Ravenna, gennaio 2005

Exhibition:
The Charm of the Fresco. Detached Masterpieces
from Pompeii to Giotto, from Correggio to Tiepolo
Location:
The Ravenna Museum of Art
Organiser:
MAR – The Ravenna Museum of Art
Patrons:
The Region of Emilia-Romagna and the Province of Ravenna
Period:
16 February – 15 June 2014
Curators:
Claudio Spadoni and Luca Ciancabilla
Organisers:
The Municipality of Ravenna – Department for Culture, MAR Ravenna,
the Superintendency for Historical and Artistic Heritage of Bologna, in
collaboration with the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and
Tourism
Official Sponsor:
The Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna Foundation
Opening hours:
Until 31 March: Tuesday – Friday 9.00 am – 6.00 pm, Saturday and Sunday
9.00 am – 7.00 pm;
From 1 April: Tuesday – Thursday 9.00 am – 6.00 pm; Friday 9.00 am –
9.00 pm;
Saturday and Sunday 9.00 am – 7.00pm, closed Monday
The ticket office shuts one hour before closing
Admission:
Full price: €9; discount price: €7;
Academy and University students and teachers: €4
The Ravenna Museum of Art (MAR) is continuing its research into unexplored subjects of great
interest with the ambitious exhibition project entitled The Charm of the Fresco, scheduled
between 16 February and 15 June 2014, which has been made possible thanks to the essential
support of the Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna Foundation.
Bringing together a careful selection of 110 works, this exhibition, curated by Claudio Spadoni
and Luca Ciancabilla, is divided into six sections organised according to their historical
chronological order: from the first sixteenth and seventeenth century ‘massello’ frescoes to
eighteenth century transfers, including from Pompeii and Herculaneum, to nineteenth century
‘strappo’ frescoes, right up to sinopie detached during the 1970s.
Over half a century ago, Roberto Longhi, following the success of the first “Exhibition of
detached frescoes” which took place at Belvedere Fort in Florence (1957), felt the need very
early on to arrange an exhibition that could retrace the centuries-old history and success of
detaching mural paintings. It was also a history of the tastes, collections, restoration and
preservation of this fundamental part of ancient Italian painting heritage.
The first detachment procedures date back to the times of Vitruvius and Pliny, which were
based on a technique that involved the removal of the works along with all the background
plaster and wall. The so-called “massello” (or cut stone) made it easier to transport otherwise
immovable paintings back from conquered lands to Rome. It was forgotten about for centuries
until the Renaissance when it found new success in northern and central Italy, helping to
preserve parts of frescoes for the future that would otherwise have been lost forever. By using
this technique between the 16th and 18th centuries, the following works were moved: The
Crying Mary Magdalene by Ercole de Roberti belonging to the National Art Gallery of
Bologna, The Group of Angels by Melozzo da Forli belonging to the Vatican Museum and
The Madonna of the Hands by Pinturicchio, all of which are on display at this exhibition.
However, it involved a difficult and expensive modus operandi and from the second quarter of the
Age of Enlightenment it was joined, and gradually replaced, by the more innovative and
practical ‘strappo’ technique. This procedure used a special glue to pull the fresco away and
transfer it onto a canvas. It was a real revolution in the field of restoration and conservation, but
also for collections of Italian mural heritage. In Herculaneum and Pompeii, which had just been
rediscovered, the most beautiful mural paintings from antiquity were being transferred onto new
supports and sent to the Museum of Portici, while the revolution of the ‘strappo’ technique was
spreading across the rest of Italy. Nothing would ever be the same again. From that moment on
and throughout the 19th century, a significant number of masterpieces of Italian painting were
pulled away using the ‘strappo’ and ‘stacco’ techniques from the vaults of churches and chapels,
or from the walls of public and private palaces, where they had remained for centuries. They
were then transferred to more secure locations, noble and regal collections or galleries
throughout Italy and Europe. In fact, even though collectors often claimed these pieces were
needed for conservation, they actually just wanted them for their own collections.
Andrea del Castagno, Bramante, Bernardino Luini, Garofalo, Girolamo Romanino,
Correggio, Moretto, Giulio Romano, Nicolò dell'Abate, Pellegrino Tibaldi, Veronese,
Ludovico and Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, Domenichino and Guercino: all these great
masters of Italian art, from the mid-eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century, were
subject to the work of extractors, including: Antonio Contri, Giacomo and Pellegrino Succi,
Antonio Boccolari, Filippo Balbi, Stefano Barezzi, Giovanni Rizzoli, Giovanni Secco
Suardo and Giuseppe Steffanoni. These people, just like the illustrious artists mentioned
above, as well as some of the most beautiful paintings from Herculaneum and Pompeii, will
be the star attractions of this MAR exhibition.
However, this extraction procedure experienced its greatest period of success during the last
century, when from the Second World War onwards an impressive number of frescoes were
treated with the ‘strappo’ and ‘stacco’ techniques and detached. The damage caused to some of
Italy’s most famous paintings by wartime bombings, as well as the conviction that the only path
to take to avoid similar irreparable damage in the future such as that to Mantegna in Padua,
Tiepolo in Vicenza, Buffalmacco and Benozzo Gozzoli in Pisa, ensured that from the 1950s the
most important ‘strappo’ and ‘stacco’ campaign was launched that Italy had ever witnessed. If
worst fears are confirmed and another war breaks out, the essential part of Italian painting
heritage could then be saved by storing it in air raid shelters, as was done from 1940 onwards
with the canvasses and panels from the greatest museums in the country.
So began the so-called “season of the stacco” and the “search for sinopie”, the preparatory
drawings which the fourteenth and fifteenth century masters left for tracing underneath the
plaster. If in the nineteenth century it was private collectors who encouraged the transfer of
frescoes, now it was art historians and museums for national restoration that were demanding
the wider use of extraction techniques so everyone could easily enjoy these many masterpieces.
The Florence floods did the rest, showing the whole world how fragile the conditions are for
the survival of the most extraordinary Italian frescoes. Consequently, works by Giotto,
Buffalmacco, Altichiero, Vitale da Bologna, Pisanello, Signorelli, Pontormo and Tiepolo
were separated forever from the walls which had guarded them for centuries, finding new
homes in some of Italy’s most important museums, and now for this exhibition, in the halls of
MAR in Ravenna.
The two-volume catalogue, published by Silvana, contains essays by different specialists,
technical data on all the works on display as well as bio-bibliographical information.
Download the photo CD from the MAR website: http://www.mar.ra.it/ita/Links/AreaStampa/Cartelle-Stampa
MAR - Ufficio relazioni esterne e promozione
Nada Mamish - Francesca Boschetti
tel. +39.0544.482017 / 482775
fax +39.0544.212092
[email protected]
www.mar.ra.it
Ufficio stampa:
Studio Esseci di Sergio Campagnolo
tel. +39.049.663499
fax +39.049.655098
[email protected]
www.studioesseci.net

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