Cultural heritage, statue of Diana the Huntress will be restored and preserved at the Salinas in Palermo. Scarpinato: «Synergy between institutions and private individuals».

The marble statue of Diana the Huntress who it embellished one of the avenues of the Royal Parco della Favorita in Palermo, established as a hunting reserve by the Bourbon rulers in 1799, finds a home inside the Antonino Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum, where it will be restored and preserved.

The work was presented to the public yesterday morning at the Salinas headquarters. The regional councilor for cultural heritage was present, Francesco Paolo Scarpinato, the director of the museum Caterina Greco, the military commander of the army in Sicily, general of division Maurizio Scardino, and the captain of the vessel Tiziano Garrapa, representing the maritime commander Rear Admiral Sicily Andrea Cottini.

The work, following a report from the Municipality of Palermo, was identified in 2003 by the Cultural Heritage Protection Command of the Palermo Carabinieri within the area of ​​the former fuel depots of the Navy. Since then it was noted that it was necessary to transfer it to the Salinas Museum to preserve its conservation and guarantee its protection.

However, only since the end of 2022 has a profitable synergy been activated between Salinas, the Sicily Maritime Command, the Superintendence of Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo, the Sicily Army Command and the Rangers of Italy association (managing body of the natural reserve oriented of Monte Pellegrino). This collaboration, with the commitment of the regional department of cultural heritage and Sicilian identity which allocated the sums to carry out the transport to the museum, led to the free transfer of the work to Salinas by the Ministry of Defence. It will thus be possible to unify in a single section, as part of the works for the new layout of the first and second floors of the Palermo exhibition structure, all the archaeological materials pertaining to the Bourbon donations of the early nineteenth century.

«The recovery of the statue of Diana the Huntress – states the regional councilor for cultural heritage, Francesco Paolo Scarpinato – represents a happy moment of cooperation between various institutions. Added to this effective collaboration is the contribution of private patronage, since the marquises Annibale and Marida Berlingieri, well known in the Sicilian capital for their multiple activities of valorisation and protection of the cultural heritage, have decided to finance the restoration of the work which will be entrusted to the care of Professor Franco Fazzio."

Of Roman imperial age and of fine workmanship, the sculpture dates back to the 2nd century AD and is identified with the goddess of hunting due to the presence of the quiver on her shoulders and the dog at her side. Similar examples are preserved in the Capitoline Museum in Rome and in the Louvre in Paris.

«The precious sculpture – underlines the director of Salinas, Caterina Greco – is thus reunited with a statue of Maenad from the same Farnese collection, also located in the Royal Park of Favorita in the past and today hosted by our museum. Both works were originally part of the family collection exhibited at Palazzo Farnese in Rome. In the second half of the eighteenth century they came, through dynastic succession, to the Bourbons of Naples and were exhibited in the Royal Museum of the Neapolitan city, before being definitively transferred to Palermo which, in 1816, became for a short period the capital of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ».