| Abstrakt: |
The author reviews a century of archaeological restoration by describing some key events for the history of the discipline. Ever since the presentation of the plan for the journal, its founders had insisted on the importance of restoration and conservation. Gustavo Giovannoni's reports on the restoration of monuments, and Giacomo Boni's on archaeological restoration, as presented to the first Meeting of Honorary Inspectors (1912-13), were indicative in this regard. The reports on the many intensive interventions conducted in the colonies in the Aegean and in Africa that Italy had obtained in 1912, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, denoted, however a still undeveloped culture of restoration: the interventions for the most part seem unmethodical and often conditioned by contingent factors. Greater consciousness of the needs of restoration emerges, however, from the successive numbers of Le Arti (1938-42) — as the Bollettino d'Arte was renamed during the war — and coincides with the creation of the Istituto Centrale del Restauro and the formulation of the philosophy of Cesare Brandi on the matter Thanks also to the growth of interdisciplinary research, restoration gradually came to occupy an ever-greater role and to be recognized as a decisive coefficient in the interpretation of works of art. This development led to the boosting in the Bollettino d'Arte of specific studies devoted to restoration, conducted both at the art-historical and scientific levels. They culminated in the numbers of the Special Series, Supplements, Special Volumes and Monographs, entirely dedicated to some particular problems, aspects and methods of conservation, or to restoration programmes of particular importance conducted in Italy over the last 25 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
