The Madonna della Misericordia, a fresco in the Bigallo from 1342, is newly legible thanks to a careful restoration funded by the no-profit foundation Friends of Florence. In the Sala dell’Udienza Vecchio in the Museo of the Bigallo, the first location of the Confraternity of the Misericordia, the over life-sized figure of the Madonna protects citizens and the city of Florence in one of its earliest known representations. (For more information about this fresco and the history of the Bigallo, see the article “Early Florentine social services: Behind the walls of the Bigallo Museum” at http://theflr.net/bigallo)
The project to restore this fresco received the first edition of the Friends of Florence Salone dell’Arte e del Restauro prize of €20,000, selected from amongst almost a hundred entries. The Foundation’s president, Countess Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda explained their desire to offer this prize as yet another element of the Foundation’s great dedication to the city, and to its art.
The restoration was carried out by Lidia Cinelli and involved careful analysis of previous interventions, cleaning, consolidation, stuccoing and infilling. The cleaning, in particular, revealed greater detail and brighter colours than were previously known in the painting, such as the individual faces of the supplicants, and even a tiny figure running outside the city walls at the very bottom of the composition.
The newly restored fresco can be visited during a series of guided tours, only in Italian, from May 24-30, 2014, at 10, 11:30, 15, and 16:30. On May 25 the tours will be held only in the morning. Reservation is necessary at the Galleria delle Carrozze, the main entrance of the Misericordia in Piazza Duomo.
