Museo Civico di Palazzo Elti

Inside Palazzo Elti, rebuilt after the 1976 earthquake, Gemona's civic art collection follows Friulian and Venetian painting from the fifteenth century onward, led by Cima da Conegliano's signed Madonna of 1496. It is the town's memory bank in paint: much of what hangs here was carried out of the rubble and rehung a street's width from where it once stood.

Why it matters

The civic gallery preserves works that might otherwise have been lost in the earthquake. The regional cultural-heritage portal explains its double origin: works recovered from churches destroyed in 1976 and never rebuilt, and acquisitions made by the commune over time. Its collection differs from a conventional pinacoteca — the pictures on the wall were often pulled from rubble, conserved, and rehung a few hundred metres from where they had stood for centuries. The collection's centrepiece, Cima da Conegliano's Madonna with Child, is signed and dated 1496, and the regional page records that it hangs beside a sixteenth-century copy by the Udinese painter Secante Secanti, a comparison between Renaissance composition and its later interpretation.

What to notice

The collection includes works recovered from the Beata Vergine delle Grazie church, including Cima da Conegliano's Madonna and an early-sixteenth-century Madonna enthroned with St Joseph and St Elisabeth of Hungary attributed to Pellegrino da San Daniele. Other works include a Crucifixion by Palma il Giovane; painted ceiling panels from San Giovanni Battista, with coffers by Pomponio Amalteo dated 1533 and by Gaspare Negro dated 1521; portraits of the Elti family; and works by painters from Gemona, Raimondo D'Aronco and foreign artists such as Fritz Erler. The collection also includes works attributed to the Maestro della Presentazione and the Maestro della Pala di Sant'Anna, as well as later acquisitions such as the Fantoni-Baldissera collection.

Context and history

Palazzo Elti grew from a late-fifteenth-century house of the de' Cramis family; the emperor Frederick III stayed there in 1452, and in 1519 it was bought by Andrea Helt of a merchant family from Rauris near Salzburg, later ennobled as Counts of Rodeano. The 1976 earthquake destroyed the building, and it was rebuilt following the "dov'era, com'era" principle — where it was, as it was — that governs the whole Modello Friuli. The museum took shape in the recovery years: the regional portal dates its establishment to 1991 and its inauguration to 25 October 2003, presenting it as a symbol of the link between the destroyed city and its rebirth. Palazzo Elti also houses the community historical archive and the Biblioteca Glemonense; the Museo della Rinascita occupies its second floor.