International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property
This Etruscan sarcophagus with a couple reclining on the lid dates from between 550-525 BCE and was excavated in Caere (present-day Cerveteri), Italy. At least, that is what was once claimed, before it was revealed to be a fake!
After nearly one and a half years of pandemic, many of us desire to share again the realities of our daily lives with family, friends, and our communities. This includes joining in celebrations, sharing meals, and maybe even cooking together. At the same time, participants from all over the world recently connected online for the 44th meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, hosted this year in Juzhou, China.
What connects these two things? And how do they relate to our Resource of the Month for August?
This month, we are showcasing one of the samples taken by Cesare Brandi, the founder and first director of Istituto Centrale per il Restauro (ICR) in Rome, during his visit to the tomb in 1958. Analysis of this and other samples at the time helped experts assess the condition of the tomb and determine whether restoration was possible and how best to carry it out.
More than half a century has passed since the death of Louis Bezacier, who was born on 4 May 1906 in the French town of Cuffy, Val de Loire and died 60 years later in May 1966. Although an architect by profession, Bezacier’s passion was archaeology, especially that of the Far East.
From Nefertari’s Tomb (Valley of the Queens, Thebes, Egypt), this image is part of a series of photographic prints taken by Giorgio Torraca during an ICCROM mission in 1978. The mission was to assess the deterioration processes affecting the paintings of the tomb, and draft a conservation and stabilization plan, together with a work programme for the Egyptian Organization of Antiquities (now the Supreme Council of Antiquities).
A resource that was developed in the United States around 25 years ago by the National Task Force for Emergency Response: the Emergency Response and Salvage Wheel. This task force was a joint initiative of the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property (NIC), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Getty Conservation Institute.
This image is part of a series of large format photographs depicting main cultural heritage sites and monuments in Cyprus, including Kiti, Kolossi, Kourion, Kyrenia, Larnaka, Nicosia, Paphos, Salamis and Soli.
Conservation reports published during the year in Japan are regularly sent to the ICCROM Library. This practice started in the 1970s when Bernard Feilden was Director-General of ICCROM, with the first 30 reports sent from the Cultural Property Division of Built Heritage of the governmental Agency of Cultural Affairs of Japan.
ICCROM Archives continue to showcase their older photographic prints (1952-1985), which are organized alphabetically by country. From Afghanistan’s heritage (Resource of the Month in October), we move to Algeria, specifically to Tassili. Tassili n'Ajjer is a national park in the Sahara Desert, which has one of the most important groupings of prehistoric rock art in the world. It is a World Heritage Site since 1982.
“VI mostra di restauri” is the exhibition catalogue of restored objects and photographic documentation of conservation treatments conducted during the year 1948 by the Italian Istituto Centrale del Restauro (Central Institute of Conservation), the first institute and school of conservation in Italy created by the Italian Government in 1939. Most of the objects were war-damaged artworks, which had suffered from the direct destruction of monuments where they were located or indirect causes linked to the conflict, as for example inadequate transport or storage conditions.
This photo is of the shrine of the Small Buddha (35 metres high) in the Bamiyan Valley, taken after the restoration work carried out between 1969-1973 by an Indo-Afghan team of experts.