A restorer looks at the portrait of Dante Alighieri by Andrea del Castagno
Credit: Aleandro Biagianti/AGF/Shutterstock
It was scratched and darkened with grime, but after a six-month restoration a famous portrait of Dante has been returned to its original lustre, just in time for the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death.
The 8ft-high, 5ft-wide portrait, which was painted in the 15th century by Renaissance artist Andrea del Castagno, was unveiled on Thursday at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence.
It depicts the author of The Divine Comedy – considered to be the greatest work of literature in Italian — dressed in a cloak and a red cap, his gaze intent and his nose aquiline.
“This is perhaps the most famous image of Dante, an icon of Italian culture,” said Eike Schmidt, the German director of the art gallery. “He’s an important figure not just for Italy but for the whole world.”
Restorers and the director of the Uffizi Galleries, Eike Schmidt, with the newly-restored portrait of Dante Alighieri
Credit: Uffizi Galleries
The restored fresco is to be loaned out to exhibitions in other parts of Italy in an initiative called “Uffizi Diffusi”, which best translates as “Scattered Uffizi”.
The idea is to take some of the gallery’s thousands of artistic treasures, including works by Leonardo da Vinci, Titian and Michelangelo, and lend them to museums in lesser-known parts of Italy.
It is hoped that, once the coronavirus pandemic is over and life returns to normal, the initiative will help Florence avoid being saturated once again by too many tourists and will encourage people to visit other parts of the country.
The large portrait will soon go to an exhibition on Dante in the town of Forlì, in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna.
'Dante and the Divine Comedy', 1464-1465, from the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence
Credit: Getty
“Forlì is symbolic because it is between Florence, where Dante was born, and Ravenna, where he died in exile,” said Dr Schmidt.
The exhibition is one of hundreds of events around Italy that have been organised for March 25, the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death in Ravenna on the Adriatic coast.
It will then be put on display in the village of Castagno d’Andrea, the birthplace of the artist who painted it, and one of the locations where Dante lived after his politically-motivated exile from Florence.
The portrait was originally one of nine famous figures painted by Andrea del Castagno on the walls of a villa outside Florence between 1447 and 1449.
They included three “condottieri” – military commanders who led bands of mercenaries in Renaissance Italy – as well as three “illustrious” women and the three most famous poets of the age: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.
But at some point the beautifully-executed cycle of frescoes was whitewashed over and they were in danger of being lost forever.
A statue of Dante in a piazza in Verona
Credit: Shutterstock
They were rediscovered during restoration work in 1847, when the owners of the villa had them detached from the wall.
They intended to sell them off to the highest bidder, which might well have meant they would have left Italy forever, but the Uffizi Galleries stepped in and bought them in 1852.
The fresco was restored by experts from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, a long-established cultural heritage institution in Florence.
“It’s one of the most important elements of the iconography of Dante,” said Marco Ciatti, the director of the workshop, which boasts world-class techniques of painting and statue restoration.
Restorers repaired the painting, corrected the effects of clumsy restorations done in the past, and made the colours of the fresco vibrant once again.
They used non-invasive techniques to study the patina of the fresco, which had “suffered many traumas,” said Renata Pintus, one of the experts.
Cristiana Todaro, another restorer, said the painting had been badly damaged. “There were abrasions and scratches on the surface,” she said.
Having looked “melancholy” and dour before the restoration, Dante’s face is once again “bright and animated,” the Uffizi said in a statement.
“To see it now, after the restoration, Dante looks much younger,” said Countess Maria Vittoria Colonna Rimbotti, the president of Friends of the Uffizi Galleries, a philanthropic organisation. “It’s very moving.”
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