Of the roughly 1500 square metres of painted surface that used to decorate the walls of the Monumental Cemetery, a compendium of Medieval and Renaissance art and culture, only a few were spared by the disastrous fire that devastated the monument in 1944. The delicate restoration works that were still in embryo just after the War and became more careful in the following decades, well thought out and preceded by thorough surveys and studies, now enable us to admire again some of the scenes that composed such a grand cycle of paintings.
Now back in their original positions, we have the 14th century scenes of Job’s Stories painted by Taddeo Gaddi on the southern wall of the building, many of the scenes of the eastern wall, with the impressive Crucifixion by Traini, the lifting and replacing of which required accurate operations that were brilliantly carried out by the staff at the Opera.
The northern wall, as far as the Ammannati Chapel, now hosts again the paintings by Piero di Puccio, whose biblical stories, which could not be completed because of the Florentine occupation, were finished by Benozzo Gozzoli. They are dominated by the vast scene of the Theological Cosmography, next to the Stories of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel, and Noah’s Ark. Amidst the latest feats of the restorers’ team, one worth mentioning is the pictorial restoration and the transfer from the temporary backing to the fibreglass backing of the four sections of scene no 34, the Building of the Tower of Babel, whose restoration was sponsored by the World Monument Fund, which received the plan as well as a detailed budget.
Over the years the restoration of the Monumental Cemetery of Pisa has made great progress, to such an extent that it has become an experimental laboratory to which scientific and chemical breakthroughs and cutting-edge technology have been applied. While in terms of conservation, an interesting study was the one on the use of live microbial cells (bacteria) to remove tough residues of animal glue that resisted the attack of traditional materials and that was used in restoring a painting by Spinello Aretino, The Conversion of Saint Ephisius, at this stage another very important innovation is the use of the Sistema Informativo del Camposanto Monumentale, a multimedia database that can be interfaced with the 3D model of the monument and can manage the three-dimensional rendering of all the items it contains. The virtual rendering of the building, created in the mid-Nineties to support the technicians in their restoration work, is now used for the preliminary repositioning of the frescoes, those operations that require a careful measurement of the wall scenes and the monuments behind them.
The project management of the Cemetery now works as part of a far-ranging project which involves not only a large group of restorers but also some chemical research units in the diagnostics of organic and inorganic materials, and experts in atmospheric science for the microclimatic survey of the prestigious pantheon of local and national gems, which will have to outline criteria for the proper conservative management of the cycle of frescoes enclosed between the precious marble walls that are still under restoration.
A conference held in March 2008 provided a wide discussion on what has been done so far, explaining the technical and methodological grounds of such work. To promote an open, free but informed discussion, many experts (Italian and foreign art historians, chemists, physicists, petrographers, directors and managers of restoration schools) were asked to give their contribution to these sessions and share their opinions on plans and results, based on the results of the reports and the survey of the frescoes as the work progressed. In order to provide a direct experience this conference was held in an area specifically set up in the new restoration laboratories of the Opera Primaziale Pisana.
