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A New Approach To The Restoration Of Cimabue’S Santa Croce Crucifix, Isaac Messina

Honors Capstone Projects - All

On November 4, 1966 floodwaters submerged Cimabue’s late thirteenth-century Santa Croce Crucifix in Florence and stripped off nearly half of its original paint. Soon regarded as a key symbol of the flood’s catastrophic effects on the city’s rich artistic legacy, the crucifix was carefully conserved, but no attempts were made to hide the extensive scars left by the disaster. Instead, lead conservators Umberto Baldini and Ornella Casazza adopted an abstract approach to filling the work’s loss that claimed to honor the flood while providing a seamless viewing experience for the contemporary audience. This thesis shows that their theory and practice …