Il Museo Diocesano di Potenza, set up in the ground floor room of the seventeenth-century building of the former Seminary, recently opened to the public, represents an important opportunity for those who visit it to ‘recognize’, through the artworks, the main peculiarities that distinguish the artistic culture of our region and the history of the ancient diocese of Potenza mediated by the narration of the microhistory of each individual item.
The museum itinerary presents, in this first setup, furnishings and sacred objects from the cathedral and some city parishes: works from the 16th to the 20th century.
Sacred silverware objects coming from the Cathedral Treasury, many of which exhibited 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 diocese of Potenza: Carlo Pignatelli, Gaetano Avigliano, Bartolomeo De Cesare, Ignazio Marolda, Michelangelo Pieramico.
The setup also includes paintings on canvas and panel, in particular, two canvases depicting the Madonna with Child between Saint Anthony and Saint Philip Neri and the Madonna of the Rosary come from the Bishop’s Palace, both from the 17th century, and from the Church of San Francesco 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 exhibited, 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 a nineteenth-century liturgical vestment commissioned by Bishop Ignazio Marolda and three mitres.
To these works, which constitute 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 precise thematic choices.
Information about Diocesan Museum of Potenza
Via Vescovado, 1
85100 Potenza (Potenza)
097121637 – 0971283110
museodiocesanopotenza@gmail.com
Source: MIBACT
