Restoration of Giotto's 14th-century frescoes completed Final Edition

• Published in: Leader-post (Regina)
• Main Author: Polk, Peggy
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Regina, Sask Postmedia Network Inc 13.04.2002
• Subjects: PADUA, Italy
• ISSN: 0839-2870

The Scrovegni family is no more, and the owners who succeeded them let their palace fall into such decay it was demolished in the 19th century. But seven centuries after it was built, the pink brick Scrovegni Chapel still stands, and Italian experts have just completed painstaking restoration and maintenance work they hope will preserve Giotto's masterpiece for centuries to come. [Giuseppe Basile] reported that the restorers made a number of discoveries about how Giotto, then in his late thirties, achieved his effects. The frescoes he painted for Scrovegni are considered daringly original for their time, his use of colour and perspective leading directly to Renaissance and modern art. Restorers found that Giotto had rediscovered the "bright stucco" technique used by the ancient Romans but lost in the Middle Ages to paint false marble panels. Giotto employed the same technique to paint smooth, compact backgrounds, making the figures he placed against the backgrounds stand out as though sculpted.