NEWS - FLORENCE
The other David gets his due
City officials have recently announced that Donatello’s bronzed statue David and Vasari’s Last Supper, two precious Renaissance masterpieces testifying to Tuscany’s significant cultural and artistic heritage, will soon undergo restoration. The costs of restoration will be sustained by the national Ministry of Civil Protection, currently under the direction of Guido Bertolaso, which will contribute 450,000 euros toward the project. Two hundred and fifty thousand euros are needed to restore Vasari’s splendid Last Supper, completed in 1546, one of the most damaged art-works to survive the Florence flood 40 years ago; another 200,000 euros will go towards clean-ing Donatello’s bronze David.
Riccardo Nencini, President of the Regional Council, announced this important restoration ini-tiative during festivities at the Festa della Toscana, stating that the decision to return Donatello’s David to its original splendor stems from the fact that the statute ‘is a symbol of liberty, the same symbol to which this festival aspires.’ This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the flood that crippled Florence on November 4th, 1966, destroying and damaging numerous works of art, among which was Vasari’s Last Supper, at the time situated on the ground floor of Santa Croce church. Since that fateful day, the 6-metre long canvas has been safeguarded, and left un-touched, in the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in the Fortezza da Basso. Marco Citati, director of the Opificio’s painting department, has affirmed that ‘a lot of time and work’ is needed to restore the Last Supper. The wood frame containing the painting has shrunk, while the canvas has ex-panded due to contact with water and mud during the flood. No one attempted to restore the painting after the flood because the appropriate restoration techniques had not yet been devel-oped.
A different restoration process awaits Donatello’s superb David, completed circa 1440, which was fortunately situated on the top floor of the Bargello during the flood and therefore escaped damage. Although the bronze is not in the same sorry state as Vasari’s Last Supper, it has yet to undergo a complete and thorough cleaning to restore the metallic bronze coating to its original brilliance. Until now, restorers have only intervened for general maintenance purposes. The Di-rector of the Bargello Museum, Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi, has confirmed that the delicate restora-tion work to be done on the bronze will entail the use of a laser, an operation that should last about a year. She further stated that the bronze will remain on display in the Bargello throughout the entire restoration process, to allow the public to witness the transformation of the statute first-hand. Restoration work on Donatello’s David is to be completed by November 2008. Super-intendent of Florence’s Museum Complex, Cristina Acidini, has commented that ‘The David is the symbol of the Florentine Renaissance, and this restoration, together with that of Vasari’s Last Supper, is of significant symbolic value to Florence.’
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