Bas-reliefs and watercolours from the archive of drawings of the Superintendency

Location: National Museum of Ravenna, Via Fiandrini
Organised by: The Superintendency for Architectural Heritage and Landscape of Ravenna, National Museum of Ravenna
Opening: 17 October
Period: from 17 October to 20 June 2010

Correspondence, cost estimates, reports and pictorial-graphic documents of the main restoration campaigns between the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds attest to the care given to the conservation of historic buildings.

The Superintendency of Architectural Heritage and Landscape of Ravenna, set up in 1897 for the principal purpose of protecting and restoring the buildings of late antiquity and Byzantine origin decorated with mosaics that constitute the most valuable legacy of the city, keeps in its archives many important items from the main restoration programmes undertaken from the middle of the eighteen hundreds.

This exhibition will present tracings, sketches and watercolours, produced between the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, which will make it possible to retrace the laborious process of copying the mosaic surfaces by the restorers in an age in which photography was still in its earliest stages.

Valuable documents, never before seen, from the Archive of Drawings, important for their value as documentation and aesthetic value will provide the graphic-pictorial interpretation of the mosaic decorations of the Basilica of San Vitale and the Archiepiscopal Chapel: a universe populated by delightful birds and delicate angelic creatures comes alive in the refined watercolours of exquisitely sensitive execution.

www.soprintendenzaravenna.beniculturali.it