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Heritage Heritage home page art architecture archeology museums and galleries personalities back up		The Gilded Bronzes of Pergola This magnificent group of equestrian sculptures, dating back to the Roman period, was unearthed in a field near Pergola in 1946 and is a rare example of its kind. The life-size statues, made of copper alloy with a large lead content and gilded with gold leaf, weigh around 900 kilograms. The group comprise two female standing figures and two high ranking cavaliers in military dress on two richly decorated horses. At the time of their discovery they were in extremely poor condition and badly fragmented. A long process of restoration has brought them back close to their former splendour. The question of their date and identity has been the subject of considerable debate. The most intriguing theory is that the bronzes were destroyed and buried on the orders of the Emperor Tiberius in the 1st Century AD and that they represent his mother Livia, Agrippina, wife of his nephew Germanicus, and her sons Drusus III and Nero, against whom Tiberius had decreed a damnatio memoriae and the destruction of all images of the family. According to this theory, the statues were destroyed and taken far away from Rome so that they could not be found. Another theory suggests that the statues were made at a nearby Roman foundry, perhaps at Sentinum, some 20 km south of Pergola, and were of an important Roman family of the 1st Century BC with the social standing of a senator. It is suggested that the family fell into disgrace, perhaps because they were implicated in the murder of Julius Caesar. The bronzes can now be seen for part of the year in the town museum in Pergola (tel. 0721 734943) and for the remainder of the year at the Archaeological Museum in Ancona (tel. 071 2075390).
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