The Madonna of the Goldfinch
Five hundreth anniversary of Raphael
Madonna of the goldfinch by Raphael restored by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure of Florence and located at the Uffizi gallery
Raphael spent the years between 1504 and 1508 in Florence. At the time Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Perugino, Andrea della Robbia, Fra’ Bartolomeo and Andrea del Sarto would meet in the streets of the city; it was a golden era and its cultural legacy is part of our heritage. The Madonna of the Goldfinch is a panel painting of 107x77 cm that was painted around 1506 for the wedding of the wealthy Florentine merchant Lorenzo Nasi. However, on November 12, 1547 Palazzo Nasi collapsed as the result of a landslip in Costa San Giorgio and the panel was recovered in pieces. The inscription that can still be read in Via dei Bardi records the ban imposed by Cosimo de’ Medici on rebuilding palazzi which had repeatedly collapsed in those years. But Raphael had already died in 1520 at the age of 37, after a short but extraordinarily productive life. Vasari in his Lives tells how the panel was put together again, integrating the support and the painting itself. “... the pieces [of the panel] were found among the debris and were carefully put together by Battista [Nasi], Lorenzo’s son, who was very fond of the arts.” 20% of the original work was lost; the previous Director of the Uffizi Gallery Antonio Natali has suggested that this first restoration may have been carried out by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, Raphael’s contemporary and friend.
More at: EuroMed 2014, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 8740 2014 Proceedings ISBN: 978-3-319-13694-3 (Print) 978-3-319-13695-0 (Online) The Madonna of the Goldfinch by Raphael: Chamera of Perception by Perla Gianni Falvo, Pages 706-715 10.1007/978-3-319-13695-0_72
English Language Consultant, Narrator of Meditation Instructions - Joel Zoss - www.joelzoss.com
Credits of the “Chamera di Percezione®” (perception room) project
The Florence Provincial Authority, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, which made the realization of this project possible and to the Soprintendenza speciale per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico e Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure e Laboratori di restauro, Florence, and the Galleria degli Uffizi.
Perla Gianni Falvo, concept and project
Curators: Livio De Luca CNRS Map_Marseille, Sofia Pescarin CNR ITABC Rome
Collaborators: CNR ITABC: Daniele Ferdani, Enzo D’Annibale, Guido Lucci Baldassarri, Emanuel Demetrescu, Alfonsina Pagano, CNRS Map : Laurent Bergerot, Studi Uniti: Andrea Talarico.
Musica: Patrizio Barontini – Progetto sonoro: Tempo Reale
Support: Archeovirtual and Digital Art Weeks, V-Must. Net– EU Virtual Museum Transnational Network of Excellence
Special thanks for the restoration film to:
Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities
Opificio delle Pietre Dure and Restoration Workshops, Florence
Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico e Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze
Uffizi Gallery
Florence Provincial Authority, Culture Department
For the high definition video:
Concept and Direction: Perla Gianni, Studi Uniti
Music: Patrizio Barontini
Sound Project: Tempo Reale
HD filming and editing: Cinealta Italia
Specialist cameraman: Roberto del Mazza
Collaborator: Andrea Talarico
Collaboration on photo images: Annette Keller
Co-ordination and post-production: Studi Uniti
For the restoration:
The restoration was carried out by the Moveable Paintings Department of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and Restoration Workshops of Florence.
Superintendents: Giorgio Bonsanti, Cristina Acidini, Bruno Santi
Works supervision: Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini.
Technical and restoration management: Patrizia Riitano for the pictorial aspect;
Ciro Castelli for the wooden support, with the collaboration of Mauro Parri, Andrea Santacesaria
For the Scientific analyses:
Alfredo Aldrovandi and Ottavio Ciappi (OPD): X Radiography; Roberto Bellucci (OPD): Infrared Reflectography with high resolution scanner (in collaboration with the INOA-CNR of Florence); Fabrizio Cinotti and Annette Keller (OPD): Ultraviolet Fluorescence, Digital False Colour Infrared and Black & White Infrared; Carlo Lalli, Giancarlo Lanterna, Maria Rizzi (OPD): Chemical analyses; Pietro Moioli and Claudio Seccaroni (ENEA, Rome): X Fluorescence (XRF); Maria Perla Colombini, Enrica Rebechini (Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Pisa): Chemical analyses; Raffaella Fontana, Luca Pezzati (INOA-CNR): Multispectral analyses and Profilometry; Mauro Bacci, Marcello Picollo, Bruno Radicati (IFAC-CNR): Spectophotometric reflection measurements using optical fibre (FORS); Costanza Miliani, Valeria Ciocan, Alessia Daveri, Antonio Sgamellotti, Bruno Giovanni Brunetti (University of Perugia): FT-IR reflectance analyses; Franco Casali, Maria Pia Morigi, Matteo Bettuzzi, Rosa Brancaccio, Irene Bernabei, Andrea Berdondini, Vincenzo D’Errico (University of Bologna): Tomographic analysis. Climatology and preventive conservation: Roberto Boddi
For the documentation and photographic references.
The photographs of the work and the documentation of the restoration were carried out by the Photography Department of the Opificio and Restoration Workshops, under the supervision of Alfredo Aldrovandi, by the operators: Fabrizio Cinotti with the collaboration of Annette Keller, The AutocaD graphics were produced by Andrea Santacesaria.
The film was produced thanks to the contribution of Synkronos Italia and Service Assicurazioni