The Tragic Fate of a Masterpiece: When the Flood came to Florence (1966)
The Crucifixion by Cimabue (1265) before the flood
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On the morning of November 4, 1966, the world got the news that the city of Florence was under water.
Heavy rains had begun in September, and increased in October. On November 2 alone, seventeen inches of rain fell in twenty-four hours. The snow on the mountains melted, and slushy rivers headed toward Florence. The Arno River submerged Florence's city center under 18 billion gallons of water, mud, heating oil and filth. When the waters began receding, the city lay in waste.
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The art world was stunned and aghast.
Ted Kennedy, attending a conference in Geneva, flew to Florence immediately to view the damage. Jackie Kennedy quickly marshaled financial help from her network of wealthy friends and agreed to chair the U.S. Committee to Rescue Italian Art. Former Monuments Man Frederick Hartt left his classroom lecturn at the University of Pennsylvania and dashed to the scene to save the art in the city he loved and had helped save 21 years earlier. While the city struggled to provide clean water, food, medical services and to restore electricity, volunteers came in droves from around the world to help rescue the city's treasures. Wearing rubber boots, working 10 to 14 hours a day, these volunteers were called the angeli del fango, the angels of the mud. Pablo Picasso auctioned one of his paintings to donate the proceeds for rescue efforts. Franco Zefferelli arrived the next day from Rome and started filming what would become a documentary about the dire situation (narrated by Richard Burton), which premiered in London in front of Queen Elizabeth and raised $25m.
Even Pope Paul VI came to Florence to say midnight mass at Christmas. He asked to be taken to the crocifisso, by then under restoration in the Pitti Palace, knelt by it, prayed...and softly wept...
Hardest hit was the Santa Croce section, which lay in the lowest elevation of the city.The greatest loss was the Crucifixion by Giovanni Cimabue, the Father of Florentine Painting, in the Santa Croce Museum. The water there rose thirteen feet and when it receded the masterpiece was ruined.
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Cimabue, an artist from the 13th century, shows us his remarkable departure from the earlier depictions in the tradition of a rather stoic, emotionless dying Savior. This artwork was important for opening the doorway to a new way of seeing and depicting the divine.
This crucified Christ is both graceful -- lyrical even, almost balletic -- and agonized, embodying the Christus Patiens (suffering christ) imagery style of presenting the crucified Christ, rather than the earlier ideal of Christus Triumphans (Christ Triumphant). In November 1966, the devastating and irreparable damage to the Cimabue would become the most iconic symbol of the Florence flood. The image of the suffering, dying Christ was itself now suffering and dying.
A decision had to be made whether or not to even attempt a “restoration.” As the water rose in the Museum, Franciscan monks had waded in with little strainers and pliers, an effort -- in vain --to salvage and then re-attach the tiny bits of paint to the original work. But the bits were just too minuscule. A different plan would have to be considered.
Some art scholars in and out of Florence argued to let it be. About 60% of the paint on the original was now lost. The traditional Italian belief in restoration of art and architecture -- “dov’era, com’era” (where it was, as it was) -- simply could not happen. Bringing in an artist who would copy from a color photograph was never considered -- it could never be reproduced as it was, because then it would not be a work by the hand of its creator. And, in fact, the rationale for most of the art of Cimabue’s time had not been aesthetic in the first place, but devotional and liturgical. In particular, a crucifix would be in his mind an aid to meditation and worship.
An argument could also be made that the heavily damaged spots were now something “lived” by the work itself. It was a loss but in another sense it became part of the artwork the way that a scar does a body, a part of its actual history, if not its original essence. To fill in those gaps would be to falsify that history.
An Italian art historian/restorer had an idea which she pitched to the director of the restoration committee. She would employ tratteggio, a hatching technique applied with a fine brush. Using hues–yellow, red, and green with black–as well as lines corresponding with the flow from the surviving image surrounding them. This “chromatic abstraction” would fill the gaps with both color and guided movements that would allow the eye to “average out” the image. Both the crucifix’s devotional purpose and its aesthetic value would thus be served.
Today, this is what the visitor to the Santa Croce will see
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= new reply since forum marked as read
What a fascinating and tragic story. I thought the solution that they came up with was really wonderful.
Thank you so much for this history and art lesson!
and thanks for the Mayes Rec of "Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces" by
Robert Clark..(will check that out) and also am fan of Mayes Tuscan Books...so will definitely check out the Clark book.
Was a huge fan of Mary McCarthy's Books...& "Stones of Florence."
Don't know if she's stood the "test of time" but I think I will also revisit some of her books now that you've reminded!
It's SUMMER and time to Revisit, Refresh and go down familiar paths as well as those we haven't yet had a chance to travel. Thanks for such a refreshing post on DU.
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Now, students of Art can't view this piece and see the mind of the master, if not the hand. To see that they are left with photographs, which do little justice at all as time passes by.
Preservation means just that, preserving it for the future. So our grandchildren can go and view it. So the generations that come later can view it and see what the history was truly like as much as humanly possible. If part of the crucifix had fallen off, would we have left it like that? In another couple hundred years, will we merely have a few splinters of wood stuck to the wall as all that is left of the masterpiece?
The original is priceless. The half-assed vague shadowing is insulting. It's not a masterpiece anymore. It no longer represents either the mind of the master, nor the revolutionary art of the era. It represents fear, fear of somehow changing the art in subtle ways.
Look at the restoration of the Sistine Chapel.
On the left upper half, the before image, the lower right is the after. That effort preserved that art by a master for another two centuries with a little luck. For the next two hundred years, students and art lovers will be able to see the actual piece, and see the brilliance first hand, instead of viewing pictures and looking up in disappointment at the result. Letting nature take it's course is not a plan for preservation, it is the key element of atrophy.
