The Vatican fragment on display at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence – Carlo Franza’s blog

The Museum of the Opificio delle Dure in Florence welcomes until November 1, 2025, as part of the “Caring for Art. Restoration on display” cycle, a guest of extraordinary importance for the world of art and Research: the so -called Vatican fragment, the only rest of the cycle of wall paintings that Giotto and his team made in the first quarter of the fourteenth century in the ancient basilica of San Pietro in the Vatican. A work of exceptional historical and artistic value, now fully enjoyable after a complex restoration intervention conducted by the Opificio delle Pietre harsh between 2016 and 2019.

The Vatican fragment represents a rare testimony of Giotto’s Roman activity: it is a portion of detached wall painting, currently incorporated into a bed of plaster that constitutes its support, depicting two sober and powerful figures of saints for a long time, wrongly, with San Pietro and San Paolo. The story of this Lacerto is fascinating and marked by a complex stratification of subjects and memories. The ancient basilica of St. Peter, erected in the first centuries of Christianity, was gradually demolished from the 16th century pEr make room for the project of Bramante and Michelangelo. Of the fourteenth -century wall decoration entrusted to the most important painter of the time and whose memory is handed down in the sources, this fragment is the only material testimony, survived for its testimonial and devotional value and therefore preserved over time with great care.
An inscription on the back recalls how, in 1610, the work was donated by Pietro Strozzi, canon of the Vatican Basilica and secretary of Pope Paul V, to Matteo Caccini. The latter, recognizing its importance, equipped to do it to adorn and expose it to worship, we do not know what place, in 1625.
Little seen and little studied, the painting was exhibited in 2015 on the occasion of the Giotto exhibition, Italy (Milan, Palazzo Reale), during which the urgency of a restoration emerged clearly that could help understand its technical and stylistic aspects. Starting from 2016, the Opificio delle Pietre Hardbone has undertaken a meticulous campaign of diagnostic investigations, followed by a careful restoration. The intervention had the fulcrum of the removal of repaints and patches overlapping over the centuries, which had gradually compromised the readability of the piece, obscuring the refinement of the original painting.
The cleaning brought to light delicate and very fine drafting. The infrared investigations highlighted the construction of the figures, characterized by clear and profound shadows. The embodied are modeled with small touches of pigment – oxes and oxides – on a greenish base, while the features of the faces, such as noses and lips, are marked by strong black and red signs. This executive method, recognizable and consistent with the Giottesca techniques, has made it possible to confirm the direct attribution to the master himself, dissipating the doubts that emerged in the previous decades.
The accurate recovery of this painting, now readable in its authenticity, allows you to insert it with greater certainty in the corpus of the Giottesca works, stimulating new chronological and stylistic reflections, as well as comparisons with other evidence of its activity, from the lower basilica of Assisi to the polyptych Stefaneschi, up to the Holy Stefano today preserved at the Horne Museum in Florence. As Serena Romano had to write in the study of the presentation of the intervention “In the history of medieval art the certainties are rare, the dates of the works travel of decades if not centuries, the attributions are difficult and the names of artist, when they exist, often foggy. What we present today, after the masterful restoration made by the opifice, is instead a miracle of history, of conservation, of a miracle that returns to public knowledge. What without too many caution can be defined as a great unpublished pictorial of Giotto and, in other ways, a concentrate of exceptional, and exceptionally documented historical events “.
This prolonged exposure therefore offers the unique opportunity for the public, both of scholars and simple enthusiasts, to admire an almost unpublished Giottesco fragment, but also to know the results of a study, conservation and enhancement project conducted with scientific rigor up close. It is an exceptional event, made possible by the generous availability of the owners of the work and by the constant commitment of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure for the Italian artistic heritage. In this context, the “Caring for art. Restoration on display” cycle is confirmed as a privileged reflection space on the value of care for art, as a cognitive and civil act, which allows you to rediscover forgotten masterpieces and return them to the community.

Carlo Franza