September open-site restoration for Rosso Fiorentino's Deposition

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of its creation, Rosso Fiorentino’s Deposition, a work owned by the Parish of the Cathedral Basilica of Volterra and kept at the Volterra Civic Art Gallery, will be restored in September.

In fact, the first operational meeting was held in recent days to plan the next steps related to the restoration of the masterpiece, made possible thanks to funding from the Friends of Florence Foundation. The restoration project was initiated by the former Soprintendente Archeologia, Belle e Arti Paesaggio of Pisa and Livorno, Andrea Muzzi, and carried out under the high supervision of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the provinces of Pisa and Livorno, directed by Esmeralda Valente, with the supervision of art historian Amedeo Mercurio and restorer Elena Salotti.

In addition to restorer Daniele Rossi and wooden support expert Roberto Buda, the mayor of Volterra Giacomo Santi, culture councillor Dario Danti, official of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio of Pisa and Livorno Amedeo Mercurio, the person in charge of the Office for Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage and Worship Buildings of the Diocese of Volterra Andrea Falorni, the head of the culture sector of the Municipality of Volterra Alessandro Bonsignori, and the director of the Volterra Civic Art Gallery Alessandro Furiesi were present.

Rosso Fiorentino’s Deposition is one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of art; it was appreciated by Gabriele D’Annunzio and physically reconstructed in film stills by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and even today, five hundred years later (it was completed in 1521), it is still able to influence contemporary artists.

The restorers, under the supervision of the Superintendency, will begin their work by doing an instructive job of getting to know the work through the tools that modern science makes available: diagnostic investigations, chemical and physical analyses will allow them to traverse the layers of color with machinery that will uncover what lies beneath the pure or mixed colors of “red,” thus allowing them to decipher the designs and changes that took place during the painting’s creation. Certain answers will be given about the composition of the Red’s pictorial palette and the binders that support the Deposition’s pictorial layers. In addition, the knowledge of the wood and the movements that occurred in the structure that supports it will be deepened: in fact, the wood is still alive and suffers from the compressions and restorations that occurred over time.

The preliminary investigations and the results obtained will be presented and publicized in the fall, on the occasion of the five-hundredth anniversary of the work’s creation, and will be visible both on panels and online; only then will the restoration be carried out.

Rosso Fiorentino’s room, where the painting is kept, from September will be a construction site visible to the public through a glass window; visitors, therefore, will be able to observe the various restoration operations live, while a video diary, through a screen placed outside the room, will tell the story of the work and illustrate the various stages of the work carried out by Daniele Rossi and his collaborators.

September open-site restoration for Rosso Fiorentino's Deposition

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