An exceptional testimony of the cultural history of Catania which documents all the eras of the past through archaeological finds, architectural fragments, epigraphs, paintings and much more
Among the special features of the Civic Museum there are the collections of the Benedictine Fathers of San Nicolò l'Arena, who, following the Siccardi laws (1850), which abolished the privileges hitherto enjoyed by the Catholic clergy, were dispossessed of their rich archaeological heritage between 1866 and 1868.
In 1779 Prince Ignazio Paternò Castello, was appointed by the king of the two Sicilies, Ferdinand III, guardian and superintendent of the excavations and antiquities of the Val di Noto and Val Demone, that is, of all Eastern Sicily.
Giovan Battista Finocchiaro, former President of the Supreme Court of Justice in Palermo, leaves his large collection of paintings to the municipality of the city where he was born: Catania.
The Mirone bequest provides the Ursino Museum with the marvelous 23 paintings by artists of the Italian and Siculo-Catanese school of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Rapisardi collection consists of the most important collection of paintings, sketches and drawings, albums of various sizes containing period photos, letters and autograph notes.
With the bequest of Maria Brizzi-De Federicis, in 1967 the Civic Museum of Ursino Castle received 52 works including paintings and drawings by the Catanese artist Natale Attanasio.
The members of the Asmundo family, in its various branches, occupied some of the most important positions in the administration of the Kingdom of Sicily since the time of the Aragonese. The Zappalà-Asmundo Collection constitutes an important part of the nucleus of works of art housed in the Catanese civic museum.
In these treee rooms, (10-11-12 ndr) you will meet voices of ancient Catania, preserved on stone. Ancient inscriptions provide unique first-hand sources of evidence for the livesand actions of those who came before us. The Civic Museum of Catania preserves a remarkable collection of some 500 of texts, and a selection is presented here.In this room you will find an introduction to ancient epigraphy in Sicily. In the two rooms that follow we present exsemples of official public inscriptions from Roman Catania and of the funerary epitaphs of the citizens of ancient Catania (Pagan, Christian and Hebrew).
WHAT IS EPIGRAPHY?
Epigraphy is the name given to the practice of writing texts on durable materials, such as stone or metal ( instead of wood, papyrus or vellum). The decision to engrave a text is a cultural choise, and not common to every society. The ancient Greeks, and above all the Romans, engraved texts in very large numbers ( as many as 1 million survive) ; others, such as the Phoenicians, did so much less. The most common inscriptions are funerary epitaphs (c. 70%), but many other types of document werww also engraved, both public( e.g. laws, treaties, honours) and private (e.g. curses). Inscriptions reflect a deliberate choice to make a text permanent, often for public display - as a result they are not necessarily the same as the original document, and they always reflect a conscious effort to present a text, and must be read accordingly.
Because the material is durable, inscriptions are valuable source of evidence for many aspects of ancient society; languages, people, historical events, public institutions, family structures, personal beliefs, naming practices and much more. For some ancient languages, such as Phoenician or Sikel, inscriptions are our only evidence.
The nucleus of the epigraphic collection of the Museum consists of two collections from eighteenth-century Catania: that of the Benedictine monks of S.Nicolò l’Arena, and the collectionof Ignazio Paternò Castello, Prince of Biscari. There are also some inscriptions from smaller local collections and from excavations in the ninetheenth and twentieth centuries.
The collections of the Benedictine monks and the Prince of Biscari contain a variety of archaeological materil and inscriptions. Most of this material comes from Sicily, and especially from Catania, either from chance finds and excavations, or purchases, often from the antiquites market in Rome. Many of these acquisitions were facilitated by the Benedictine prior Placido Scammacca, uncle of the Prince of Biscari.
It is due to Scammacca that the Christian epitaphs and frescoes on display in this room came into the museum, originally from the catacomb of Domitilla in Rome. Removed from different zones of the Roman cemetery, these frescoes were united in the collection of the Prince of Biscari in order to enrich his private museum. In a similar fashion, he brought together several inscriptions which include the Roman cognomen Paternus, to glorify the origins of his family, Paternò Castello.
Inventory number:
Subject/object:
Author:
Date:
Description:
Material and technique:
