Category: Museums

Roman hoard with rare rattle donated to Aylesbury museum

Ancient, Museums

A small hoard of Roman objects including a rare ceremonial rattle has been unearthed in Chilterns, Buckinghamshire, and goes on display today at the Discover Bucks Museum in Aylesbury.

Metal detectorist Adam McLelland discovered the group of two studs with millefiori pattern enamel, a glass gaming piece, a bone die and the component pieces of a bronze rattle. Very few of this type of rattle, known as a sistrum in Latin, have been found in Britain. While the rattle was broken apart, every piece of it survived.

The rattle was shaken during religious ceremonies. The metallic jingle was believe to ward off evil spirits. They were likely required elements in the rituals of mystery cults as some deities, like Cybele and Isis, were depicted holding a sistrum.

The finder reported his discovery to the Portable Antiquities Scheme Finds Liaison Officer, and the Buckinghamshire Council quickly contracted Oxford Archaeology to excavate the find site. They found traces of textile, which they believe was the remnants of a cloth bag or wrap that contained the hoard when it was buried.

Normally a hoard like this would be declared treasure and then assessed for market value. A local museum would be given the opportunity to acquire the hoard for the assessed sum, and the money would be split between the finder and landowner. In this case, the finder and landowner both agreed to donate the objects to the Discover Bucks Museum. A private donor then funded the necessary conservation, which was complex and time-consuming, especially for the enameled surface of the studs.

Bayeux Tapestry back on English soil after secret Channel crossing

Medieval, Museums

After a secret trip across the English Channel, the Bayeux Tapestry is back on English soil for the first time since it was made 900 years ago. It has been loaned to the British Museum by France after a major conservation project to stabilize the fragile textile made transportation conceivable, although some heritage figures objected to the loan agreement on the grounds that moving the tapestry can’t help but endanger it.

The plan for the transport was very carefully thought-through, leaving nothing to chance. The British government insured it for more than one billion dollars. Experts on both sides of the Channel made two complete test runs with a full-scale replica to ensure it would not be damaged by the stress of the trip. Security measures were also unprecedented, which is why nobody knew the tapestry was coming until it arrived in the middle of the night on Friday.

The 70-meter (230-foot) tapestry was folded accordion-style in a climate-controlled case that was placed inside a shock-absorbing cradle. That went into a truck that crossed from France on a vehicle shuttle train through the Channel Tunnel.

After an 11-hour, 350-mile (560-kilometer) trip, escorted by police, the truck backed slowly into a loading bay at the museum, where workers gingerly eased the container, the size of a small car, to the ground. Museum staff and British and French diplomats who had been watching in hushed silence broke into applause.

The wool thread embroidery-on-linen tapestry created as a visual record of the William of Normandy’s invasion of England in 1066, was woven in the Canterbury area around 1077. It was commissioned by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, William the Conqueror’s brother, so when it was complete, the tapestry moved to Normandy and has stayed there ever since.

There have been talks previously between the UK and France, and in 2018 there was even a deal announced to e exhibit it in England in 2022. The deal fell through when a condition survey found the tapestry was too weak to be transported. Three years of meticulous conservation ensued and with the Bayeux Tapestry stabilized, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the loan during a state visit to the UK in July 2025.

Now that it has arrived at the British Museum, the Bayeux Tapestry will remain in its custom-made shock-proof case for several days to acclimate to its new location before experts perform a thorough condition check. It will be exhibited at the British Museum from September 10, 2026, until July 2027. Pre-sales of tickets are already through the roof, with 100,000 sold since tickets for the first four months of the exhibition went on sale July 1.

In exchange for the loan of one of the greatest historic artifacts in French and English history, museums in Normandy will be loaned of the British Museum’s most famous objects, including pieces from the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon ship burial and the Lewis Chessmen.

Largest Italian Renaissance artwork in US back on display after 70 years

Museums, Renaissance

The largest Italian Renaissance work of art in the United States will emerge from the storage underworld at the Minneapolis Institute of Art for the first time in 70 years. It is a tapestry 17.4 feet high and 15.5 feet wide depicting Dante’s meeting with Virgil in Canto I of Inferno designed by Florentine painter Francesco Salviati between 1546 and 1548.

The monumental tapestry was created in one of two workshops Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici founded in 1545 to rival the famed tapestry weavers of Belgium. He hired Brussels master weaver Jan Rost to get the Florentine workshop off the ground, staffing it with Flemish weavers who brought the secrets of their art from Brussels to Florence. Flemish artist Johannes Stradanus made the cartoon from Salviati’s design and weaving began on The Meeting of Dante and Virgil in 1547. It was completed in 1549.

It captures Dante emerging from the “selva oscura” where he had lost his way. His path is blocked by three animals — a leopard/lynx, a lion and a she-wolf, symbolizing three major categories of sin punished in Hell — but the poet Virgil emerges on a mountain, quiets the animals and gestures to Dante. This scene is set in border with swagged banners, fantastical figures and scrolls.

The ownership history of the tapestry is not fully documented. It was in Rome in the 17th century, part of the collection of the noble Rospigliosi family. Banker John Pierpoint Morgan acquired it there. He loaned it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which he co-founded). After his death in 1913, his son J.P. Morgan, Jr., sold the tapestry along with many thousands of objects his father had collected.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art acquired the tapestry in 1915, a donation from Ella Martin in memory of her husband. It was removed from display in the 1950s due to its dire state of conservation. Centuries of light exposure have caused fading, ironically the image of the sunrise suffered the most loss. There are threadbare areas, and despite being extraordinary light (it weighs less than 100 pounds) for its monumental size, the pull of gravity took its toll on the weaving.

For its long-term preservation, the tapestry needed to be exhibited in very low light levels with a new custom-made hanging system. Gaps in the woven silk are being bridges with tulle, invisible to the naked eye but far less complex and invasive than attempting a new weave.

The masterpiece will be the exhibited in the Fiterman Gallery, the only space in the museum large enough to display so enormous a work of art. The exhibition, “Back from the Underworld: Mia’s Dante Tapestry Restored,” runs from July 11, 2026, through January 31, 2027.

Restored 18th c. globes back on display in Verona

Modern(ish), Museums

The Biblioteca Capitolare in Verona has completed a comprehensive restoration of two globes by 18th century German mathematician, astronomer and cartographer Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr. After four months of meticulous conservation out of public view, the restored terrestrial globe and celestial globe are back on display as part of a new exhibition dedicated to the history of astronomical thought.

Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr was a scientific polymath. He spoke German, French, Italian and English, and translated astronomical treatises by the likes of Newton and Huygens, as well as writing his own works about astronomy and cartography. He was Professor of Mathematics at the Aegidien Gymnasium in Nuremberg from 1704 until his death in 1750, but in the 1710s developed an interest in globes. He quickly became the premier globe-maker in Germany, doing a brisk trade selling low-cost but finely-drawn and well-constructed globes. He developed a reputation for the accuracy of his maps, and for the wealth of information — detailed annotations, color-coded routes of major explorers — he added to them,

The celestial and terrestrial globes at the Capitular Library of Verona date to 1728 and 1730, respectively. The were made out of twelve gores (the pointed football-shaped strips of paper that are used to make flat paper wrap around a sphere), finely engraved and hand-colored on a core of papier-mâché and plaster. One is a map of the earth, the other a map of the celestial sky. They are both encircled by an engraved brass meridian with a stamped brass hour dial and pointer on top.

The [Gazing Toward the Sky: Reading the Universe Through Manuscripts and the Stars] exhibition takes shape through a dialogue between medieval manuscripts, ancient books, and scholarly instruments preserved by the Capitolare, all of which bear witness to a body of knowledge that, over the centuries, has interwoven astronomy, mathematics, religion, and philosophy. Since ancient times, in fact, observing the sky has been essential for navigating space, measuring time, and understanding the order of the universe.

Livorno Torso restored and back on display

Ancient, Museums

The Livorno Torso, one of the famed sculptures in the “Great Bronzes” of the Medici family collection, is back on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Florence after two years of conservation.

The torso has been part of the Medici collections since at least the rule of Cosimo I (Duke of Florence 1537-1569, Grand Duke of Tuscany 1569-1574). It was famous in the 16th century and beyond for its rarity and large scale, appearing in Johann Zoffany’s famous 18th c. painting The Tribuna of the Uffizi that crams in dozens of ancient, Renaissance art works in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery.

Despite its fame, the origins of the sculpture are shrouded in mystery. It was said to have been pulled from the sea off the coast of Livorno, hence the name, but there are no records of such an event, and scholars have long debated its real history, how it entered the collection, whether it was a Greek original or a Roman copy.

Funded by the Friends of Florence, the comprehensive restoration had the budget to analyze the metal alloy and the production techniques using state-of-the-art technology, including neutron imaging at the Institute Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France. This was the first time the technology has been used on a monumental bronze sculpture.

Researchers confirmed that the sculpture spent a significant period underwater, a conclusion supported by evidence found during the restoration. The work also revealed traces of marine deposits and shell remains preserved inside the bronze.

As with many bronzes from the Medici collections, the sculpture was covered by dark surface coatings applied in later centuries. Removing these layers allowed conservators to address corrosion issues and recover variations in the original appearance of the metal surface.

The restoration team also designed a new display support that will improve the torso’s long-term structural stability.

After it spends the summer in its home museum, on September 25 the Livorno Torso will be displayed at Palazzo Strozzi in its new exhibition dedicated to the cultural significance of incomplete or damaged works. Broken. The Power of the Fragment runs through January 24, 2027.