Page 38 - Studio International - January 1967

and its framing, and dissolved the gesso to porridge; an somewhat primitive working conditions which obtain
amount which, in reports, varies between 50 and 90 per there, a controlled humidity gradient can be established
cent, but which I should estimate at two-thirds, of the in which the paintings can be dried gradually and evenly.
paint-surface, including most of the figure of Christ, fell In the meantime, many of them were kept from drying
off; the picture cannot be restored, and it is not certain by the crudest measures : for example, the great Cimabue
that it can even be stabilized so as to prevent the rest of crucifix remained on its back on an improvised scaffolding
the paint from falling as the ancient wood contracts 5 feet above the floor, in the damp air of the museum,
while drying. This expansion problem is, of course, the because the pulpy wood was too soft to be moved safely—
special nightmare of panel-restorers. Some 560 of the and because, in any case, there was nowhere safe to take
1,300 paintings which were damaged by the floodwaters it. There it stayed for three weeks.
in Florence are painted on panel; and, although none of The same problem, of course, exists with wooden sculp-
them are of the same importance as the Cimabue, they tures, of which twenty-two were soaked, the most famous
include works by Bicci di Lorenzo, Baldovinetti, Ber- being the Donatello Magdalen in the Baptistery. (For-
nardo Daddi, Paolo Schiavo, Lorenzo Monaco and many tunately, the swirl of the flood did not knock it from its
other important figures of the 13th, 14th and 15th cen- pedestal, although a massive marble figure of S. Giovanni
turies, not to speak of the many remarkable works by Battista by Giuseppe Piamontini was flung down and
unknown artists whose efforts are the subsoil of Florentine broken.) The Donatello was submerged only to the waist,
culture. All the damaged pictures have now been given a and this 'unequal saturation', to quote Dr John Shearman
preliminary supporting-treatment with rice-paper glued of the Courtauld Institute, 'has caused a deep vertical
to their surface. Very little more can be done to them until crack through the torso'. (Though I frequently saw the
they have been thoroughly dried. The rate of drying must Magdalen on its pedestal after the flood while taking
be controlled, in order to minimize the danger of splits notes in the Baptistery, I was not able to see the crack,
in the wood. But in fact, innumerable lesions of this kind which developed later while the sculpture was in restora-
have already occurred: panels bending like membranes tion custody.)
under stress, frames distorted, paint spalling off. The Pictures on canvas fared, on the whole, better than
altarpiece by Bicci di Lorenzo in Sant'Ambrogio, for those on panel. Some were damaged by floating debris,
instance, is riven clean through by unequal expansion but the most important canvas paintings which have
in the wood, for it was half submerged. A hospital for been damaged by the flood do not seem to have been
panel paintings has been set up in the limonaia (a special torn, and their paint surface has been stabilized with
shelter, 100 metres long, built for the lemon trees in rice-paper. Many canvases and panels were covered with
winter) of the Boboli Gardens, behind Palazzo Pitti ; it a thick coating of mud and oil; I will refer to the oil
has been equipped with £100,000 worth of conditioners problem shortly.
and humidifiers, and it is hoped that, even under the The situation with frescoes is, as yet, unclear. The princi-