Since 1990, the building, which is an integral part of the monumental group of 'Piazza dei Miracoli', has undergone intensive restoration, involving its architectural structure and all the works it contains, especially the frescoes. Planning this complex work began in 1980 through a long sequence of in-depth diagnostic activities. The aim of the project is to recompose all the components of the building. Since showing the Cemetery without its large cycles of frescos embodying its significance and function since the very beginning, or without the Roman sarcophagi brought to the Cemetery in the XIV century, to be reused as tombs for illustrious citizens or without the sepulchral monuments that had turned it into a memorial chapel, a Pantheon of native memories, would mean resigning oneself to exhibiting a broken, incomplete, briefly an unintelligible text.
The virtual reconstruction of the building was originally developed to support the technicians in their restoration work. The tests, the plans and the works were generating a multitude of information that only computer technology could master. In particular, the planned repositioning of the frescoes that had been torn off the walls during wartime required a careful check of the size of the scenes on the walls and the monuments that lean against them.
An object-oriented Multimedia Database was thus designed which could be interfaced with the 3D model of the Monumental Cemetery and manage the three-dimensional representation of all the objects it contains in a VRML format.
But for the curators it was also essential to have a system for providing a spatial contextualisation, through the different historical epochs, of the many monuments and sarcophagi that with time had been brought into the building and placed in different positions. All through the nineteenth century, the Monumental Cemetery had become a museum to exhibit local paintings and sculptures. So, the functions of the system have been extended to provide a dynamic connection between the database and the 3D model.
The many transformations that the life of the monumental group has gone through are corroborated and proven by the fact the Information System dynamically produces, on the user's request, the different positions that the works have taken over the centuries, thereby facilitating research, studies and restoration works.
For managing such a substantial amount of geometrical-informational data and for complete freedom in the selection of the user interface, the system uses software libraries that have been developed by Laboratorio PERCRO of the Scuola Superiore S. Anna in Pisa for the interactive display of highly complex Virtual Environments. The model of the Monumental Cemetery, with the scale of its architectural features and its frescoes, raises technical data processing problems, which can only be solved by the use of special data-managing techniques. This software, through an advanced management of the graphic database, provides optimum use of the available calculation resources, so that the monument can be viewed in real time, even when using medium-low quality hardware.
For more information please contact:
Laboratorio Multimediale
Opera della Primaziale Pisana
tel. +39 050 3872 210/211
+39 050 56 05 05
laboratorio(at)opapisa.it
© 2004-2007 Opera della Primaziale Pisana - credits & copyright
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