Identifier: TDX:4501
Authors: Aglio, Roberta
Abstract:
In Italy the rediscovery and renewed fortune of polychrome ceiling panels, a characteristic covering of Medieval and Renaissance buildings in the Mediterranean area, occurred starting from the second half of the 19th century, the era of national unification, when the reorganization of urban centers led to the demolition of ancient buildings and the discovery of heterogeneous material. The tablets, which resurfaced in large numbers, initially attracted a foreign clientele and divided owners, merchants and buyers between disinterest and intense research, between misunderstanding and understanding if not of the related symbolic value, then at least of the structural role of the small panels. The dispersion resulting from a long-vacant legislation led, over the course of a few decades, to an intricate interchange between Europe and the United States which gradually saw the tastes of buyers change. The ceiling panels reused in the revivals respond to the ostentation desires of the new bourgeois class, often unaware of their function, modifying them in favor of their own vision of the past and the social reality in which they lived. They were also valued as a small portraits, through an aestheticizing dialogue full of dissonances, the panels ended up being trimmed, repainted, framed and also reused as furnishing. The catalog of Cremonese ceilings in the appendix highlights the dispersion suffered by these artefacts, being located all over the world, and represents a compass for orienting oneself in the chaotic, opaque world of the antiques market between the 19th and 20th centuries, a trade which is still flourishing, favored , in recent decades, by the increase in international studies dedicated to the topic which have renewed the 'fashion' of this artistic genre.
Repositori URV