Episode 12 - A Survivor of the Flood
Part 2
Cimabue, Crucifix, c. 1265
Tempera on wood panel, 176 x 150 in (448 x 390 cm)
Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence
Before 1966

The refectory of Santa Croce, Florence, 2023




Map of the Florence Flood, by Robert W. Nicholson, National Geographic, July 1967

Photos from National Geographic, July 1967
Piazza Santa Croce by Daniele Pettinari and A Mud Angel by Elio Sorci


Taking down the Crucifix a few days after the flood

On the way to the Boboli Limonaia

Photo from National Geographic, July 1967
Refectory of Santa Croce by Mondadori Press

During Treatment
The panel and the upper layers, separated

Before inpainting

Arriving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1982


After treatment, 2023

On display at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1983

Renstallation in the sacristy of Santa Croce, 2014
Cimabue, Crucifix, c. 1265
Tempera on wood panel, 176 x 150 in (448 x 390 cm)
Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence
2023



Recommended Reading
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Umberto Baldini and Ornella Cassazza, The Cimabue Crucifix, Published by Olivetti / Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1982
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Marco Ciatti. "Twentieth-Century Italian Conservators And Conservation Theory," The Burlington Magazine, October 2017
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Robert Clark, Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces, Doubleday, 2008
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Joseph Judge, "Florence Rises From the Flood," National Geographic, July 1967
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Helen Spande, ed, Conservation Legacies of the Florence Flood of 1966, Archetype, 2009
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