Italy earthquake:
Temblor deals latest blow to nation’s long deteriorating trove of art and architecture.
ROME — Within hours of last week’s devastating earthquake in central Italy, a national police squad of art experts were already exploring the mounds of rubble in several medieval hill towns.
They have photographed hundreds of centuries-old churches with missing roofs, tornaway frescoes or gaping holes where stained glass once filtered sunlight. The quake and several powerful aftershocks dealt the latest blow to Italy’s long-deteriorating wealth of art and architecture.
Even without nature’s fury, monumental fountains, churches and ancient Roman ruins were already vulnerable to car exhaust, vandalism and other human-inflicted damage.
Italy’s most urgent priorities are to ensure shelter for those needing a safe roof after Wednesday’s temblor and to keep digging for any more victims’ bodies. But the stricken region’s cultural heritage of medieval paintings, sculptures, bell towers and other monuments is vitally entwined with residents’ daily lives and intrinsic to Italy’s international reputation as a treasure trove of art.
No artworks with the cachet of a Leonardo, Michelangelo or Giotto are among those lost in the quake. But art historians stress that local art of whatever pedigree helps to explain the cultural and artistic contexts that inspired the great masters. And just as important, local pride over this artistic heritage in churches or piazzas binds these centuries-old towns to their past.
“The icons of these towns are dear to the hearts of the locals,” said Cristiana Collu, who trained as a medieval art historian and was recently named director of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. “Life is precious, but it’s also precious because of these memories” of the artistic past, Collu said.
Quickly and methodically documenting the damage helps culture officials determine which basilicas or bell towers are beyond repair and must be razed for safety’s sake, and which are candidates for Italy’s internationally recognized trailblazers in art restoration.
Italy has long experience in repairing the artistic destruction wrought by natural disasters.
When a 1997 quake sent Giotto’s frescoes raining down in tiny fragments from the vaulted ceiling of the St. Francis Basilica in Assisi, restorers painstakingly pieced together much of the masterpiece. In 1966, a corps of global volunteers dubbed the “angels of the mud” rescued countless Florence artworks from Arno River floods.