Opera della Primaziale Pisana

The recovery of the sinopie

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“It was the evening of July 27^th 1944 and the last German resistance on the river Arno was dwindling. A hot, calm evening, some American artillery volleys grazed the roof of the northern corridor of the Cemetery, setting it on fire…”
“Lots of well-meaning people rushed in, in the attempt to isolate the area that was on fire, but a new artillery volley, fiercer and longer than before, forced them to take cover and give up on the noble feat, tears tight in their throats, their souls full of dismay. After the fire, Giovanni di Simone’s monumental work looked frightful, a harrowing and dreadful sight that broke their hearts. The big roof had disappeared; the sarcophagi were shattered, the funeral monuments damaged, the rendering of the frescoes was swollen, dilated, coming off or stained by thick, wide streaks, drawn by the lead dripping down from the molten roof …Words fail to convey that ruin and that ghastly feeling…”

This was written by Piero Sanpaolesi, head of the local Monuments Office, in 1944, and by Giuseppe Ramalli, lawyer and president of the Opera in 1960, who witnessed those dramatic events.
The works ravaged by the fire had to be studied and restored for years before they could be returned to their pristine glory. The frescoes began to be restored in 1947. The chosen solution was the “ripping" method, the extreme choice in the range of options offered to restorers. A thin cloth soaked in animal glue was stuck to the painted surface. Once dried, the cloth was ripped off to take the painting off the plaster and reveal the preparatory drawing on the wall underneath. At this point, the painted film, finally separated from its original location, was glued to a new backing, ready to be restored.

But how is a fresco prepared, and above all what is the relation between a fresco and its sinopia? Frescoing is a painting technique whereby watered-down colours are painted over fresh plaster: once set, the plaster completely embeds the colour, which thus becomes particularly resistant to water and age. The process was established in the early XV century by Cennino Cennini, in his Libro dell’Arte, which described the procedure for applying the drawing and the colours. Cennino suggests that a painter should draw a grid on the first coat of rough plaster, also known as rendering, using lead wire to cut thin furrows. Thus the artist has a screed that he can use to copy onto the wall the lines of the preparatory charcoal drawing, completed by the preliminary laying of the scene, drawn in reddish clay from Sinope, a city on the Black Sea, from which the sinopie take their name. No water is required so far. The sinopia is coated in a thin film of plaster, also known as plaster finish, only in the area that the painter expects to finish within the day, and on this portion the artist lays the colours, depicting a face, a landscape, a life-size figure, along the lines of the scene that are still visible. The artist had to have a very quick and firm hand, so that he could predict the overall final result and the exact shade the colours would turn. Whilst drying, the colours actually change a lot, so much that Vasari, in the Preamble to his Lives, explains that the eye does not see the true colours until the lime is perfectly dry, as if the work were painted in the dark or wearing coloured spectacles. Bound to stay hidden under the finished work, the sinopia is for us the only valuable graphic evidence of the earliest artists, since few drawings on paper or parchment survived after the 14^th century, and very few are left from the early 15^th century. A sinopia is always drawn by the artist’s hand, while the final colours are applied by several painters. It is in these preparatory drawings that the artist’s distinctive style can be noticed: there are some who finish their sketches in few quick, brief strokes; there are others who instead draw the light and shade effects as if they were the final versions or who linger on some detail, on some small item.

However tragic it was, the fire of 1944 unearthed this extraordinary wealth of graphic works that would have otherwise withheld their beauty for centuries. The discovery of the sinopie of the Cemetery of Pisa is one of the extremely rare cases in which we can admire a whole cycle of frescoes with the attendant autograph preparatory drawings.
In the recent layout of the museum, the viewing of the works is eased by the 19^th-century engravings made by Carlo Lasinio, Curator of the Cemetery. They allow us to see clearly how the artist changed his mind as he went on with his work. A comparison between the sinopia displayed in the museum and the engraving, showing the appearance of the fresco, shows details that, in the transition from the preliminary drawing to the wall painting, were often changed, reworked or even eliminated by the artist.