ART/ ‘All’altezza di Piero’, in Cappella Bacci ‘face to face’ with one of the masterpieces of Renaissance painting

Arezzo (Tuscany) – Face-to-face’ with one of the masterpieces of Renaissance painting: from 27 January to 12 March in the Cappella Bacci of the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo, ‘All’altezza di Piero‘, the program of extraordinary visits to the maintenance side of the cycle of wall paintings of the ‘Leggenda della Vera Croce‘ by Piero della Francesca, will start. From 10 January 2024, the work will be subjected to maintenance and conservation works by the Regional Directorate of the Museums of Tuscany, which – for the occasion – has decided to set up an accessible scaffolding that will offer small groups of visitors the exceptional opportunity to admire the cycle of wall paintings from a completely different and unprecedented perspective.

‘La Leggenda della vera Croce’, painted by the artist between 1452 and 1466, presents a series of episodes taken from the Legenda Aurea by the Dominican friar Jacopo da Varagine, a collection of lives of saints and explanations of liturgical feasts written from the 1460s onwards and circulated with great success throughout the Middle Ages. The scenes, articulated in three levels on the walls of the Cappella Bacci, tell the story of the Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, starting from the birth of the tree from which the wood was made. The episodes depicted by Piero della Francesca are not connected according to chronological succession but by formal and symbolic relationships and are characterized by a careful perspective vision.

The maintenance and conservative overhaul work (previously carried out in 2016), includes the removal of the significant quantities of dust and atmospheric particles deposited on the painted surfaces and the simultaneous verification of the state of conservation of the paint film and plasterwork to avoid the onset or progress of any new deterioration phenomena (lifting, detachment, sulphation, etc.) that could seriously jeopardize the conservation of the paintings. The work site will also include the restoration of the large painted Cross, dating back to the eighth-ninth decade of the 13th century and attributed to an Umbrian painter conventionally known as the Master of San Francesco, and of the mullioned window, with the preparation of a newly designed external counter-window.

(Mem-IlMohicano)