The "Vase Collection" of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum reopens
From Tuesday 23 November 2010, the Vase Collection of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum will reopen. After five years, the Rooms XIX, XX and XXI, now restored and reorganised, have reopened, enabling visitors to admire, in its integrity, one of the most famous collections of ancient painted vases.
The new arrangement of exhibits was overseen by Maurizio Sannibale, Director of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum. It is a collection which includes ancient ceramic masterpieces, generaly known to the public as they are replicated in illustrations for school and university books, and in studies and exhibition catalogues. During the museum restorations carried out in 1996, it would then have been ill-timed to have made changes to the collection. Now the new display can as intended enhance the Vase Collection, for it is one of the most emblematic sections of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum. First of all, new marble flooring, created with great taste and expertise by the Medici Firm, was laid. It reproduces a Roman pattern, reproportioned to the dimensions of the room, which was much in vogue in the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, already displayed in the Chiaramonti Gallery founded by Pius VII.
With regard to the arrangement, the old monotone and anonymous display system was removed, and glass shelves have been replaced by structures composed of various levels. The desired effect aims to present a global view, with points of interest, enabling the more specialised public to have the possibility of studying the objects in detail. The vases are displayed in chronological order, with careful classification of painters and of groups of ancient ceramics. Lastly, a few examples of the orginal elements previously displayed in the room, greatly transformed by the first restoration in 1920-1925, have been retrieved and are once again displayed.