RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

Humanistic research and new technologies - multimedia and diagnostic tools as scientific fundaments and technical resources for conservation, museology and art techniques

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di FIRENZE - STORIA DELLE ARTI E DELLO SPETTACOLO - ()

Research Unit Leader

Giorgio Bonsanti

Description

In analogy with the transformations of contemporary society, the museum also has become part of networks, relations, cultural production welcoming the new technologies and their applications, used for services to the users, as educational and communicative instruments, but also as a vehicle for commercial promotion. The most relevant transformation has been determined both by the sophisticated techniques of reproducing the cultural products as well as by the application of new interactive means. The latters have been used first in the management and data archiving systems, then successively to create an innovative museum communication system and in the end for the birth of a previously unseen typology: the virtual museum. Therefore, also the role of the visitor and the fundamental concept of the art work, which can be, therefore, interactively enjoyed at home, have been moved. The otherwise not generalized use of the new technologies has, in many cases, modified, or is progressively modifying the traditional tasks and functions of museum communication. The most evident transformations are related to the educational role of the museum and to the educational services. Together with the guided visit, they also add a virtual visit for the adult public, and the on-line education for the school public, through videogames, questionnaires and laboratories. In addition, the didactic and commentary aids inside the museum take advantage of the new structures to elaborate and offer, a system of informations suited to contextualize any formal, technical and conservative aspect of the work exposed.
The use of IT structures has also increased the definition of public, creating a new figure: the “remote” or virtual user. The visitor can, therefore, define himself as physical or virtual, or physical and virtual. The interactivity, the multimedia, the connectivity, the dynamics and incite narrative characteristic in and of the IT structures have also modified the public’s perception in relation to the institution, as well as the composition and the physionomy of the users.
Taking also into consideration this new reality, the need is to identify and analyze the degree of use of the IT and multimedia systems, both by large and famous museums, as well as by the small local ones using these means. There is also the need to establish in which percentage and how the virtual visit can be used by the users as baggage and deposit of preparatory informations and subsidiaries to real visit or even, in replacement of it.
A monitoring of the relative reception related to great museums as well as to the small complexes in the Tuscan area, an analysis of the typology, the selection and the composition of the public against, and in consequence of, the use or not of the new IT instruments, to be integrated with historical and documentary studies, can offer additional research and knowledge data related to the actual museum, subject today to the pressing informational requests of the mass public.
The passage form the Museum to the conservation is based on the central and non-replaceable role of the artwork or of the historically and culturally valuable artifact. For what’s related to the history of restoration, on which we believe a renewed re-thinking, also over already known episodes, is opportune, the research propose to examine systematically with critical approach the considerations on restoration contained in the technical and literary contribution of the 17th -18th centuries, evidencing the cognitive contribution to the development of theories and of the history of restoration, the observations related to the artistic and restoration techniques, also in relation to the figures of the authors. In particular, the research provides for the analysis of the Dialogues on the three arts of drawing (1754) by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari and of the lectures of Luigi Crespi to Francesco Algarotti (1756), through which it shall be provided a picture of the critical texture of the 18th century for what is regarding conservation. Being texts that are hard to find, their so much desired transcription shall be finally realized, thanks to the digital and IT technologies. It will also be possible to put them progressively on-line, so as to offer a service of great usefulness to a public that has already shown a great interest for these types of access.
On the other side, the progress of the studies, of the theoretical reflections and of the documentary researches, has increasingly led the history of art made with “traditional” methods to interface with widely renewed research methods and techniques. In this context, the conservation sciences and the world of restoration have offered new instruments, capable to integrate in a determinative manner the traditional historical-artistic research. This is happening both thanks to the visual investigations with a physical character, as well as to the material implementation of the restoration works, which have offered new possibilities to read and understand works of art, even though they are well known. It is therefore opportune to re-think the relation between the history of art and the researches on conservation, a point which has caused also some suffering to the more ordered studies, obliged to face innovations that sometimes cannot be easily interpreted and not easily understood by who does not have technical and scientific knowledge. This argument shall be the object of the first real international Congress in regard, to be held at the end of the study, as its conclusive act.
The study of the artistic techniques is today more and more at the center of more interests cutting across various disciplines. In fact, the precise knowledge of the modalities, of the techniques and of the materials used for the realization of the work of art can be of an important interest to who must take care of the preventive conservation and of the restoration, but is becoming an additional modality of lecture and interpretations also for historical art studies.
The first category of interest is easily understandable: every material has its own way of acting through time both in relation to the natural ageing, as well as in reply to the stimulations originated from outside. The latter can be connected with the environmental microclimate where the work of art is located or with its modalities of use. Finally, also man' precedent interventions interact with the materials, made for restoration as well as for transformations and adjustments dictated by the most various needs. Knowing the materials and the assembly of that “delicate” machine which is every work of art, is the starting point for understanding the conservational problems and for setting a correct conservation project based on its three obligatory stages, preventive conservation, maintenance, and restoration.
Instead, the interest for knowledge requires a major explanation. First of all, it is fascinating to understand in what manner the artist’s expressive wills find the concrete way for realization, inside of an ongoing dialectics between the artistic intentions and the technical means. In fact, the two elements are constantly interacting between themselves, reciprocally influencing and stimulating themselves in sight of a finalized change in order to better realize the aim proposed. The relation between the artist’s will and the technical mean represents therefore one of the most interesting moments for the historical art study and can show us extremely various and different situations. Moreover, the exact knowledge of an artist’s or a local school’s the technical modalities can allow us to back or to look at with caution, the possible historical- artistic conclusions reached through other lines of study, expressing therefore an evaluation on the compatibility or less from the point of view of the executive moralities. For example, the great debate arisen in relation to the dating of the Madonna di Santa Maria Maggiore in Florence, whose age has been anticipated by a century thanks to the researches on the technique and to the archeometrical investigation, in respect to the prevailing historical-artistic opinion acquired through stylistic analysis, cannot avoid taking into account the deep difference of the materials and techniques hereby present in respect to those normally implied by Coppa di Marcovaldo, to whom the work has been previously attributed.
The specific project hereby reported intends to investigate which was the technique for the realization of the painting on mobile support, in a large majority on table, of the Italian painting before Giotto. As already mentioned in another occasion, Giotto’s role in this field is equal in terms of importance; with the one, he has in changing the style, so much as to become a real watershed. From what has been understood until now, through the restoration interventions, the Maestro’s function has been to implement a reduction of the great variety of techniques and operational possibilities which existed precedently, coming to a standardization of the operational process, to be probably interpreted as a productive optimization and as a precise definition of the quality level to which all his vast studio had to conform. The great fortune, starting from the 19th Century, of Cennini’s Treatise on Art, which represents a late codification of the technical modalities imposed by Giotto’s success, has sometimes caused the misunderstanding that he can be understood as a representative guide of all the middle-age painting techniques. In reality, the works of the 12th and 13th centuries researched until now show characteristics that are also deeply different from those documented by Cennini and present in Giotto's paintings.
A second sector of investigation, still in the same art works, is the one of the construction of the wooden supports, which at the time were given to another professional figure, the one of the “legnaioli” (“woodcutters”), almost always tied to the place where the work of art was made; and, therefore, the witness better in respect to the increased mobility of the painters, the constructional characteristics and traditions of the various cities or areas. Even in this field have been reported interesting observations and discoveries, always connected to the randomness determined by the realization of the connected restoration interventions.
It is evident that a more systematic study can allow obtaining a deeper and more representative knowledge of the art schools of the era in object.
The researches implemented until now by the Opificio have been implemented both by close direct observation with various magnification systems, made normally during restorations ( which can be made up to dismantling the wooden structures), as well as diagnostic investigations (Rx Radiography, Infrared B/N, False Color Infrared, IR Reflectography, High Resolution Scanner Reflectography, Multi-spectrum investigations, UV phosphorescence; Measures of Reflection in Visible and in IR, etc), reducing to a limited number the invasive analysis, meaning through sampling, especially for the analization of the paint and of the adhesives (for the painting and the preparation).
The final objectives of the above-mentioned project shall therefore consist in investigating the composition, the extraction and the distinctive characters of the use of the museum, starting from the regional Tuscan area used as an indicative case; taking into account that the region, thanks to the absolute recall exercised since the 18th century by the great museums like the Uffizi, and later the Accademia, can also be used to characterize the dependencies between the center and the periphery. Therefore, in the first instance, it must evaluated how much the fame of the great institutions has weighted negatively on the knowledge of the more modest, but more relevant for what is regarding quality and variety of the artistic and historical types, Tuscan realities. Successively it shall be needed to analyze through monitoring and relevation of the important data and thanks to the use of the new IT technologies, the general typology of today’s public and its cultural expectations. Main aim of the project is, fundamentally, the analysis of the perception of the visitors and of the users in relation to the museum institution and the degree of change and transformation of the public itself following to the use of the virtual-museum, intended both as an instrument that is both introductory and subsidiary to the real visit, as well as a replacement of it.
For what’s related to the department dedicated to conservation, the point shall be made on the researches, even very recent ones, related to the development of the studies on conservation, especially with physical character (id est, non destructive). A widely ranged review will be made, addressed to the more updated international scene. The outcomes shall be introduced in a project-type of IT model meant for uniformization. A few case studies shall be examined, especially directing the investigation to the Italian painting of the origins between the 12th and 14th centuries. It shall also be tried to define which additions have been brought by the studies on conservation sciences, on historical-artistic research, a theme of great interest, treated only in a fragmentary manner, in the intention to procure new instruments to be systematically used in the research of this disciplinary area.
The aim of the project related to the artistic technique is therefore to allow a widening of the observations beside the cases that are the object of conservation and restoration interventions, to finalize these enormous cognitive potentials, well referenced by the sections related to artistic technique present in the publications related to the single restorations of the Opificio, with a prevailing aim to study so as to be allowed to integrate the traditional historical-artistic researches with thee new data.
The results expected through the analysis of the data acquired shall be divulged in the international scientific community under the form of articles or monographic essays, as well as under the form of the International Meeting entitled to the Humanistic Research and the New Technologies, whose Proceedings, destined in our intentions to constitute an essential reference point for future studies, shall be promptly published.