Back to L’Aquila (4). An exhibition about the Maestro di Campo di Giove

1. View of the exhibition
Photo: Didier Rykner

See the image in its page

As part of the tour of the Museo Nationale d’Abruzzo (see article), from 26 May until 3 September there is a very interesting focused exhibition accompanying the recent acquisition of four panels depicting scenes from the life of Saint Eustace. The history of these works is instructive: they formed part of an ensemble known as a "custodia". This liturgical object, quite specific to the Abruzzo region, was made up of painted (sometimes sculpted) panels mounted in such a way as to surround a sculpture, the whole being able to be opened or closed, rather like an altarpiece. In the catalogue of his Louvre exhibition "Les premiers retabmes (XIIe-début du XVe siècle)", Pierre-Yves Le Pogam used the term "retable-tabernacle" (altarpiece-tabernacle) for objects of this type. The one that belonged to the church of Campo di Giove near L’Aquila formed a rectangular niche almost 2 metres high, 65 cm wide and 24 centimetres deep, and housed a statue of Saint Eustache.

2. Maestro di Campo di Giove (active in the second half of the 14th century)
History of Saint Eustace, c. 1370
Tempera on panels
Photo: taken c. 1890 (before the theft) by Pietro Piccirelli
Sulmona, family archive

See the image in its page

3. Maestro di Campo di Giove (active in the second half of the 14th century)
History of Saint Eustace, c. 1370
Tempera on panels
Photo: taken before 1923 (after the theft) with the panels reversed
Bologna, Fondazione Zeri

See the image in its page

In 1902, the two panels of this altarpiece-tabernacle, each composed of eight scenes from the life of Saint Eustace, were stolen and cut up in order to be sold on the art market, which unfortunately caused, in addition to the mutilation of the work, major damage to the pictorial surface of the paintings, which were transformed into independent elements, and provided with frames on this occasion. The…