Living between New York and Florence, Donna Malin is a firm believer in giving back as seen by her generous sponsorship of the Tiberio Titi restoration project at Casa Buonarroti.
For much of her 30-year legal career, mostly at Johnson & Johnson, Donna spent her spare time working with homeless shelters. When she retired in 2017, Malin joined the board of a non-profit organization that provides safe housing, critical services and ground-breaking programs to help homeless women and their children rebuild their lives. “That’s how I embarked on my retirement,” she says with a laugh. “No goofing off.”
Donna has always had a soft spot for Florence. “My first visit to Italy was as a teenager when I went with my mother,” she says. “I fell in love with Florence, as one does, of course. Later, as I began to be able to afford to go back, I went every year, sometimes multiple times. These days, I spend three to four months a year in the city as a member of Palazzo Tornabuoni.”
In 2014, Malin started to support restoration projects through a donation to Santa Croce’s first crowdfunding campaign, whose purpose was to restore the loggia of the Pazzi Chapel, which was in a critical state of decay. Over $100,000 was raised from 859 donors, 75 per cent of which were from the United States.
“I was invited to meet the restorers, climb up on the scaffolding, see how the work was going, try not to fall off the scaffolding,” she says with another laugh. “That started a wonderful friendship with Paola Vojnovic, who approached me in late 2016 to ask me to participate in the project to restore the tomb of Michelangelo and the altarpiece of his family.”
The In the Name of Michelangelo campaign was launched to restore the tomb of Michelangelo and the altarpiece of the Buonarroti family, both created after the death of the artist in 1564. The altarpiece, Christ Meeting Veronica on the Way to Calvary, was painted by Giorgio Vasari, court artist under Cosimo I the Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The marble tomb was in dire need of a thorough cleaning and the altarpiece, measuring almost 15 feet in height and nine feet wide, was badly damaged in a flood in 1966. The campaign raised about $136,000 and the restoration was completed in late 2018.
“Michelangelo is my favorite artist and sculptor,” Donna remarks. “I’ve visited Santa Croce on every trip I’ve made over the past decades. I’ve stood in front of his tomb, wept, and said a silent ‘thank you’ to him for the beauty that he created through his art and architecture. So I was thrilled to be asked to participate in the restoration of his final resting place. I had pretty active involvement in it, meeting with the restorers and learning about the process. I was up on the scaffolding and nearly eye-to-eye with the figures in the sculptures. I felt like I was in heaven.”
Last year, Donna sponsored the restoration of the 19th-century cenotaph to Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern at Santa Croce. Born to an aristocratic family in Prussia and raised under the protection of Maria Theresa of Austria, Louise of Stolberg-Gedern married Charles Edward Stuart, claimant to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, for the purposes of diplomatic relations. The marriage fell apart due to her husband’s violent tendencies, and yet the princess succeeded in securing a legal separation with a generous annuity due to her petitions to Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, King Gustav III of Sweden and the Cardinal of York. The princess moved to Paris and then Florence with her partner, Count Vittorio Alfieri, where they established a literary salon at Palazzo Gianfigliazzi. The princess continued to live in Florence, where she died in 1824 and was buried in Santa Croce, close to Alfieri. Charles Percier designed the princess’s funerary monument, while the Faith, Hope and Charity marble group was sculpted by Edoardo Santarelli.
Donna’s interest in supporting the Tiberio Titi restoration came from having followed the conservation of Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting The Allegory of Inclination at Casa Buonarroti and because of the painting’s particular subject given her previous sponsorship for the restoration of Michelangelo’s tomb monument in Santa Croce.
“I’m getting involved with things that are beautiful, but maybe we can make them a little more beautiful. To me, it’s always been about getting more involved, learning more, but also how I can share this joy with everybody else.”
The Florentine thanks Donna Malin for her generous sponsorship of this March issue dedicated to women and their accomplishments.
