In silence in front of Her
Our work is made up of many silences, those due to the concentration while we work and those due to the beauty of an artwork and the reflectographic image that we see while our scanner acquires the necessary data. This is the thought we dedicate to Bronzino’s portrait of an extraordinary woman: Laura Battiferri. She was an intellectual and literate woman, of whom we have already spoken here.
In this difficult year, the diagnostic, reflectographic and radiographic campaign on this painting represented a precious gift. The restoration and investigations were carried out in a special laboratory, Palazzo Vecchio.
This time, even the transport of our equipment alone was enchanting, because it allowed us to enjoy the journey between the rooms of Palazzo Vecchio in total solitude. In retracing the road that separated us from the painting we stopped many time to appreciate the details that often remain invisible, when we are distracted by the crowd.
At the end of the road there was her, standing still in time. A figure so authoritative that it seemed a pity to interrupt her thoughts even with the noise caused by the assembling our devices.
Laura has been “reflectographed” several times. Thanks to the several diaphragms at our disposal, we found the one which was right for her. It is always like this, the Art–Test Scanner adapts to the painting, follows the inclinations and allows for different transparencies of the pigments. A unique gift, which allows us to obtain the best results, where others fail and “see nothing”.
Two days in Palazzo Vecchio, in which these investigations were also the moment in which together with the restorers, Lucia and Andrea Dori from “l’Officina del Restauro” and Dr. Pini for the Municipality of Florence, we talked about her as a very precious object to take care of. And it must be said that it is thanks to Friends of Florence that much of our Florentine heritage actually finds a “cure”.
The only painting by the hand of Bronzino of a figure in a profile pose, reminiscent of numismatic works but also of cameos of the classical age, which inspired him, flies to the United States, to the MET. It will be one of the spearheads of the exhibition “The Medici. Portrait & Politics, 1512-1570 “.
We just wish a good trip to “Laura Battiferri”, certainly the longest in her life. Who knows what she will think.
She, who married in 1550 with Bartolomeo Ammannati, who frequented Michelangelo assiduously, and the other Florentine intellectuals, and was in correspondence with other poetesses, whose fame crosses borders and is known from Madrid to Prague, but who probably did not expect to become a New York star.
