18 June. On 11 June, the Director-General of ICCROM, Mounir Bouchenaki, returned some precious wall-painting fragments that had been stored for many years at ICCROM to Caterina Bon Valsassina, Director of the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro (ISCR), formerly the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro (ICR). The fragments will be used for reconstruction of lacunae in the wall paintings of the Ovetari Chapel in the Eremitani Church in Padua, which is currently being restored by Carlo Giantomassi and Donatella Zari.

The wall paintings by Mantegna, Nicolò Pizolo and Guariento were reduced to fragments by a bomb in 1944, and shortly afterwards were put together at the ICR, applying Cesare Brandi’s approach to resolving the issue of lacunae (gaps): the tratteggio technique [fine watercolor strokes]. In other words, the idea was to recreate the image’s fabric, wherever possible, but to do so in such a way that it would be ‘recognizable at first sight, without any special documentation, precisely as a proposal to be put to the critical judgement of others’ (C. Brandi 1961).

Fragments have been re-emerging, and the wall paintings have gradually been ‘recomposed’, giving the sense of a wound slowly healing.  A first group of recomposed fragments were returned to their place between 1949 and 1975. In 1992, another group of fragments were returned, followed by a few others in 2006.

The story of this important restitution by ICCROM is somewhat different. Historically, ICCROM has provided training for conservation professionals, and the Mural Paintings Conservation Course was one of the three core courses offered in Rome. Initially, it was offered in the premises at Via Cavour in close collaboration with Paolo and Laura Mora, the ICR’s wall-painting restorers.  Some of the fragments from Padua were then used as didactic material to explain wall-painting techniques. When ICCROM moved to the San Michele premises, the fragments came along with all the other didactic material.

Carlo Giantomassi and Donatella Zari have said that they will not only be able to reposition most the fragments, but also that they hope that this initiative will encourage anyone who has more of these fragments to return them so that they can slowly ‘reconstruct’ the paintings.

This initiative, therefore, shows the importance not only of collecting and recognizing fragments, but also of conserving them and returning them so that they once again become part of our cultural heritage, which knows no frontiers and constitutes the heritage of all humankind.

Member State represented: Italy

updated on: 23 June, 2008