There’s no better opportunity to learn about a great artist than during a great restoration. This is certainly the case during the restoration campaign currently underway on Giotto’s Stories of St. Francis fresco cycle in the Bardi Chapel at the Basilica of Santa Croce. Long awaited, given the complex conservation conditions of the cycle, the one million euro restoration began in June 2022 and is expected to take 36 months to complete.
Most likely commissioned by Ridolfo dei Bardi, a member of the powerful Florentine banking family, the Bardi Chapel stands to the right of the Chancel Chapel and extends across 180 square metres, a space on which Giotto and his workshop depicted six scenes featuring key moments in the life of the founder of the Franciscan Order. The chronology of the cycle is still debated among scholars, wavering between 1317 and 1321 and a time close to the artist’s return from Naples in 1333.
This late Giotto masterpiece has had a troubled past. Its traces were lost beneath whitewashing, which probably occurred in the first half of the 18th century. In 1851, plans for new decoration in the chapel offered an opportunity for an initial discovery of portions of the 14th-century painting beneath the whitewashing. The task of proceeding with the rediscovery of Giotto’s paintings was entrusted to one of the most famous restorers of the time, Gaetano Bianchi, who completed the operation in about a year between 1852-53 before going ahead with the actual restoration of the paintings. Many of the abrasions, scratches and leaks that so clearly mark the painted walls were caused by the mechanical procedures of removing the whitewash, while on the occasion of the 19th-century rediscovery the two funerary monuments dedicated to the grand-ducal architects Giuseppe Salvetti and Niccolò Gaspero Maria Paoletti were removed, under which Giotto’s painting was completely lost and whose silhouettes now profoundly mark the image of a text as powerful as it is fragmented. Finally, the arrangement of the painted decoration of the chapel prior to the current intervention is due to the work that took place between the summer of 1957 and the end of 1958 by two star restorers in 20th-century Florence, the superintendent Ugo Procacci and the restorer Leonetto Tintori.
The current restoration campaign furthers the activities started by Opera di Santa Croce, the basilica’s governing body, and Opificio delle Pietre Dure, global leader in the field of art restoration, in 2010, when diagnostics were conducted to learn about Giotto’s technique and the state of conservation of the Bardi Chapel and the adjacent Peruzzi Chapel based on a grant from the Getty Foundation. Between 2011 and 2013, the episode of the Stigmata of St. Francis, painted on the entrance arch of the Bardi Chapel, was also restored by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure’s wall paintings and stuccoes department.
Today’s campaign allows restorers to get up close to Giotto’s wall paintings, reconstructing his operational stages and site choices, and imagining the original richness of colors and effects of this mature masterpiece (it was certainly made after 1317), in which the artist bends the techniques and materials of painting to the service of an intense story, inspired by the narration of the life of St. Francis according to the biography of Bonaventura da Bagnoregio.
The Opificio delle Pietre Dure has made use of the most advanced technologies. Following high-resolution photographic documentation in diffused, grazing and ultraviolet light, the diagnostics started with structural investigations conducted using an innovative no-touch device and refined with the help of a thermal imaging camera to understand the condition of the masonry and identify any irregularities or degradation. The HBIM 3D model of the entire chapel, which will inform subsequent analyses, was obtained on the basis of a laser scanner survey.
Surprises and confirmations have emerged regarding the artist’s methods. An earlier, probably geometric, decoration, has come to light. The putlog holes have been pinpointed and it has been possible to specify the scaffolding structure of Giotto’s painting site, starting from the middle of the lunettes in order to be able to paint the vault and then brought to the base of each scene. Other traces can be ascribed to preparatory drawings, fundamental in studying the pictorial composition of the scenes on the walls. As in established practice, Giotto traced the sketch of each scene to plan the “days” of the tonachino, namely the thin plaster on which the painters would spread the colors. This allows us to reconstruct the succession of pictorial work over time. The Bardi Chapel furthers experiments on the mixed use of fresco and dry paint, managed by Giotto with extraordinary design and technical ability.
Guided tours of the Giotto restoration site
Culture lovers have an opportunity to join a guided tour of the restoration site beginning this October through July 2025 thanks to Fondazione CR Firenze. Reservations are required and can be made at www.fondazionecrfirenze.it. While the restoration is scheduled to be completed in Summer 2025, the decision has already been made to keep the scaffolding in place for at least another two months to allow public visits in order to appreciate Giotto’s masterpiece up close.
