The Diocesan Museum of Potenza, set up in the ground floor hall of the 17th-century former Seminary building, recently opened to the public, represents an important opportunity for visitors to ‘recognize’, through the artworks, the main features that distinguish the artistic culture of our region and the history of the ancient Potenza diocese mediated by the microhistory story of each individual item.
The museum route presents, in this first exhibition, furnishings and sacred objects from the cathedral and some city parishes: works from the 16th to the 20th century.
The sacred silverware items from the Cathedral Treasury, many of which are displayed to the public for the first time: chalices, pyxes, crosses, reliquaries, monstrances, made by Neapolitan silversmiths between the 16th and 19th centuries. Most of the silverware was donated by generous bishops who led the Potenza diocese: Carlo Pignatelli, Gaetano Avigliano, Bartolomeo De Cesare, Ignazio Marolda, Michelangelo Pieramico.
The exhibition also includes paintings on canvas and wood, in particular, from the Episcopal Palace come the two canvases depicting the Madonna with Child between Saint Anthony and Saint Philip Neri and the Madonna of the Rosary, both from the 17th century, and from the Church of Saint Francis the Virgin nursing the sleeping Child (late 17th – early 18th century) and the Madonna with Child (first half of the 17th century). The five panels with the Stories of Saint Anthony, surviving side panels of an icon, are dated ‘March 1645’.
Ancient texts are displayed, including the 15th-century illuminated Bible and the 1600 Parish Register, preserved in the Cathedral archive, and finally some textile artifacts, among which stands out an 19th-century liturgical vestment commissioned by Bishop Ignazio Marolda and three mitres.
To these works, which form the fixed and central core of the museum setup, will be added artistic testimonies temporarily taken from churches in other municipalities of the Diocese, according to criteria dictated by specific thematic choices.
Information about the Diocesan Museum of Potenza
Via Vescovado, 1
85100 Potenza (Potenza)
097121637 – 0971283110
museodiocesanopotenza@gmail.com
Source: MIBACT
