Caserta, restoration for Diana and Actaeon fountain, masterpiece of the Royal Park

Restoration of the Fountain of Diana and Actaeon begins at the Royal Palace of Caserta. The work will be carried out thanks to the Soroptimist International association: the Caserta club, chaired by Giulia Polverino, won a competition launched by the international association, prevailing over 22 other proposals received from clubs all over Italy, relating to the same number of sites. The Caserta circle can thus obtain the 40,000 euros from the Art Fund made available by the international association for an intervention on the most important and famous sculptural groups in the Royal Park created by Tommaso and Pietro Solari, Paolo Persico and Angelo Brunelli.

Soroptimist International Italia’s Art Fund aims to finance interventions to safeguard, conserve and restore Italy’s cultural and artistic heritage. The Caserta group’s project came in the selection round ex aequo with two works housed in Florence’s Santa Croce church. At the national convention, it was overwhelmingly voted for by Soroptimist international delegates, and Caserta was therefore able to take first place. The goal of the Terra di Lavoro club’s proposal is to contribute to the preservation of the heritage of the Royal Palace of Caserta with a subject that symbolizes the theme of women, their strength and their value: the statuary complex located under the waterfall of the Royal Park’s Torrione, in fact, tells the myth of Diana and Actaeon. Legend has it that the goddess, realizing that the hunter was spying on her while she was bathing with her nymphs, turned him into a stag in revenge. Actaeon then became prey to her dogs, which are depicted in the act of mauling him.

“The territorial network represents an important resource for Italy’s cultural heritage,” says the general director of the Royal Palace of Caserta, Tiziana Maffei. “Dialogue and the sharing of projects and perspectives with active and proactive forces in the community is always a harbinger of great results. I would like to thank Soroptimist international and the club of Caserta for thinking of the involvement of our museum institute, which has been the protagonist, in the last year and a half, of many restoration and conservation interventions. In our mission, the preservation of the guarded cultural heritage is an opportunity for relationship building, support for professionalism, knowledge of the constituent material of the assets and, above all, transmission of the values of care and shared responsibility.”

“The projects presented were all worthwhile, but this one involving the fountain of Diana and Actaeon has special significance because in it there is myth, the sense of rebirth in water, beauty, art, the woman violated in her privacy who punishes the perpetrator of this ante litteram violence,” says Soroptimist National President Mariolina Coppola. “Moreover, it is located in one of the most beautiful palaces in the world, a UNESCO site, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Icing on the cake: the general director of the museum is a woman, Tiziana Maffei, as is the restoration officer who will direct the intervention, Anna Manzone.”

Caserta, restoration for Diana and Actaeon fountain, masterpiece of the Royal Park

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