Sculture medievali dai depositi del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Aquileia

This essay explores how private and public art collections can shape a specific local identity and collective memory by selecting pieces that belong to a very precise moment of the past. Glorious periods are assumed as the most representative of specific ideologies and hence tend to be given prominence in collections and museum exhibitions. By exploring pieces kept at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Aquileia this essay both challenges and complements the usual approach to the collection. Indeed, while scholars and curators have mainly focused on Roman pieces, which are on display, we have rather concentrated on medieval pieces, that are, on the contrary, on storage. The careful examination of selected case-study sheds new light on the medieval era, but also on how local intellectuals and collectors perceived that period in the 18th and 19th century, when the bulk of the collection was formed. By scrutinizing the kind of pieces they picked out, in terms of their stylistic, formal, iconographical, ornamental, functional features, we aim at classifying those characteristics which were understood as ideal markers of the local medieval identity, linking such choices to their causal explanations, i.e. political, cultural, social ideologies of the time.