EXTRA. Ancient Signs/Contemporary Visions is the latest project by Fondazione Perugia which, after exhibitions dedicated to Antonio Canova, the comparison between Perugino-Burri, and reflections on the theme of Nature/Utopia, presents an original exhibition proposal to create a dialogue between the ancient and the contemporary in a show that can also be considered dual, as it explores the relationship between image and sign, icon and words.

Curated by Marco Tonelli, the idea for this exhibition originated in 2024 when Fondazione Perugia acquired a selection from the Albertini Collection consisting of approximately 1700 parchment covers dating from the 13th to the 15th century. These are precious documentary covers, finely decorated and painted on parchment covers that wrapped ancient municipal, notarial, and administrative records, belonging to podestàs, captains of the people, judges, and mayors of the Municipality of Perugia: within them appear lists, texts, judicial annotations such as testimonies of accusations, reports of damage to crops and livestock, records of food supplies and distribution.

On one particular parchment appears the word Extraordinariorum, which comes from the Latin term of the imperial age cognitio extra ordinem to indicate legal norms outside traditional schemes and later passed into common language usage to describe something unusual, unexpected, exceptional. Hence the idea of creating something truly extraordinary like the juxtaposition of a selection of about 100 parchment covers with over 40 works by 18 contemporary Italian and international artists, according to sometimes very stringent criteria, others merely evocative, others iconographic or typological if not thematic and material or that relate word and image, understanding the image as a word, visual rebus, or speaking figure.