Word: giotto
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...badly damaged, and four of the Baptistery's mosaic floors were washed away. Immense quantities of water, mud and heating oil, which polluted the water when the floods burst open storage tanks, inundated both the Pizza Chapel and the Horne Museum. The waters battered the lower portion of Giotto's Campanile so severely that it was feared the tower might collapse...
...Procacci, superintendent of the city's museums, the loss of the Cimabue was the major single catastrophe. "One of the hinges of Italian art," he said. "The work that opened the way for Giotto." But, says Procacci, "Not one percent of Florentine art was lost...
...only did he record all the gos sip, true and untrue; he also took time out to describe the works he most ad mired. Among them were Giotto's 14th century frescoes, presumably on the life of the Virgin, in Florence's Badia church. Particularly singled out by Vasari was the panel showing "Our Lady when she is announced...
...Heart Skipped." Could the polyptych be by Giotto and come from the Badia? Vasari had described such a work on the high altar. Later cleaning proved Procacci's hunch correct; handwriting analysis narrowed the date of the sticker to about 1810. Procacci was then able to reconstruct what had happened: the altarpiece had been removed in 1810 by Napoleon's troops from the Badia; then in 1815, through a clerical mistake, it had been returned instead to Santa Croce. Digging through the old floor plans of the Badia, Procacci made a second discovery. The church had been rebuilt...
Missing Faces. As the masons chipped away, the golden rays of the halo surrounding the head of the announcing angel were slowly revealed. Giotto's frescoes, hidden from sight for over 300 years, had been found. "Our expectations were enormous," he remembers. But the rays heralded a false dawn. Says Procacci: "When we saw that the face of the angel was missing, it broke our hearts." Procacci is convinced that the face of Mary in the Annunciation fresco that Vasari so admired was similarly cut out before the wall was covered in the 17th century...