The_Art_Newspaper_-_November_2016

38 THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016

Conservation Europe

Memories from

a drowned world

Fifty years on, an oral history project on the 1966 Florence flood captures

conservators’ stories of weeping oicials and guards unknowingly

treading on an Old Master

FLOOD: © GERARD GERY/GEORGES MENAGER/PARIS MATCH VIA GETTY IMAGES. ZEBEDEE: © DAVID LEES/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES. VASARI: THE HISTORY

BLOG. ARCHIVE: COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVIO DI STATO DI FIRENZE

DISASTERS & DESTRUCTION

Florence. Asking a veteran conservator

or museum professional where they

were when the Arno River burst its

banks 50 years ago this month, sub-

merging the historic centre of Florence

under 18 billion gallons of filthy water, is

akin to asking someone what they were

doing when Neil Armstrong walked

on the moon. The flood was a pivotal

moment in the history of conservation

in terms of the development of new

methods and techniques, key lessons

learned, the formation of lasting rela-

tionships and, significantly, attracting

a younger generation to the field. It is

being marked by a series of events in

Florence and Venice (which also sus-

tained extensive damage).

CATASTROPHIC DESTRUCTION

Within a matter of hours on 4 Novem-

ber 1966, more than 30 people had

been killed in Florence, and the city’s

rich artistic heritage had taken a seem-

ingly insurmountable beating. The cul-

tural disaster toll included damage to

120 frescoes, 300 panel paintings, 500

sculptures, 800 paintings on canvas,

6,000 volumes from the archive of the

Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore and 1.3

million rare books from the Biblioteca

Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Images of

the destruction galvanised people from

all over the world into action. Italian

and foreign volunteers, known as mud

angels, worked tirelessly, in often forbid-

ding conditions, alongside Italian profes-

sionals to salvage the city’s art treasures.

For the past 41 years, the Foundation

of the American Institute for Conser-

vation (FAIC) has collected the stories

of these first responders as part of its

ongoing oral history project, which

documents the history of the conserva-

tion of cultural property. While the 320

interviews conducted so far cover all

areas related to the field, around 10% of

them provide new or significant infor-

mation related to the Florence flood.

It is because of the FAIC initiative that

we know that Ugo Procacci, the super-

intendent of Florence’s museums, cried

when he saw the state of Cimabue’s

13th-century Crucifix (widely considered

the Medieval artist’s greatest work)—

half of its paint had been stripped away

by the waters, which crested at Christ’s

halo. It is also how we know that one

panel painting still bears the imprint of

the shoe of a museum guard because he

did not realise what he was stepping on

when he went to retrieve his raincoat,

and that a representative from DuPont

drove all the way from Paris with large

container of Elvacite (a synthetic resin)

for the conservators to use. The oral

histories also revealed that a technique

devised to remove oil stains from the

city’s many sculptures came from a dis-

cussion on the best methods for getting

spaghetti bolognese stains of clothes.

CONSERVATORS’ TALES

A group of conservators, including “Mon-

uments Man” George Stout—the epithet

referring to his part in helping rescue art

and architecture from destruction and

looting during the Second World War—

started the oral history project in 1975.

“No one else was collecting the history of

the care of art collections,” says Joyce Hill

Stoner, a paintings conservator from the

Winterthur/University of Delaware art

conservation programme. “We initially

looked at other oral history projects at

places such as Columbia University and

the Smithsonian’s Archives of Ameri-

can Art and wondered if we should be

sharing efforts. But they were more

Exhibition round-up: venues

across Florence mark the 50th

anniversary of the ood

Salone dell’Arte e del Restauro di Firenze,

various venues (912 November)

The ifth edition of Florence’s international restoration fair

opens at the Church of Santa Croce, where Vasari’s Last Supper

(1546) will be back on view for the irst time since 1966. It

has been restored by the Opiicio delle Pietre Dure, thanks to

support from Prada and the Getty’s panel paintings initiative.

The fair is also running guided tours by conservators and art

historians at Santa Croce and the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.

Florence 19662016: Beauty Saved,

Palazzo Medici Riccardi

(30 November-26 March 2017)

Cristina Acidini, the former superintendent of Florence’s

museums, who volunteered as a teenage mud angel, is

organising an exhibition exploring the disaster’s impact on

local heritage and conservation. With loans from more than

30 institutions, the show will reveal how paintings, sculptures,

books and decorative art objects were restored in emergency

laboratories across the city. A number of works still encrusted

with mud and awaiting restoration will also be on view.

Arno: Source of Prosperity, Source of

Destruction, Archivio di Stato di Firenze

(until 4 February 2017)

With more than 1,500

exhibits, including

drawings, maps,

photographs and

a boat used on the

looded river on

4 November 1966, this

show examines the

double-edged history

of the Arno since the

Middle Ages. A section

will be dedicated to

the eects of the 1966

lood on the state

archives, which were

housed at that time

on the ground loor of

the Uizi.

Fishing in the Mud: the Museum and the

Flood, Museo Galileo (until 20 November)

In a show of restored books, scientiic instruments and archival

photographs, the riverside Galileo Museum, formerly the Institute

and Museum of the History of Science, remembers the eorts of

the then director Maria Luisa Righini Bonelli to repair the damage

and reopen the museum.

And the Waters Subsided, Biblioteca

Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

(until 27 January 2017)

Thousands of Jewish books and scrolls in the Florence synagogue

archive were damaged. The Foundation for Jewish Cultural

Heritage in Italy and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

have co-organised an exhibition reuniting many of them, with

sponsorship from Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze bank. H.M.

• A separate programme of events in Venice includes a conference at the
  Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Sustainability of Local Commons with a Global
  Value: the Case of Venice and its Lagoon (4-5 November). The director-
  general of Unesco, Irina Bokova, is due to give the keynote speech.

Submerged for 12 hours: Vasari’s Last Supper (1546)

Mud angels at work in Florence’s

state archive

A lood-damaged painting, Christ and the Wife of Zebedee, is

carried to safety

“The response was amazing because

the entire world paid attention. But

what can you expect when you see a

Cimabue loating down the Arno River?”