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| The Nativty by F.Gambacciani, before and after restoration |
The Nativity project was created keeping in mind a wish from
behalf of MMGFund founder Mr Luke Olbrich, who wanted the project to help
promote the careers of young and up-coming conservators/restorers working in
the field of cultural heritage. With this wish in mind, the board of
directors of the association Bastioni, administrators of the MMGFund, decided
to launch a competition whereby members of the association could offer a bid
for the restoration of the Nativity on the basis of an intervention projected
signed by two accredited conservators. By Italian law only accredited
conservators can sign projects, technicians (young conservators who by lack of
experience still have not achieved accreditation) can intervene on objects of
cultural heritage only if the intervention project is signed accordingly. By
asking conservators to offer a bid on a signed project, the MMGFund was giving young
conservators/restorers the unique opportunity to make head-way in their careers.
Requests to bid for the Nativity project were published on the
Bastioni web-site and other social media platforms. Approximately ten offers
were sent back us. The choice for the best offer was done by discarding the
highest and lowest offers, finding the weighted average of the remaining offers
and awarding the bid to the offer which was closest to the average figure.
Even though experienced and less experienced conservators
were invited to bid, we were delighted when a young conservator/restorer from Turin,
who had recently moved to Florence, won the bid. Nicholas Castelli, in joint
venture with the accredited conservator Natalia Materassi, a well-known Florentine
conservator whose experience in the field of panel painting and easel painting
conservation covers over 30 years of experience, embraced the Nativity project
with heightened enthusiasm and professional zeal.
The experience of the Nativity project has been phenomenal
for everyone involved. A special thank you must be given to both the conservators
Nicholas and Natalia, not only for the high standards of their work but also
for the adaptability they showed when working within the Bastioni labs. Another
thank you must go to all the professionals involved with the project; Maria Maugeri,
art historian supervisor for the Florentine Superintendency, all the art movers
from the firm Arternativa who are equally efficient, charming and incredibly
skilled, to the insurance brokers from Assicurazione AXA who indeed poses the virtue
of patience, to the photographer and diagnostic expert Ottaviano Caruso for working
well into the wee hours of the night and to the board of directors Bastioni who
have so efficiently administered the project. A heartfelt thanks must go to
project manager Caterina Canetti who always reacts to my slight autistic
reactions with a hearty laugh and who is always willing to join me in the most bizarre
of projects. The many donors of the fund are of course the wheels that keep our
activities alive and for that we are all eternally grateful. But if there is
one person who will never be forgotten by both MMGFund members and the
professional who work at the Bastioni, that is Mircea. His elegance, his beauty
and his lust for all related with the art world are hopefully immortalised in
all that we do under his name. I hope he
is just as proud of us, as I am of him. Daniela Murphy Corella, President Associazione Bastioni
Tecnical downloads:
Project for the Nativity by F.Gambacciani signed by accredited conservators/restorers Daniela Murphy Corella ACR and Caterina Canetti. Download project by clicking here.
Final Conservation/Restoration report signed by Nicholas Castelli and Natalia Materassi. Download reprot by clicking here.
Watch a brief video as art movers from Arternativa take the painting back to the Basilica del Carmine by clicking here
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