Digital frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo unveiled at Villa dei Leoni in Mira

The frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo that adorned the entrance hall of the Villa Pisani Contarini, better known as the Villa dei Leoni, in Mira are returning in digital copy to their place of origin. The original frescoes have been kept since 1893 in the Jacquemart-Andrè Museum in Paris after being sold to Edouard André and Nélie Jacquemart by the owner of Villa Pisani Contarini, Commendatore Demetrio Homero, sparking quite a bit of controversy at the time.

The digital reproduction, on the other hand, was made with Tatoowall technology, an international patent of the Padua-based company Graphic Report, based on the transfer of digital inks onto a surface with the very rendering of the fresco, obtaining, thus, a realistic copy even to the touch. This technique was first used in the restoration industry in 2009 to restore Andrea Mantegna ’s lost frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel in Padua. Other interventions have been done in theAbbey of Novalesa - Turin, the Church of San Pietro in Tuscania - Viterbo, and the Cathedral of San Panfilo - Sulmona. The one in Mira is the first intervention operated in the Venetian region.

The digital copy was presented a few days ago at an unveiling in the presence of Mira Mayor Marco Dori, former mayor Stefano Simioni, art historian Giandomenico Romanelli, Culture sector manager Luciano Bertolucci, and Antonio Brigato, owner of Graphic Report, the company that created the digital frescoes.

“We are giving back to the city of Mira and to all the people of Mira,” said Mayor Marco Dori, “a part of the artistic and cultural heritage that belongs to it. It is a symbolic recovery, but one that goes beyond the crowning achievement of a project to return it to the city: it is a monument to memory and to our identity, a confirmation of the value that our territory can express and a demonstration that dreams, even if they take time, can come true. I dream, within my term, to be able to realize the fourth of the fresco cycle as well, so that the hall will also be completed with its original ceiling.”

“You can’t imagine my excitement,” recounted former mayor Stefano Simioni, the first to kick off this project in the 1980s, “when I met Mayor Dori and discovered, not knowing that he was working on this work, that I was in front of the last runner in the relay race of this important challenge that had passed through no less than 8 hands. Let’s not forget that the Miresi in the late 1800s opposed the sale of the frescoes, even though this Villa was privately owned and many of them had never even seen them. They were aware of the value of their artistic heritage, however, and we should be too. The city can be proud of this place, identify with it, feel it as its own.”

Pictured: the digital copy of Tiepolo’s frescoes at the inauguration

Digital frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo unveiled at Villa dei Leoni in Mira

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