 Museo Nazionale d'Abruzzo | |
  Location within Abruzzo | |
| Location | L'Aquila |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 42°21′13″N13°24′18″E / 42.353689°N 13.405069°E Coordinates: 42°21′13″N13°24′18″E / 42.353689°N 13.405069°E |
| Type | Art museum |
| Website | http://www.munda.abruzzo.it/ |
The Museo Nazionale d'Abruzzo is hosted in the Forte Spagnolo of L'Aquila. [1]
L'Aquila is a city and comune in Southern Italy, both the capital city of the Abruzzo region and of the Province of L'Aquila. As of 2013, it has a population of 70,967 inhabitants. Laid out within medieval walls on a hill in the wide valley of the Aterno river, it is surrounded by the Apennine Mountains, with the Gran Sasso d'Italia to the north-east.
The Museum is on three floors: on the ground floor, there is the giant skeleton of an Archidiskon meridionalis (improperly called mammoth, a prehistoric "elephant") found a few miles from Aquila in 1954, and an archeological section with pieces of the Italic pre-Roman period, a section with inscriptions and pieces from the Roman towns in Abruzzo, among them a fine Roman calendar from Amiternum (25 AD).
A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch into the Holocene at about 4,000 years ago, and various species existed in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They were members of the family Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors.
Abruzzo is a region of Southern Italy with an area of 10,763 square km and a population of 1.2 million. It is divided into four provinces: L'Aquila, Teramo, Pescara, and Chieti. Its western border lies 80 km (50 mi) east of Rome. Abruzzo borders the region of Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east, and the Adriatic Sea to the east. Geographically, Abruzzo is divided into a mountainous area in the west, which includes the Gran Sasso d'Italia, and a coastal area in the east with beaches on the Adriatic Sea.
Amiternum was an ancient Sabine city, then Roman city and later bishopric and Latin catholic titular see in the central Abruzzo region of modern Italy at 9 km from L'Aquila. Amiternum was the birthplace of the historian Sallust.
On the first floor the medieval and modern art section, with works of Abruzzese artists of the centuries 13-17th such as: the polyptych by Jacobello del Fiore; a Processional Cross by Nicola da Guardiagrele, a group of wooden and terracotta sculptures such as a St Sebastian by Silvestro dell'Aquila and another by Saturnino Gatti; paintings by Flemish and Roman and Neapolitan artists such as Sebastiano Conca, Giulio Cesare Bedeschini, Francesco Solimena, Francesco de Mura; finally the contemporary art section with such artists as M. Vaccari, Renato Guttuso, Virgilio Guidi, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Orfeo Tamburi, and Remo Brindisi.
Jacobello del Fiore was a Venetian artist in the late fourteenth century and early fifteenth century. His early work is in the Late Gothic style popularized by Altichiero da Verona and Jacopo Avanzi, two of his contemporaries, while his mature work displays a local Venetian style established by the school of Paolo Veneziano, an artist and workshop proprietor with notable Byzantine inspiration in his work. This stylistic return to his roots sets him apart from Niccolò di Pietro and Zanino di Pietro, Venetian contemporaries he is often associated with. During his lifetime, he received commissions primarily on the Adriatic coast and in Venice.
Nicola da Guardiagrele was an Italian late medieval goldsmith, painter and etcher.
Silvèstro dell'Aquila, also known as Silvestro di Giacomo da Sulmona, was an Italian sculptor of the late Quattrocento, active in L'Aquila, in the Abruzzo.
