Art History Alive

arthisto July 17th, 2009

Florence, Italy, 1966:  Whatever happened to the water soaked, mud encrusted crucifix by Cimabue, c. 1288? You remember, the one that was found floating in the flood waters of Florence, with its painting washed away?  Where is that crucifix? In a previous post, A Dilemma For the Ages: What Would You Do?, we discussed the devastating flood that ravaged Florence, and her art, and we followed the plight of just one piece, although there were thousands.  In this post you will read of how the dilemma was resolved.

However, if you would like to refresh your memory, I have included a brief background, and the tremendous dilemma that faced the art historians and restorers in that gloomy November, and for the next forty years.

The Background:

Florence, Italy – Firenze, Italia

The Crocifsso before the flood.

In 1566, a fourteen foot tall wooden crucifix, built and painted by Cimabue, c. 1288, is removed from above the high alter, where it has been suspended high above the floor of the Basilica of Santa Croce since its creation. The gigantic crucifix is carefully moved to the refectory of the Basilica, where it is hung low on a wall, and where it remained for the next 400 years.

The neighborhood around the Basilica and the church are the lowest areas of Florence and were therefore hardest hit by the great flood of 1966. The water and mud levels reached well over 20 feet.

Rescue workers found Cimabue’s crucifix immersed in the water surrounded by tiny floating flecks of paint. Using tea strainers they were able to collect about 100 of these, none larger than 1/16 of an inch in size, in hopes of one day reapplying them to the cross. Sadly, that was never accomplished.

The Dilemma:

What was left of the crucifix when the waters receded, was the original cross, that had been constructed by the artist, swollen to four times its normal size and waterlogged to about 1,000 pounds. Two thirds of the Christ painted on the cross had washed away in the flood waters.

• Should the art restorers attempt to repaint and fill in the areas destroyed by the water? Should they try to bring Christ’s image back to Cimabue’s original creation? If so, does it remain an original Cimabue? No matter how meticulously brush stokes are copied and colors matched, isn’t it still an imitation? Should a disclaimer follow it for the rest of its existence?

• Should they slowly and carefully dry the crucifix and leave it as they found it, the way an archeologist digs up an ancient vase and displays it as is, an “authentic remnant”? But what does this have to do with art? “Isn’t it the beauty and transcendent value in these works that are supposed to make them worth looking at in the first place”? Or, should we look at it in the same way a body receives a wound that leaves a scar? Isn’t it all part of the life span of the piece of art?

• Is the crucifix in such terrible repair that it should simply be removed and put away? Almost immediately the mold and mildew became visible in the widened damp cracks in the wood. Perhaps it should be let go like a person that is dying? Perhaps this was simply the death of this piece of art?

• And what about the cross itself? Some see the art applied to the cross, while others give reverence to the cross itself, decorated or not. For many believers, since 1288, Cimabue’s crucifix, not the painting on it, has been a tangible symbol of a deep commitment of faith. With Cimabue in particular, art historians knew that the rationale for his art was not aesthetic, but devotional. Further, because he created the cross himself, isn’t it art in and of itself?

The following excerpt from Dark Water will explain the what and why of the final solution:

“Cesar Brandi, was perhaps the first person to attempt a theory – a set of first principals – that might govern a more sensitive restauro, (restoration) and in particular the problem of the “gap,” lacunae or heavily

Crosifisso after restoration.

damaged spots in an artwork in which part of the image had been lost.  The gap both was and was not a part of the work: in one sense, it was a deficiency, a loss, but in another sense it became part of the artwork in the way that a scar does a body, a piece of its history if not of its original essence.  To fill a gap was to falsify that history, but to leave it untreated was to falsify the work’s soul, the artist’s intent, the life of its meaning.

Brandi’s solution was a kind of neutral inpainting, designed neither to hide not to highlight the gap, called tratteggio, “hatching,” the infilling of gaps with lines or cross-hatching in neutral tones based on the color of the intact surrounding painted surface.  From a distance, the eye would fill in what was missing, but close up the gaps would still be subtly but clearly gaps.  The integrity of both art and history would be respected.”

Further, this solution resolved the problem of the cross itself, as a Christian icon:  “In fact the rationale for most of the art of Cimabue’s and Giotto’s time had not been aesthtic but liturgical, didactic, or devotional.  . . . . . A crucifix or Madonna was, in the mind of Cimabue, Duccio, or Giotto, above all an aid to prayer and worship.”

Exactly ten years after the flood, in 1976, and with great celebration, Cimabue’s cross was reinstated in the Museum of the Opera of the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence.  It, along with its story, is now included on the Art History Alive itineraries for that beautiful and fascinating city.

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