Art restorer Elizabeth Wicks and writer Wallis Wilde-Menozzi have a conversation ahead of a week-long series of lectures and exhibitions in Providence, Rhode Island, commemorating the Florence flood (1966) and Hurricane Carol (1954).
Wallis Wilde-Menozzi: People of a certain age remember the drama and anguish of the 1966 Florence flood: racing water battering Ghiberti’s bronze doors and the muddy surge climbing the steps of Santa Croce to snatch Cimabue’s crucifix. People from all over the world came to Florence to help clean and dry the priceless work of centuries. For a while, people felt the life and death importance of art.
In November, you will be participating in a week-long series of lectures and exhibitions between Providence, Rhode Island, and Florence, commemorating the Florence flood and Hurricane Carol, which sent their city under water in 1954, causing enormous loss of life and property, including art. Is memory an important element in soliciting interest in the links between climate change and the preservation of art? Do you see connecting cities and places where art and life were lost in natural disasters as a growing way to raise consciousness?
Elizabeth Wicks: My very first awareness of Florence and of the 1966 flood came from seeing Zeffirelli’s documentary Per Firenze, which was shown at my school in the U.S. when I was a little girl. That memory changed me and eventually my life’s path. Ever since, and perhaps before, there has been a link between climate disaster and the preservation of human culture. The connections that we hope to form during the November 9-17 event, Splendor in Florence, in Providence, Rhode Island, which range from a scientific panel featuring experts on climate change and flood control from the University of Florence and Brown University, to presentations of Florentine artisans, art conservators, musicians and restaurateurs, will hopefully raise the general level of awareness that we are all in this together, and of how much we stand to lose if nations don’t help each other to find global solutions to curbing climate disasters.
Wallis: We know restoration has often been politicized and artworks have been censored in the past. Revising naked bodies with pious drapery and fig leaves is an example. You recently restored Artemisia Gentileschi’s Allegory of Inclination. Because of the technical risks of removing the added veils, in 2023 through diagnostic investigation you were able to reveal the artist’s original image in digital form…Environmental protestors have shocked the public by throwing paint on masterpieces, albeit under glass.Is climate change an issue that brings politicization to your restoration work? Smoke, termites, mold, humidity, and wars were common causes of damage over centuries. Is there general agreement now on which environmental elements are the most threatening to art? Is there consensus on which extraordinary precautions must be taken and how? We know that tourists in unstoppable numbers have led to breathing itself becoming destructive for works of art.
Elizabeth: The climate change protestors have added another risk to public artworks, creating a problem, not a solution, and tourism is, of course, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, visitors directly fund conservation initiatives through ticket sales and, on the other, too many people can stress the works of art. The latter is controllable by limiting access, but access there must be because art unexperienced is art forgotten. What needs to be done now is to form a protocol to disaster prevention and response with respect to climate change that reaches down to art conservators in the field. We have global organizations such as ICROOM and ICOM that address climate change, but concrete steps need to be taken at the level of those responsible for caring for works of art in museums, churches and public spaces.
Wallis: As someone who has touched the faces of many centuries-old portraits,what does it feel like to work on a face? Have any really spoken to you and, if so, what did you learn?
Elizabeth: Why are we so captivated by portraits? A portrait involves three pairs of eyes and three sets of feelings: the artist’s, the subject’s and the viewer’s. To gaze into a portrait’s eyes is to feel a sense of communion, to have the veils of time and space between you fall away, if only for a moment. To touch the face of Artemisia’s Inclination, thought to be an idealized self-portrait, gave me a feeling of closeness with the artist and her imagination. It’s hard to describe, but I felt an optimism and a sense of peace and also determination from the painting, a sense of aliveness that I’ve felt from few other portraits. There were times when I could have sworn she was breathing!
Elizabeth Wicks conserves fine art from ancient to contemporary, both onsite and in her studio in the center of Florence. She lectures at the university level and consults regularly on projects in the U.S.A.
Wallis Wilde-Menozzi’s most recent book is Silence and Silences (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Her translations of Antonella Anedda’s Selected Poetry will be published by FSG in 2024.
