The prophets, bishops and cherubs depicted in the fourteenth-century mosaics on the internal walls of the Florence Baptistery have returned to shine thanks to a complex restoration that has led scholars to make important discoveries.
Work on four of the eight walls of the monument has just been completed and the goal of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore is to finish all the restoration by 2021.
Anna Maria Giusti, former director of the Opificio delle Pietre Gemini and consultant for restoration, explains that the work "aimed to preserve what was there, to integrate the gaps and to restore, in this case it can be said really, the splendor of the mosaics that were born to shine and in this case have really returned to do so ".
From next Monday, January 25, the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore informs us, the dismantling of the scaffolding on the restored sides will begin, scaffolding that will be immediately reassembled on the others on which action must be taken.
The object of the intervention are the internal walls of the monument made of white marble, green Prato and mosaics.
"We have started a large restoration site for the internal vestments - explained Samuele Caciagli, manager of the technical area of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore -, consisting of over 1100 square meters of marble surfaces, 200 square meters of mosaic decorations, as well as 100 square meters of gilding treated in relation to the different degrees of complexity, also through the application of specifically studied restoration methods ".
Begun at the end of 2017 after completing that of the external facades and the roof covering, the restoration of the internal walls proved to be very complex and involved the architecture, structure and mosaic decoration.
During the works, moreover, many innovations emerged such as the use of a mosaic technique that is unique among those known today and the presence of a pigmented wax on the green of Prato, used to cover the white of the limestone formed due to water infiltration from the roof, removed during the restoration to bring back the natural color of the stone.
Not only.
The traces of gold leaf found on one of the capitals of the women's galleries have been interpreted as evidence confirming that they were originally all gilded.
On the occasion of the restoration, a cleaning intervention was also carried out on the funeral monument of the antipope Giovanni XXIII, the work of Donatello and Michelozzo.
"The restoration of the Baptistery was entirely financed by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore - said Vincenzo Vaccaro, councilor of the Opera - which has invested over 1.5 million since 2017. Today's project does not concern the restoration of mosaics of the dome that will eventually be subject to a subsequent restoration ".