MUSEO DEL COSTUME BRANCALEONI

costume museum

THE HISTORY OF THE COLLECTION

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Countess Clorinda Rigi Luperti, a young woman known for her exuberant character, discovered in a little room in her Castle a number of seventeenth century costumes, all carefully packed away in boxes that had been hidden behind a large bookcase.

Since she was very fond of parties and balls, it immediately occurred to her to make use of this intriguing discovery in order to organize a sumptuous fancy dress party in the beautiful painted halls of her Castle.

Once freshened up and repaired, with all shabby parts replaced or altered, these old clothes were donned by the guest at the party and, for the space of one evening, brought back to life the splendour of times long past .

The imaginatively gifted Clorinda decided to intermingle with her family’s clothes some Ottoman costumes which, a few years previously, she had gone all the way to Macedonia to buy, so as to enhance the beauty of her float at the carnival procession organized by the French Ambassador in the Papal Rom of the first half of the century .

In the course of time, some of Clorinda’s own gowns have been added to the collection, as well as the wardrobe of the Bishop Benedetto Luperti Brancaleoni.

Unaware of the changes and ups and downs that have left their mark on at least six generations, those old clothes, now somewhat tarnished but nonetheless striking visually and emotionally, have returned to the Castle, not for a ball, but still for an occasion of festivity.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, it is you who are invited.

The Brancaleoni Castle of Piobbico is more than a palace , or even a lordly mansion ; it comprises the entire village that originally housed the family’s numerous servants and employees. And now those who long ago created and inhabited its ancestral halls have unexpectedly returned to their family seat.

To visit this castle is to be immediately and effortlessly transported back in time, with an extraordinary broadening of the mind and all one’s horizons swept away.

There is nothing technological in the style here, but the effect of this collection and the way it is displayed is as powerful as any sci-fi time machine.

Not only is it a highly valuable collection, unique and unrepeatable as a guide to the understanding of the history of costume and fashion, but the way each element of the exhibition completes all the others - rooms, decorations, spaces, objects, writings –is so perfect that it is hard to decide which of them is a work of art and which merely the frame. It is the most meaningful of restorations and exhibitions imaginable.



The Costume Museum is located inside Brancaleoni Castle, an imposing building spread around several courtyards, with interiors embellished by a wonderful sequence of frescoes, stuccoes, portals, loggias and fireplaces, all the work of the most talented artists of the Renaissance.