Restoration: Sleuthing Behind the Wall

Art historians have good reason to be thankful that the 16th century painter and architect Giorgio Vasari wrote about as well as practiced his profession.

For not only did he record all the gos sip, true and untrue; he also took time out to describe the works he most ad mired. Among them were Giotto’s 14th century frescoes, presumably on the life of the Virgin, in Florence’s Badia church. Particularly singled out by Vasari was the panel showing “Our Lady when she is announced.”

Scholars had long had to take Vasari’s word for it, since the frescoes seemed to have disappeared without a trace. But one who had not forgotten about them was Ugo Procacci, Florence’s superintendent of galleries and formerly the Uffizi Gallery’s chief restorer. While bundling off Florentine art treasures for safekeeping after the outset of World War II, he was struck by a five-paneled altarpiece in the Church of Santa Croce. Underneath the thick overpainting, his restorer’s eye told him, might lie a masterpiece. So even in the haste of the moment he took time to carefully examine the back. There he spotted a moldy, handwritten sticker, partially eaten away by termites: “Removed from —dia.”

“My Heart Skipped.” Could the polyptych be by Giotto and come from the Badia? Vasari had described such a work on the high altar. Later cleaning proved Procacci’s hunch correct; handwriting analysis narrowed the date of the sticker to about 1810. Procacci was then able to reconstruct what had happened: the altarpiece had been removed in 1810 by Napoleon’s troops from the Badia; then in 1815, through a clerical mistake, it had been returned instead to Santa Croce. Digging through the old floor plans of the Badia, Procacci made a second discovery. The church had been rebuilt in 1628, with new interior walls set inside the structure. With one major Giotto find to his credit, Procacci prepared for what he hoped would be an even grander one.

Not until 1958 did Procacci get final authorization and money to tear down the Badia’s 17th century east wall. The first chisel strokes opened a hole in the inner wall no bigger than a grapefruit, just large enough for Procacci to put his hand through. The inner surface was smooth, which meant it had been frescoed. “When I saw that there was a lit tle color,” he recalls, “my heart skipped a beat.”

Missing Faces. As the masons chipped away, the golden rays of the halo surrounding the head of the announcing angel were slowly revealed. Giotto’s frescoes, hidden from sight for over 300 years, had been found. “Our expectations were enormous,” he remembers. But the rays heralded a false dawn. Says Procacci: “When we saw that the face of the angel was missing, it broke our hearts.” Procacci is convinced that the face of Mary in the Annunciation fresco that Vasari so admired was similarly cut out before the wall was covered in the 17th century.

Still, there was plenty to marvel at, and the recovered Badia fragments are the hit of Florence’s current exhibition, “Four Centuries of Masterpieces in Fresco.” Best preserved of all is the head of a young shepherd, which rightfully ranks as a masterpiece. Wearing a grey cloak with cowl, he is portrayed against a brilliant deep blue background; behind him stand two small sheep and a small ram on hind legs stripping bark from a tree. So tenderly did Giotto paint the youth that viewers were reminded of the artist’s own boyhood herding sheep.

Under the Arch. As for ever finding the missing faces, Procacci admits he is stumped. “Either they bungled the job when they removed them and destroyed them at once, or they exist somewhere in a private collection.” At any rate, his art sleuthing has only begun. Walking along a Florence street the other day, Procacci looked up, pointed to a small arch called the Volta dei Peruzzi. It was covered with black grime. “Under there,” he said, “there should be some Uccello frescoes. One of these days, we’ll get to them.”