Assisi frescoes' restoration

Zenit News Service

Contents - Sep 1999 - Buy a copy now Editorial: 1999 Fighting Fund launched - Peter Westmore Heroin injecting room in Catholic health centre? - Dr Joseph Santamaria News: The Church Around the World Religious Life: The crisis of women religious not confined to the United States - Sr Kathleen Dalton Cardinal O'Connor's tribute to noted priest-author - Cardinal John O'Connor Spirituality: West Australian Rosary tapes: a growing international success story - Colleen McGuiness-Howard Social Justice: Father Winfried's Tanzanian Water Project appeal - AD2000 Report Education: Teaching the right values: a challenge for Catholic schools - Greg Craven Assisi frescoes' restoration - Zenit News Service Scripture: The call to conversion in the early Church: lessons for today - Rev Dr Peter Waters Reflection: A spirit of poverty and the level of vocations: how they connect - Fr Fabian Duggan OSB

THANKS TO TECHNOLOGY, the magnificent frescoes of the immortal painter Cimabue, that decorated the vault of the Upper Basilica of Assisi and were completely destroyed by the 26 September 1997 earthquake, will soon be enjoyed once again. Tiny video projectors, to be placed on either side of the vault, will project slides of the destroyed frescoes.

At present, much restoration work is being carried out in both the Upper and Lower Basilicas. Both are covered with frescoes by great pre-Renaissance and Renaissance masters. The work should be completed for the inauguration of the Holy Year on Christmas Eve, 1999.

In the Upper Basilica, 28 frescoes by Giotto and his disciples depicting St Francis' life, suffered cracks and chips in the plaster that have been completely restored. What seems impossible to recover, however, are Cimabue's St Matthew, portraits of the Doctors of the Church, and the star-studded blue heavens that decorated the vault's ceiling.

But the technicians have not given up hope of reconstructing the lost frescoes. As with a puzzle, they hope to piece together the thousands of fragments found, although they estimate that 25% of the paintings are beyond recovery.

The Basilica has now been made earthquake proof, thanks to almost 20 miles of steel tubing that supports the foundations, walls and roofs, and the 30,000 bricks, fired in the original manner, which replaced those that crumbled.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 12 No 8 (September 1999), p. 11