Dark Water_ Flood And Redemption In The City Of Masterpieces Part 9

But when Lorenzo was sixteen, in glorious, ignominious 1968, his father persuaded him to come to a shoot. David was working in Rome at the church of San Andrea della Valle, at night, as was his wont, so that he and his setups wouldn't be disturbed. That evening Lorenzo discovered photography, and he seemed to have also discovered something about churches, and about faith.

He continued to work with his father, and David taught him photography, not just about the technical things, but about what went on in the photographer's mind and eye. "Every picture begins here here," David would say, tapping his head. "And then you wait wait for it to happen, because it always for it to happen, because it always will will happen." It was like hunting, or like prayer. You held yourself still and waited for the thing-the thing as it truly was-to appear. happen." It was like hunting, or like prayer. You held yourself still and waited for the thing-the thing as it truly was-to appear.

After Life Life ended David and Lorenzo worked together, mostly out of Milan, doing architectural and industrial photography. And then, in 1978, Lorenzo got his own chance to shoot for Time-Life: Pope Paul VI had died and Lorenzo photographed the funeral for ended David and Lorenzo worked together, mostly out of Milan, doing architectural and industrial photography. And then, in 1978, Lorenzo got his own chance to shoot for Time-Life: Pope Paul VI had died and Lorenzo photographed the funeral for Time. Time. David had covered Paul for so long that the Pope always recognized him instantly, calling out, "How is my English Florentine friend?" Now Lorenzo would take the final pictures of that a.s.signment. David had covered Paul for so long that the Pope always recognized him instantly, calling out, "How is my English Florentine friend?" Now Lorenzo would take the final pictures of that a.s.signment.

At some point he and David talked about David's absence while Lorenzo and his brother were growing up; the life-the greater part of the boys' entire life-he didn't share with them. But what would David have been able to do, having had the father he'd he'd had, the genius Gordon Craig, himself the son of prima donna genius Ellen Terry? All David could tell Lorenzo was that, really, he loved Lorenzo more than his mistress, more than any of his women. He had always tried, if not quite enough: being so much under the influence of others-Craig, the art, and all the rest-he had done as he could. had, the genius Gordon Craig, himself the son of prima donna genius Ellen Terry? All David could tell Lorenzo was that, really, he loved Lorenzo more than his mistress, more than any of his women. He had always tried, if not quite enough: being so much under the influence of others-Craig, the art, and all the rest-he had done as he could.

As of 1972 Joe Nkrumah had been working among the damaged books of Florence for six years. He'd traveled elsewhere in his work as a now eminent conservationist, but he always came back here. Tony Cains had stayed until just last year. There was still a mountain of books to rescue-it was better not to think about how many-but they'd had some memorable experiences, heroic, moving, and absurd. In 1968, a year and a half after the flood, he, Tony, and Nick Kraczyna had gone up to Germany to buy a used Volkswagen, which they totaled on the way home. Joe finished up on crutches. But it was an adventure. It was fun. Why this should have been the case would escape any normal, sane person, anyone who hadn't spent the last eighteen months as a mucker and navvy of books and art in Florence. It was a story with an end, a punch line, unlike the flood.

Still, things were being wound up. CRIA was closing its office, and while it would remain in business a little longer, it was looking farther afield for projects; in Venice, for example, which was in its way flooded in perpetuity, sinking into the Adriatic. The angeli angeli, of course, were long gone: they'd left by the end of 1967, perhaps to go to Paris or another zone where 1968 was being played out. There were still students coming to Florence from abroad, but they'd come to study art or art history, as they'd been coming for 150 years. Nick was teaching them in American overseas college programs.

He was still painting, drawing, and-more and more-etching Icarus. But the Pietas were gone. Now he was preoccupied with Vietnam, another of those things that moldered without end. He'd traded one tragedy for another, but he imagined this one as a chess game, death and power hopping from one square to another in Machiavellian gambits. Icarus was still the central figure, though this time the victim of other people's heedless wishful thinking.

Then, in March 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped and murdered Aldo Moro, leaving his corpse in the trunk of a Fiat in Via Fani in Rome, in what came to seem the final, shabby b.u.t.t-end of the 1968 evenements. evenements. For a long time afterward Nick worked on a series called For a long time afterward Nick worked on a series called Labyrinth of Via Fani. Labyrinth of Via Fani. Everyone-Icarus, the Madonnas, the Everyone-Icarus, the Madonnas, the angeli- angeli-was trapped inside the labyrinth with everyone else, holding one another prisoner. There was no way out, no end, infinite leaves of infinite books.

In 1973 Joe finally had to go for good. The CRIA grant that had kept him, Tony Cains, and the others at the Biblioteca had run out. Perhaps it was time anyway, time to go back to Ghana and do something with art there. He'd miss Nick and Amy's daughter, Anna, who'd been born the spring after the flood. She'd miss him too. Now six, she liked to look at him, even to touch him, and he'd laugh. She'd say, "You're so so black," as if this was the most marvelous thing she'd ever seen, as if his lovely color was the deepest image, the labyrinth she could lose herself in. black," as if this was the most marvelous thing she'd ever seen, as if his lovely color was the deepest image, the labyrinth she could lose herself in.

9.

Here is where we begin, Umberto Baldini might have thought. By the beginning of 1975 the cross was as dry as it had been before the flood, nine years before. In February it was sent to the Fortezza carpentry shop and when it emerged six months later in most respects it looked no different than when it arrived. That had been the intention. But inside, the cross was now very much the "machine" Baldini had alluded to in "Firenze Restaura": it had been taken apart and reduced to its smallest components, in places down to nails and slivers. Cracks and fissures were filled with new but well-seasoned poplar from the same Casentine Forests that had supplied Cimabue's timbers seven hundred years earlier.

Inside the flesh of the wood, there was now a matrix of Inox screws, resin plugs, and composite materials. To hold the crossbeam and the upright together, stainless-steel rods were threaded through the members and then every trace of their insertion removed. All these additions or alterations had been designed to disappear inside the original remnant of the cross but also to be removable. If another team of restorers needed to overhaul the Crocifisso Crocifisso in two hundred years, they could remove practically every trace of Baldini's restoration and start from scratch. in two hundred years, they could remove practically every trace of Baldini's restoration and start from scratch.

By the autumn the cross and its painted surface had been reunited. In most ways the Crocifisso Crocifisso looked the same as the day it had been brought to the Limonaia in December 1966 save that the cleaning of the canvas had made the gaps even more glaringly visible. looked the same as the day it had been brought to the Limonaia in December 1966 save that the cleaning of the canvas had made the gaps even more glaringly visible.

As an intervention, tratteggio- tratteggio-hatching applied with a fine brush-would be the obvious approach and the surest bet. But no one had ever dealt with gaps like those in the Cimabue, some of them in excess of four feet long. You couldn't fill them with one color or even several: what had originally been in the gaps was full of varying brushwork, shading, and built-up or compounded hues. Moreover, to the eye of a spectator any sizable gap not only interrupted the visual field of an artwork but dominated it, becoming what the eye most noticed, reducing the extant parts of the original to background. Filling the gap with one or another selected hue from elsewhere in the painting would only change the color of the gap.

Baldini's idea was to infill with something that would allow the eye to keep moving in its search to apprehend the object before it; filling the gaps with something neutral that it could scan right by and through without interruption. In small, monochromatic patches, tratteggio tratteggio accomplished exactly that: unless the viewer examines the infilled gap closely-in effect, scans the gap at its own level-the eye pa.s.ses right over it. But a accomplished exactly that: unless the viewer examines the infilled gap closely-in effect, scans the gap at its own level-the eye pa.s.ses right over it. But a tratteggio tratteggio of, say, one by three feet done in one or another selected color could scarcely disappear into the remainder of the painting. of, say, one by three feet done in one or another selected color could scarcely disappear into the remainder of the painting.

The solution was to rely on another habit of the human eye called "the contrast of succession." Shown one color, the eye demands its complementary color: red followed by green, yellow by violet, blue by orange. If the complementary color isn't present, the eye-or rather the brain of the viewer-will supply it. It's this ability that allows the eye to fabricate the "true" color from a printed image or television picture made of dots or pixels in only three primary colors.

It was not Baldini but Ornella Casazza, Edo Masini's prize student (and by now, it was said, Baldini's lover), who discovered how to put this principle to work on the Cimabue. Casazza realized that you could measure the relative quant.i.ties of colors in the Crocifisso Crocifisso, then fill the gaps with "pixels" in the same proportions, and the eye would average out the hues that ought to be in the gaps from the surviving image surrounding them. And it would create not just the color that should be in the gap but also-from the colors extant on either side of the gap-its correct gradations as it scanned by.

Instead of dots, however, Casazza would use overlapping tratteggio tratteggio brushstrokes in three colors-yellow, red, and green-plus black. She'd also angle her brushstrokes to correspond with the flow of the adjacent surviving image-the curve of Christ's head or the angle of a limb-to give the eye's scan a boost in the right direction. Taken all together, this "chromatic abstraction" would fill the gaps with both color and a kind of guided movement. brushstrokes in three colors-yellow, red, and green-plus black. She'd also angle her brushstrokes to correspond with the flow of the adjacent surviving image-the curve of Christ's head or the angle of a limb-to give the eye's scan a boost in the right direction. Taken all together, this "chromatic abstraction" would fill the gaps with both color and a kind of guided movement.

Casazza and her regular partner Paola Bracco began work in the autumn of 1975. The aim was to finish by November 1976, the tenth anniversary of the flood. Now employed full-time by the combined Laboratorio and Opificio, the restorers were obligated to work only six hours a day, but often put in twelve. They had to cover nearly fifty square feet of gaps four times over (one application for each color plus black) with quarter-inch brushstrokes.

You could have called the gaps that needed to be filled injuries, insults, and wounds to the figure of Christ except for the fact that they were more akin to decapitation, dismemberment, or flaying. The forehead and right side of the face were destroyed. So too was the center of the torso, the breastbone and heart down to the navel; and so too the left-hand side of the rib cage, upward to the armpit. Below the waist there was still less: the left hip and the belly, the genitals, both of the upper thighs, the lower left thigh and knee, most of the right knee and upper calf, the left ankle and instep, and instep and toes of the right-all annihilated. The left arm was broken into three segments at the bicep and the upper forearm. The palms of both hands were destroyed precisely in the places where Christ's real wounds ought to have been.

All that would be covered in chromatic abstraction-in what from a distance would look like a loosely woven mat of green-gold flesh-and perhaps abstraction was precisely the right word. Because when on the tenth anniversary of the flood the Crocifisso Crocifisso was returned to Santa Croce, you could not say it had been restored in the sense that something that had once been part of it and lost had now been put back; nor could you say that the wounds had been closed or healed. Rather, they'd become like the phantom limbs of an amputee: they were, for all their self-evident absence, still there, still palpable to the eye even as the eye registered the s.p.a.ce they'd once occupied and moved on. In sum, what was once concretely present and then concretely absent in the was returned to Santa Croce, you could not say it had been restored in the sense that something that had once been part of it and lost had now been put back; nor could you say that the wounds had been closed or healed. Rather, they'd become like the phantom limbs of an amputee: they were, for all their self-evident absence, still there, still palpable to the eye even as the eye registered the s.p.a.ce they'd once occupied and moved on. In sum, what was once concretely present and then concretely absent in the Crocifisso Crocifisso was now present again, but as an abstract presence. You couldn't put your finger or eye on it, but your mind grasped its reality, the specter of what had been lost. was now present again, but as an abstract presence. You couldn't put your finger or eye on it, but your mind grasped its reality, the specter of what had been lost.

December 14, 1976, was a Wednesday night in Advent, all chill expectation, and it was the last time they would gather in this particular constellation, the living and the dead, the restorers and restored; at the foot of the Borgo Allegri, in the once-upon-a-time shadow of Cimabue's studio; Bargellini in his library a block away, worrying his books and his prayers; Ruskin's ghost sprawled in ecstasy on the paving stones of the Peruzzi Chapel; and Francis, Francis and his brothers, watching over them all, looking down with Christ from the tattered heaven of the Crocifisso. Crocifisso.

The same truck piloted by the same driver who'd brought the Crocifisso Crocifisso from Santa Croce to the Limonaia ten years and a week ago drove it back today from the Fortezza. Then he and a work crew hung it in the sanctuary of the church for the first time since Vasari's day. Art, it often seemed, was the province of geniuses and scholars, but as had been true ten years ago, it was just as much about laboring men: haulers, hod carriers, and carpenters-all heavy lifters, good at plodding and grunt work, the people the Casa del Popolo was supposed to shelter. They carried that carpenter's cross this night, hefted it and bore it up. from Santa Croce to the Limonaia ten years and a week ago drove it back today from the Fortezza. Then he and a work crew hung it in the sanctuary of the church for the first time since Vasari's day. Art, it often seemed, was the province of geniuses and scholars, but as had been true ten years ago, it was just as much about laboring men: haulers, hod carriers, and carpenters-all heavy lifters, good at plodding and grunt work, the people the Casa del Popolo was supposed to shelter. They carried that carpenter's cross this night, hefted it and bore it up.

The organist played Bach, and the restorers sat in the half-light of the cold church flanked by Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli. Then a film was shown, a doc.u.mentary that recorded the work of the last decade: Procacci at the Limonaia, misting the cross with fungicide; Baldini pacing the Laboratorio, willing it back to life; Casazza in a lab coat and pearls, hand suspended over a gap with brush cradled in her long Maddalena fingers.

At the end the organist played more Bach, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and perhaps it was the wrong choice. Virtuosic and darkly majestic, even bombastic, it was a magnificent end to an evening celebrating an accomplishment for which, however fine, magnificent was not quite the right word. The Crocifisso Crocifisso, after all, was ultimately meant to be an emblem of humility, of G.o.d brought low on account of his love for humans, lodged in the church of the humble Francis. It had been shunted into the refectory by Vasari and into art historical oblivion by Berenson and his ilk. Then it was drowned, muddied, stripped, and bloated by the Arno, humbled still more. Now it had been pieced back together, its skin grafted with hatching, and for a few days it would get to preside over its old home before returning to the refectory. It was not made for glory.

Baldini was proud of what they'd accomplished. Of the completed Crocifisso Crocifisso he wrote: he wrote:

In spite of irretrievable losses, it is now once again recognizable in that indescribable beauty which-now, more than ever, owing to an interpretation deeper than any before-justifies its position as the absolute masterpiece of Italian painting.

That judgment was one not even Ruskin would have rendered. Until 1966 art historians had not much mentioned the Crocifisso Crocifisso at all, except as a milepost on the way to greater things. Now Baldini seemed to be according it the status of, say, Duccio's Rucellai at all, except as a milepost on the way to greater things. Now Baldini seemed to be according it the status of, say, Duccio's Rucellai Madonna. Madonna.

Perhaps he meant that it now now was the masterpiece of Italian painting. In the same pa.s.sage he'd said the restoration "produced a genuinely new painting." Maybe he meant this new painting was in some way a greater painting than the preflood was the masterpiece of Italian painting. In the same pa.s.sage he'd said the restoration "produced a genuinely new painting." Maybe he meant this new painting was in some way a greater painting than the preflood Crocifisso. Crocifisso. It was a short step to a.s.suming that, on account of the "interpretation deeper than any before" they'd formulated, the authors of this new masterpiece were Baldini and Casazza. It was a short step to a.s.suming that, on account of the "interpretation deeper than any before" they'd formulated, the authors of this new masterpiece were Baldini and Casazza.

The Cimabue was an important painting, its restoration one of the major projects in the history of restauro restauro, and Baldini himself was a large target. He was, like Procacci, respected, but he was not revered. For all his insistence on his own work's rigor and even scientific basis, restauro restauro remained a personal and therefore subjective business: the final and unanswerable criterion in evaluating someone's work was to ask how someone else-most probably yourself-would have done it. remained a personal and therefore subjective business: the final and unanswerable criterion in evaluating someone's work was to ask how someone else-most probably yourself-would have done it.

By the end of 1976 and into 1977, there had been not a few comments from highly placed restorers and art historians suggesting that the job indeed could have been done differently, which was to say better; which was to say, more implicitly but no less clearly for that, that Baldini had botched it. Paolo and Laura Mora-Baldini and Casazza's counterparts at the Ist.i.tuto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome-felt that chromatic abstraction did rather the opposite of what it claimed; that in its desire to avoid falsification of the artwork it drew attention to itself, especially with the coa.r.s.e hatching of its tratteggio tratteggio, which a less decorous person might have described as chicken scratchings. The prominent Florentine restorer Dino Dini was blunt: "They can do it if they want to," he allowed. "I don't care for it."

Those amounted to disagreements, even quibbles, over technique. Others would raise the question of whether restauro restauro of this kind should be carried out at all. Chief among them was Alessandro Conti, a young art historian at the University of Bologna who was building a considerable reputation as a historian of of this kind should be carried out at all. Chief among them was Alessandro Conti, a young art historian at the University of Bologna who was building a considerable reputation as a historian of restauro restauro itself. He intended, in the tradition of the Casa del Popolo, to foment civic discourse and published a screed in the Florence evening paper. itself. He intended, in the tradition of the Casa del Popolo, to foment civic discourse and published a screed in the Florence evening paper.

Contrary to the mood expressed in the public events held the previous November, Conti said the return of the Crocifisso Crocifisso to Santa Croce was not a triumph but a tragedy. A treasured piece of Florence's heritage had indeed been injured by nature in 1966, but the Laboratorio had destroyed and defiled it. An "inattentive" Superintendency (which, in fact, had no jurisdiction over the restoration) had allowed "a rash restorer to jeopardize the very physical essence of a work of art, indeed to make such a mess of it that there's scarcely anything left to see." to Santa Croce was not a triumph but a tragedy. A treasured piece of Florence's heritage had indeed been injured by nature in 1966, but the Laboratorio had destroyed and defiled it. An "inattentive" Superintendency (which, in fact, had no jurisdiction over the restoration) had allowed "a rash restorer to jeopardize the very physical essence of a work of art, indeed to make such a mess of it that there's scarcely anything left to see."

Baldini and Casazza had defenders, and powerful and influential ones at that. In the journal Critica d'Arte Critica d'Arte Procacci's eminent old colleague Carlo Ragghianti pointedly wrote, "I have to say . . . that the skepticism and nay-saying in this matter are entirely unfounded and prejudiced, based on ignorance or a deficiency of knowledge of the historical and cultural conditions of artistic endeavor." Procacci's eminent old colleague Carlo Ragghianti pointedly wrote, "I have to say . . . that the skepticism and nay-saying in this matter are entirely unfounded and prejudiced, based on ignorance or a deficiency of knowledge of the historical and cultural conditions of artistic endeavor."

Baldini himself didn't respond to his critics, indeed scarcely seemed to be conscious of their existence. Florentine restauro restauro had never taken much interest in the world beyond the city walls, and wasn't going to begin now. And if the world wanted to know what Baldini thought, he obliged them the following year in his theoretical masterwork, had never taken much interest in the world beyond the city walls, and wasn't going to begin now. And if the world wanted to know what Baldini thought, he obliged them the following year in his theoretical masterwork, Teoria del Restauro e Unita di Metodologia Teoria del Restauro e Unita di Metodologia ("Theory of Restoration and Methodological Unity"). The first rule, Baldini's existential imperative, was "The intervention should happen!" without "alibi[s]" founded on theoretical dithering or cowardice in the face of practical obstacles. ("Theory of Restoration and Methodological Unity"). The first rule, Baldini's existential imperative, was "The intervention should happen!" without "alibi[s]" founded on theoretical dithering or cowardice in the face of practical obstacles.

And with that, he continued on his way, and so did Casazza. Her and Baldini's respective divorces came through, and to cap that year of 1978, they were at last married. Together, they continued to make interventions happen, and at a very high level. For a long time Baldini had had his eye on the Brancacci Chapel and its Masaccios at the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in the Oltrarno. Vasari had called its frescoes la scuola del mondo la scuola del mondo, "the art school of the world," the essential foundation that every great Renaissance artist had studied and learned from.

For perhaps the first time in his career, Baldini met resistance, and from a formidable opponent: the Ist.i.tuto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome. With both Cesare Brandi and Procacci retired, the longstanding mutual nonaggression pact between Florence and Rome was null. The Brancacci was, after the Sistine Chapel, the biggest prize in Italian restauro restauro, and the Ist.i.tuto wanted to claim it. It pressed its case with the national government, citing its putative jurisdiction over any and all churches in the country as well as its unrivaled expertise with fresco. But the Ist.i.tuto hadn't reckoned with Umberto Baldini. Not satisfied with simply s.n.a.t.c.hing back the Brancacci from the Roman carpetbaggers, he seized control of the Ist.i.tuto and got himself appointed its director.

On leaving in 1982 for his new post in Rome, Baldini put Casazza in charge of the Brancacci. She and Paola Bracco had just completed another high-profile restoration, the Primavera Primavera of Botticelli, and her qualifications for another important project seemed unquestionable. But Casazza had never, in fact, worked on fresco. Alessandro Conti, who'd decried their restoration of the Cimabue of Botticelli, and her qualifications for another important project seemed unquestionable. But Casazza had never, in fact, worked on fresco. Alessandro Conti, who'd decried their restoration of the Cimabue Crocifisso Crocifisso, issued a public plea not to let them touch the Brancacci. But the project went forward as Baldini intended, with Casazza in charge.

The Crocifisso Crocifisso, meanwhile, had scarcely been forgotten. Baldini sent it on a world tour, underwritten by the Olivetti Corporation, first to the Metropolitan in New York and the Louvre in Paris in late 1982, and then to the Royal Academy in London and the Prado in Madrid the following spring. When the cross came back to Florence, he persuaded Olivetti to underwrite the restoration of the Brancacci too. In that year, 1984, you might have commissioned a vast mural to commemorate a great man at the height of his powers, The Apotheosis of Umberto Baldini The Apotheosis of Umberto Baldini, which lacked only a Giorgio Vasari to paint it.

Casazza, however, seemed to some observers a little weary. She was in fact doing an extremely credible job at the Brancacci. But when visitors or journalists came by, wanting a look at the most important restoration project in Italy, she was curiously dispa.s.sionate, flatly reciting the theory of chromatic abstraction by rote. Asked if she was excited, she'd say she didn't get emotionally involved in her restorations. There was always, she said, another one waiting.

Casazza was perhaps tired, but, at age forty-four, she was scarcely old. Baldini, on the other hand, being an employee of the state and age sixty-five, was compelled to retire in 1987. The Brancacci still wasn't finished, but he was no longer in charge. He didn't like it. Ugo Procacci seemed amused at how his protege had ended up: "This is what happens to a historian when he retires. He loses all his influence. It happened to me. And now it has happened to Baldini."

The Brancacci restauro restauro was completed at the end of February 1991. Ugo Procacci had died a week earlier. Baldini remembered the last time he'd seen him, perhaps a year before. They'd talked as two old men, retirees, about the past. Procacci was, as ever, "a limpid, transparent man"-there was nothing hidden, least of all his pa.s.sion for art-and of course as they talked, as they untwined the past together, he cried. was completed at the end of February 1991. Ugo Procacci had died a week earlier. Baldini remembered the last time he'd seen him, perhaps a year before. They'd talked as two old men, retirees, about the past. Procacci was, as ever, "a limpid, transparent man"-there was nothing hidden, least of all his pa.s.sion for art-and of course as they talked, as they untwined the past together, he cried.

A few months later Frederick Hartt pa.s.sed away in America. He'd died an eminent man, his textbook on the Renaissance still the standard work in its field. In retirement he'd turned his expertise to connoisseurship and paid authentication, and had a final, unintended Berensonian moment: learning he'd taken a commission on the sale of a Michelangelo sculpture he'd also authenticated, a London newspaper branded him an unscrupulous art hustler in the mode of BB. Hartt sued and was awarded a token settlement. But the judge opined that Hartt had acted "dishonorably" if not illegally in a technical sense.

It was perhaps the only stain on a career that was in every other respect remarkable for its idealism and unselfishness. And perhaps this one blemish was only the acquisition late in life of a kind of birthmark, a baptism as a vero fiorentino vero fiorentino in the waters of the Arno where art and money mingled so promiscuously. His memorial service was held in San Miniato, overlooking the city, and his body was brought from America and buried nearby. in the waters of the Arno where art and money mingled so promiscuously. His memorial service was held in San Miniato, overlooking the city, and his body was brought from America and buried nearby.

Nearly seven hundred years after he'd painted his last panel, Cimabue, or at least his reputation, knew no rest. He'd had his Maesta Maesta reattributed to Duccio nearly a century ago, and now, in 1997, another art historian was saying that not only was Cimabue not Duccio's teacher but that he hadn't even influenced him. It was the other way around: Cimabue had seen Duccio's work and incorporated it into his own style, including, presumably, the reattributed to Duccio nearly a century ago, and now, in 1997, another art historian was saying that not only was Cimabue not Duccio's teacher but that he hadn't even influenced him. It was the other way around: Cimabue had seen Duccio's work and incorporated it into his own style, including, presumably, the Crocifisso. Crocifisso. The following year another art historian, Luciano Bellosi, published a huge monograph designed to rehabilitate Cimabue's reputation and put his work back in its Vasarian position as the "first page of Italian art." But Bellosi felt the need to pause to regret the unfortunate tampering with the The following year another art historian, Luciano Bellosi, published a huge monograph designed to rehabilitate Cimabue's reputation and put his work back in its Vasarian position as the "first page of Italian art." But Bellosi felt the need to pause to regret the unfortunate tampering with the Crocifisso Crocifis...o...b.. means of "so-called chromatic abstraction": even those charged with saving Cimabue's masterpiece could not be trusted to treat him respectfully. Another standard text cited the by means of "so-called chromatic abstraction": even those charged with saving Cimabue's masterpiece could not be trusted to treat him respectfully. Another standard text cited the Crocifisso Crocifisso as an egregious example of a as an egregious example of a restauro restauro "dominating the original work of art" which "cannot be accepted." "dominating the original work of art" which "cannot be accepted."

Nor was nature done with Cimabue. Thirty-one years after the flood, on September 26, 1997, an earthquake struck a.s.sisi. Inside St. Francis's basilica, plaster and the frescoes painted on it rained down. Among the works demolished was Cimabue's Saint Matthew Saint Matthew, part of the cycle that had convinced Ruskin that "before Cimabue, no beautiful rendering of human form was possible"; that he was the master "even more intense, capable of higher things than Giotto . . ."

Cimabue's greatest gift, Ruskin had thought, was his compa.s.sion, and perhaps compa.s.sion, conpa.s.sione conpa.s.sione, must always be accompanied by pa.s.sione pa.s.sione, "submission to suffering." That was what Francis had meant all along; that love consists of coexisting with the pain borne by others. Maybe Cimabue had known exactly what to expect, exactly what he had bargained for.

One hundred and twenty thousand pieces of Cimabue's fresco were found in the wreckage of the basilica at a.s.sisi. The job of sifting and sorting them was given to the Ist.i.tuto Centrale per il Restauro. In 2006 the fresco was reinstalled on the ceiling of the basilica using 25 percent of the original painted fragments, with the lacunae infilled with a "neutral" hue based on the color range of the surrounding painting.

Baldini and Casazza might have shrugged, and perhaps that explained Casazza's apparent indifference or resignation when she was working at the Brancacci: there would always be another artwork that needed restoring, so it was foolish to get too excited about or attached to any one project. Beauty, like truth, was supposed to be timeless, but the fact was that beauty was always falling apart or decaying. It needed constant shoring up, and the labor could make you weary. Beauty was, al fondo al fondo, in the final a.n.a.lysis, very like human flesh and bone. In Florence, where they'd made so much of it, there was that much more of it to break or injure. Left alone, without restauro restauro, it would all eventually disappear. Really, art was always dying, beauty forever decaying. "I had not known death had undone so many," Dante marveled.

Ugo Procacci and Frederick Hartt believed that saving art was worth crawling through rubble under sniper fire. Thousands of angeli angeli fought the mud and the mold under the same conviction, and for a while it seemed that almost the entire world joined them, as though culture, true to its linguistic root, really was the soil of our humanity. But if Adolf Hitler had donned his sungla.s.ses and spent his ten days incognito in Florence among the masterpieces, might anything really have been different? Is the world a different, better place because the Cimabue fought the mud and the mold under the same conviction, and for a while it seemed that almost the entire world joined them, as though culture, true to its linguistic root, really was the soil of our humanity. But if Adolf Hitler had donned his sungla.s.ses and spent his ten days incognito in Florence among the masterpieces, might anything really have been different? Is the world a different, better place because the Cimabue Crocifisso Crocifisso survived the flood of 1966, however altered? survived the flood of 1966, however altered?

But the art in an artwork might not be located precisely where you thought it was. Perhaps it was just as much in the damage and decay as it was in the intact original. Perhaps it was in the gaps-in contemplating and tending those insults and injuries-that we find ourselves, by compa.s.sion; by bandaging, however imperfectly, those wounds. Art may be a species of faith, the a.s.surance of things hoped for. It contains nothing so much as our wish that we persist.

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I forget the names of the towns without rivers.

A town needs a river to forgive the town.

Whatever river, whatever town- It is much the same.

The cruel things I did, I took to the river.

I begged the current: make me better.

-RICHARD HUGO,"THE TOWNS WE KNOW AND LEAVE BEHIND, THE.

RIVERS WE CARRY WITH US"

Angels washing books, November-December 1966 (Photograph by David Lees) (Photograph by David Lees)

1.

The morning of the 1997 a.s.sisi earthquake I was in Rome. I had come for the art; or rather, I was writing a book about how, for me at least, beauty and art seemed to imply faith, or something close to it. It was about two in the morning and the quake came as a single jolt, a momentary shudder. I'd been awake or sleeping fitfully: the night was hot and the street was noisy. I waited for the shaking to continue, as it would have done at home, on the Pacific coast. When it didn't I went back to sleep. It didn't seem to have been, by my definition, an earthquake after all.

In the morning I learned it had indeed been a quake, with its aftershocks a significant one, albeit far away in a.s.sisi. It didn't preoccupy me. I'd been to a.s.sisi, but my spirituality just then was more Baroque than Franciscan. I suppose the frescoes, hailing down on the stone floor of the basilica, must have made an enormous sound-like a landslide of gla.s.s and pebbles, a cascade of Scrabble tiles, a clatter of bones-but I didn't give it a thought. I was intent on other things: on art and the self I was busy discovering in art's reflection. Sometimes beauty can blind you to truth.

Thirty years before, in December 1966, on the long cusp between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I'd been looking at David Lees's photographs: the restorer Dino Dini and his workers clambering up the scaffold of the Gaddi Cenacolo Cenacolo; the plaintive, empty-handed Virgin of Santa Croce in her field of melma melma; Baldini in his azure sweater at the moment they'd discovered the ruined Cimabue Crocifisso. Crocifisso. I was fourteen years old. I was fourteen years old.

I looked at them lying, belly down, on the blue sofa in our blue living room, the magazine laid on the floor, my chin on the welting of the cushion, one hand slung to the floor in order to turn the pages. It was an odd way to read-though perhaps it was the only way for me to accommodate the sprawling fourteen-year-old body I was not quite used to-but I looked more than I read. It's unlikely I took in any of the particulars of the flood or of Florence, never mind of Gaddi and Cimabue. Mostly, I was struck by the colors: gilded, molten, mounting upward into human yet magisterial figures, stern, compa.s.sionate, and pitiful; dolorous Mary, Christ suspended in death, Francis among the birds. I loved photography and I had also been religious-not prayerful and certainly not given to good works, but pulled irresistibly toward what seemed to me must be the numinous and infinite: colors, ceremonies, hierarchy; a kind of love and beauty limned with purposeful tragedy that went back two thousand years.

But just then I was giving those things up, my photography and my religion: my novitiate in beauty, in the tears of things as manifested in Jesus and his tender suffering. I'd gotten my first camera in December 1963 and joined the Episcopal Church the same month. I would not have connected the two, but the correspondence now seems unmistakable. Those next three years were happy. My mother and I might have been Dorothy and David Lees-my father was not an artist, never mind a genius, but he had absented himself years before-she practicing such bohemianism as could be mustered in St. Paul, Minnesota, I taking pictures. My heroes, beyond Jesus, Mary, and Francis, were the great Life Life photographers: Eisenstaedt, Mydans, Feininger, and Bourke-White. And during those three years, the photographs of David Lees-his shots of popes, the Holy Land, the Vatican, a.s.sisi and its frescoes, the hills cowled and vested with olive trees-figured large. I didn't know his name but I would have envied his life: his Nikons and Linhofs, his spools and sheets of Tri-X and Ektachrome to take hold of the world's lineaments and shadows and to extract its colors. photographers: Eisenstaedt, Mydans, Feininger, and Bourke-White. And during those three years, the photographs of David Lees-his shots of popes, the Holy Land, the Vatican, a.s.sisi and its frescoes, the hills cowled and vested with olive trees-figured large. I didn't know his name but I would have envied his life: his Nikons and Linhofs, his spools and sheets of Tri-X and Ektachrome to take hold of the world's lineaments and shadows and to extract its colors.

But I put that away just then, in December 1966, G.o.d and the image, the craving for the luminous and profound. It had nothing to do with the flood, unless the flood in some uncanny way marked those things for me as spoiled, tarnished, and merely old rather than ancient. Soon I'd be remaking myself; driving around in my mother's car, listening to the top-forty songs on KDWB or WDGY, smoking Marlboros and, later, pot, aspiring to s.e.x and, finally, idealism. But by then, after 1970, it was too late to join the angeli. angeli.

I doubt I made, that December, much of the flood itself, only of David Lees's photographs; and then as pictures, as things in themselves-artworks-rather than as a record or evidence of something else that might have corresponded to something I knew; say, our Mississippi to their Arno, our Mondrian print on the living room wall to their Cimabue, my father to their Azelide. Soon I would pa.s.s from seeing photographs to looking at not much more than television or the merest reflection of myself in a mirror. All the rest-the imperative, joyous hunger for created, creaturely beauty and its Creator's love and glory, my own original vita nuova- vita nuova-was swept away. It couldn't be recovered, still less restored.

I'd come back to Italy again in 2005, eight years after the a.s.sisi earthquake. This time I was in Florence, trying-so it seems to me now-to write another book about those same things, the things I had lost, and I was flailing. When I noticed the flood marker above our mailbox, the thing that drew me to it, I think, was the concreteness of what it commemorated: it dealt with a fact, anch.o.r.ed in the past, that wove together Florence's art with its history and people. It seemed to contain and connect everything I was interested in but had not been able to grasp. And investigating it would give me a reason to stay longer in Italy.

The flood was by then thirty-nine years in the past, recent enough that memories were still relatively fresh but also sufficiently distant to have become no more than a historical event. It was over, the story complete, so I thought.

But the first week of November it began to rain. I should say that it had been raining a great deal even by Pacific Northwest standards ever since we'd arrived in September. There'd been thunderstorms and weekly downpours. The ceiling of our apartment began to leak. The landlord didn't seem very alarmed by this. When it rained a little more, we were told, everything would swell up and the leaks would stop. This proved to be correct. The central maxim of Tuscan home maintenance-maybe of Italian problem-solving in general-was "Ignore it and it will go away." And although it wouldn't work in America or perhaps anywhere else, more often than not, here it seemed to hold true.

There was no reason, therefore, to pay any attention to this latest onslaught of rain. But I crossed the Ponte alla Carraia several times a day and I couldn't help but notice that the river was rising. Trees, branches, and vegetation were piling up around the piers of the bridge. The river was murky and umber, a turbid orangish brown reminiscent of nothing so much as diarrhea. Pausing on the bridge to gaze at the water rushing under it was now both heady and slightly nauseating, like vertigo.

By the third day, November 5, the water was still rising, and when I crossed the bridge that day I was not so much intrigued as apprehensive. The speed at which the water was tearing downstream made me nervous, as though it were a roller coaster that was, if not out of control, moving faster and more precipitously than I'd bargained for. I wanted to get off.

Neither the river nor my anxiety abated. It was not only ironic but creepily ironic that no sooner had I begun to look into the flood of November 4, 1966, than it had risen from its crypt and was chasing me down. Stranger still was the sense that no one but me was remotely alarmed by this.

It seemed, I learned from reading the papers and talking to neighbors, that the river rose nearly every year in early November. This time the water was indeed a bit on the high side, but not excessively so. It didn't present any danger, but it did afford the opportunity-as in almost every year-for Florentines to rehash the 1966 flood, the matter of who was to blame for it, and the likelihood of it happening again. Inevitably, the supposedly unsolved mystery of the dams would be raised and inevitably ENEL, for the thirty-ninth time, would deny they'd played any role in the deluge. Inevitably too the likelihood of such a flood occurring again would arise-it was said that nothing had been done, or even that things were worse-and inevitably the responsible government agency, L'Autorita di Bacino del Fiume Arno, would respond that, no, a flood on the scale of 1966 almost certainly wouldn't occur again and that much had been done since then to ensure against it.

So regardless of the state of the river, the beginning of November marked Florence's annual festa festa of muttering, backbiting, obfuscation, rationalization, and paranoia that ran for perhaps ten days on either side of the fourth. Beyond the matter of the dams and the potential for future floods, the other perennial debate centered on the current status of the art and books damaged in 1966. And as with the dams and flood prevention, suspicion trumped probability: the operative principle was a corollary to "Ignore it and it will go away," one that stated that if there is something to hide, someone somewhere will be hiding it. of muttering, backbiting, obfuscation, rationalization, and paranoia that ran for perhaps ten days on either side of the fourth. Beyond the matter of the dams and the potential for future floods, the other perennial debate centered on the current status of the art and books damaged in 1966. And as with the dams and flood prevention, suspicion trumped probability: the operative principle was a corollary to "Ignore it and it will go away," one that stated that if there is something to hide, someone somewhere will be hiding it.

One ingredient in that latter discussion was Giorgio Vasari. Like most people I had heard of Vasari because of his Lives of the Artists. Lives of the Artists. In fact I had just finished writing a novel that borrowed that very t.i.tle for satiric purposes. I also knew, like most people, that he had been some sort of artist himself. On the other hand I couldn't by any stretch of the imagination have named one of his works, still less one that was considered important. Vasari, then, was well known, even famous, in a very modern way: he was a famous artist based on his being an artist who was otherwise famous. In fact I had just finished writing a novel that borrowed that very t.i.tle for satiric purposes. I also knew, like most people, that he had been some sort of artist himself. On the other hand I couldn't by any stretch of the imagination have named one of his works, still less one that was considered important. Vasari, then, was well known, even famous, in a very modern way: he was a famous artist based on his being an artist who was otherwise famous.

As CRIA had discovered, there was a bottomless market for masterpieces to rescue. Thirty-nine years after the flood all the obvious ones had been saved, but surely, as with the dams and flood abatement, the authorities were hiding something, and a Vasari would suffice to prove it. That was how I encountered Vasari's Last Supper. Last Supper. It was mentioned in the Italian newspaper I read every morning and also in the national newsmagazines, and the nub of the story was this: bureaucratic inept.i.tude and cynicism had allowed the painting to molder, unseen, for the last thirty-nine years. It was the scandal of an abandoned masterpiece. That it was a masterpiece that no one knew the name of-that no art historian or connoisseur had ever claimed was a masterpiece-was either beside the point or in some way made its neglect that much more criminal. It was mentioned in the Italian newspaper I read every morning and also in the national newsmagazines, and the nub of the story was this: bureaucratic inept.i.tude and cynicism had allowed the painting to molder, unseen, for the last thirty-nine years. It was the scandal of an abandoned masterpiece. That it was a masterpiece that no one knew the name of-that no art historian or connoisseur had ever claimed was a masterpiece-was either beside the point or in some way made its neglect that much more criminal.

Typically, The Last Supper The Last Supper was portrayed as having just been discovered-every November somebody seemed to be stumbling across it-in a pile of junk in a cellar or a barn, but the actual story was a little more complicated and a little less scandalous than that. It was merely pathetic in the quotidian mode, sad in that middling sense that characterized almost everything that touched upon Giorgio Vasari. was portrayed as having just been discovered-every November somebody seemed to be stumbling across it-in a pile of junk in a cellar or a barn, but the actual story was a little more complicated and a little less scandalous than that. It was merely pathetic in the quotidian mode, sad in that middling sense that characterized almost everything that touched upon Giorgio Vasari.

The Last Supper had not, in fact, ever really been lost, any more than hundreds of other panel paintings that had had to wait their turns for restoration at the Fortezza. In 1982 its "desperate condition" was publicly noted and an initial plan had been mooted, a had not, in fact, ever really been lost, any more than hundreds of other panel paintings that had had to wait their turns for restoration at the Fortezza. In 1982 its "desperate condition" was publicly noted and an initial plan had been mooted, a trasporto trasporto that never went forward. The problem was twofold: on the one hand the painting was severely damaged and its restoration would therefore consume vast quant.i.ties of money and time; on the other it wasn't, by anyone's lights, a very important work of art. Decisions about which pieces got restored first were similar to choosing a patient for a rare, costly, and difficult operation: which one had the best prospects and would, recuperated, lead the fullest life and make the largest contribution to society? Subjected to that sort of cost-benefit a.n.a.lysis, the Vasari finished in limbo. It wasn't a write-off but neither did it make a compelling case for immediate action. that never went forward. The problem was twofold: on the one hand the painting was severely damaged and its restoration would therefore consume vast quant.i.ties of money and time; on the other it wasn't, by anyone's lights, a very important work of art. Decisions about which pieces got restored first were similar to choosing a patient for a rare, costly, and difficult operation: which one had the best prospects and would, recuperated, lead the fullest life and make the largest contribution to society? Subjected to that sort of cost-benefit a.n.a.lysis, the Vasari finished in limbo. It wasn't a write-off but neither did it make a compelling case for immediate action.

So The Last Supper The Last Supper remained in storage near the train station until 1991, when it was moved to another building near the Uffizi. Five years pa.s.sed and in November 1996, the thirtieth anniversary of the flood, the central panel was put on display in an exhibition t.i.tled "Salvate dalle Acque," "Saved from the Waters." It had to be exhibited laid flat: the surface, though still secured with Marco Gra.s.si's application of rice paper, was too fragile to risk dislodging by hanging it upright. Only the head of Peter was visible; the rest of the panel, including the figure of Jesus, was concealed beneath the murky, translucent mask of remained in storage near the train station until 1991, when it was moved to another building near the Uffizi. Five years pa.s.sed and in November 1996, the thirtieth anniversary of the flood, the central panel was put on display in an exhibition t.i.tled "Salvate dalle Acque," "Saved from the Waters." It had to be exhibited laid flat: the surface, though still secured with Marco Gra.s.si's application of rice paper, was too fragile to risk dislodging by hanging it upright. Only the head of Peter was visible; the rest of the panel, including the figure of Jesus, was concealed beneath the murky, translucent mask of velinatura. velinatura. In the catalog it was described as "moribund" and its injuries enumerated: "shrinkage, deformations, and fractures of the wooden support (some several centimeters in size), loss of cohesion of the layers of the ground with consequent loosening and detachment of the painted surface." That diagnosis referred only to the central panel: the other four, back at the warehouse, were in considerably worse condition. In the catalog it was described as "moribund" and its injuries enumerated: "shrinkage, deformations, and fractures of the wooden support (some several centimeters in size), loss of cohesion of the layers of the ground with consequent loosening and detachment of the painted surface." That diagnosis referred only to the central panel: the other four, back at the warehouse, were in considerably worse condition.

Three years later the Vasari was moved "temporarily" to another storage room at the Palazzo Serristori. In 2000 the restorer Giovanni Cabras prepared an estimate for the restauro restauro in the amount of 500 million lire, about $400,000, as much as had been spent on any panel painting at the Fortezza thus far. As though in response, in the amount of 500 million lire, about $400,000, as much as had been spent on any panel painting at the Fortezza thus far. As though in response, The Last Supper The Last Supper was moved back to another storeroom in the Palazzo Pitti, which a journalist would later describe as "squalid." Returned to the vicinity of the Limonaia, the Vasari had come full circle in thirty-five years, still in exactly the same devastated condition in which it had arrived there in December 1966. An official from the Superintendency explained that in "meritocratic" terms its was moved back to another storeroom in the Palazzo Pitti, which a journalist would later describe as "squalid." Returned to the vicinity of the Limonaia, the Vasari had come full circle in thirty-five years, still in exactly the same devastated condition in which it had arrived there in December 1966. An official from the Superintendency explained that in "meritocratic" terms its restauro restauro could not presently be justified. could not presently be justified.

For the succeeding three Novembers The Last Supper The Last Supper did not attract much attention or comment: the usual conspiracies surrounding the dams as well as forecasts of future cataclysms were rolled out and the customary official responses volleyed back, but conditions on the art front remained relatively calm. However, on November 1, 2003, a journalist named Marco Ferri, writing in Florence's did not attract much attention or comment: the usual conspiracies surrounding the dams as well as forecasts of future cataclysms were rolled out and the customary official responses volleyed back, but conditions on the art front remained relatively calm. However, on November 1, 2003, a journalist named Marco Ferri, writing in Florence's Giornale della Toscana Giornale della Toscana, published an article that was, compared to previous exposes on the flooded artworks, explosive.

Ferri was not only a professional journalist but an academically trained historian. In composing his story, he didn't simply marshal the usual statistics of unrestored objects and the neglect of supposed masterpieces, but put in months of legwork around Florence and the surrounding countryside with Superintendency inventories, a flashlight, and a photographer. What he found did indeed seem to be a scandal, extending from the "morgue" that contained the Vasari at the Palazzo Pitti to a hundred thousand unrestored books (36,000 of which were still mud-encrusted) at the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale to the "Dantesque" conditions at a former Medici farmstead in the hills. The latter contained literal heaps, ton upon ton, of damaged furniture, artworks, and furnishings-a near landslide of candelabra, for example-from flooded churches. Amid those darkened rooms and cellars, Ferri also discovered the disa.s.sembled altar of Vasari whose ciborio ciborio had replaced the Cimabue had replaced the Cimabue Crocifisso Crocifisso in Santa Croce four centuries earlier. in Santa Croce four centuries earlier.