This page outlines the resources and materials the Federico Zeri Foundation has to offer on the Marche and Umbria art heritage.
We hope it will make a concrete contribution to our knowledge of the areas involved in the 2016 earthquakes, and will spur the scientific community to activity in helping to revive the area.

We are also publishing the appeal by the Mayor of Matelica, art historian Alessandro Delpriori, who immediately set about mapping the cultural heritage of the area, covering as it does nearly two whole regions, whose art treasures mean so much in the history of Italian art, but have now been destroyed by the quake in considerable part.
Matelica museo aperto [.pdf 731 KB]

 

FEDERICO ZERI

Right from his youth Federico Zeri singled out the Marche and Umbria for specially detailed research. His attention to the remotest corners of their artistic output gave him a thorough knowledge of these territories – the fruit of years of exploration.
Many of his writings bear witness to this. They would underpin the revival of studies on the Marchigiano school and the identification of many art-world personalities who had previously lacked a name. Those texts still form a benchmark for scholars today.

Federico Zeri's full bibliography may be consulted under these headings: Zeri Bibliography on the Marche and Umbria [.pdf 113 KB], fully available in the Foundation library.

In the 2011 volume La pittura italiana nella Fototeca Zeri two essays summarise the stages of Zeri's studies on painting in these regions, ample documentation of which is to be found in his photoarchive.
• MARCHE [.pdf 92 KB] by Giulia Alberti
• UMBRIA [.pdf 80 KB]by Elisa Montecchi


THE MARCHE AND UMBRIA IN THE ZERI PHOTOARCHIVE ONLINE CATALOGUE

One of the topics that Zeri devoted most time to is painting in the Marche from the 14th to the 16th century. His Photo Archive contains rich collections of Marchigiano art - over 600 photos on Carlo Crivelli alone - focusing especially on artists like: Allegretto Nuzi, Lorenzo and Jacopo Salimbeni, Gentile da Fabriano, Carlo Crivelli, Paolo di Giovanni da Visso, Cola dell'Amatrice, Giovanni Angelo d'Antonio, Lorenzo De Carris, the Master of the Tavole Barberini (Fra' Carnevale), Girolamo Genga, Sassoferrato, Lorenzo Lotto, Federico Barocci.
Now available online are over 4,000 images relating to 1,836 works of Marchigiano painting:
Marchigiano works in the Zeri Photo Archive catalogue

On the art heritage of Umbria the photo archive has extensive documentation including both early and more recent photographs: from Valnerina to Spoleto, from Terni to Narni and Amelia. Sifting through the thousands of images that Zeri assembled, studied and arranged in order over the years, one can trace the development of Umbrian art from the workshops serving the basilica of Assisi, to painters such as Bartolomeo di Tommaso da Foligno, Bartolomeo Caporali, Benedetto Bonfigli, and the Master of the Gardner Annunciation alias Piermatteo d'Amelia. More than 800 photos cover Giotto's frescoes for the Assisi buildings, and as many again document Perugino's output.
For Umbria there are over 8,000 images corresponding to 3,350 works of painting:
Umbrian works in the Zeri Photo Archive catalogue

 

SUMMER SCHOOL IN THE MARCHE

One of the missions of the Federico Zeri Foundation is to promote, pursue and update issues connected with Zeri's own research. In 2016 it therefore inaugurated a cycle of specialist courses on Art in the Marche. The intention is to explore in depth topics related to Marchigiano art history, to enhance emerging art in that region, and to draw attention to issues connected with safeguarding the heritage.