Programme - Mosaics - Drawings and watercolours
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Bas-reliefs and watercolours from the archive of drawings of the Superintendency
Exhibition
Location: National Museum of Ravenna
Opening hours: 8.30a.m. - 7.30p.m.; close on Monday; closed on 25/12 and 1/1; Ticket office closes at 19.00
Entrance: Euro 4,00
Opening 17 October 6.00p.m.
From 17 October to 20 June 2010
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.
Correspondence, cost estimates, reports and pictorial-graphic documents attest on one hand to the care given to the conservation of historic buildings and on the other hand to the methods used in a period of history full of cultural turmoil and contemplation that would lead to the creation of historic philological restoration.
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
