Dilacerata signa: frammenti di statuaria romana in bronzo dai Renai di Signa. Dal recupero alla musealizzazione

As part of the well-established collaboration between the Soprintendenza ABAP of Florence, Pistoia and Prato and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, a group of twenty-eight bronze fragments from the Roman period, some with clear traces of gilding, were transferred to the Florentine Institute. The contextual evidence of human anatomical parts and equestrian figures suggested that they may have belonged to a single, larger-than-life equestrian monument. The fragments were handed over to the then Soprintendenza Archeologica della Toscana in 2011 by the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Florence, with a generic reference to their provenance “from the Renai in the municipality of Signa”, a vast alluvial area to the west of Florence, already the site of numerous sand quarries and known for the discovery of various archaeological materials. Despite the presence of various types of deposits on the bronze surfaces, which prevented accurate reading, the exceptional artistic quality of some of the pieces found was immediately apparent. Moreover, on the basis of obvious morphological and chemical-physical affinities, a similarity was hypothesised with the two bronze fragments on display in the Museo Archeologico di Firenze, which had also been suggested as possibly coming from the same area. The preliminary but significant data obtained from the restoration work carried out as part of a thesis at the School of Higher Education and Study of the Opificio have led to a new interpretation of the context, since these fragments most probably belong to different statuary groups, as seems to be confirmed by the scientific research currently underway and by the presence of very different technological details (gilding, dowels, repairs, joints, etc.) on the surfaces, which make it difficult to attribute them to a single statuary complex and/or bronze workshop. The results of the diagnostic analyses and the results of the restoration are presented here, which have contributed to the stylistic-typological classification of the artefacts, to the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment and to the occasion of the first exhibition inside the mill complex of Gonfienti (P0).