first exhibition after 2016 earthquake. At Palazzo Castelli the recovered works

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