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Etruscan urn’s polychromy restored after 1966 Florence flood
The Bottarone Urn, an extraordinary Etruscan cinerary urn with a sculpture of a married couple on the lid, has been comprehensively restored to vivid polychromy 60 years after it was caked in mud from the 1966 Arno River flood of Florence. The major new conservation has restored the natural luminosity of the alabaster and revived the intensity of its original painted colors and patterns. The diagnostic examinations also identified for the first time the presence of Egyptian blue pigment.
The urn dates to between 425 and 380 B.C. and is exceptional for the quality of its material — alabaster with delicate grey veining — and artistry, both in the carving and in detailed polychrome painting. Its subject matter is also unusual for the period. The lid depicts a man reclining on a kline (the daybed/dining couch) holding a patera in his left hand and reaching his right arm out to embrace his wife. She sits up with her feet on a pillow in the act of removing her veil. Etruscan sarcophagi with married couples on the lid were a popular motif in earlier periods, but when this one was made, cinerary urn lids typically featured semi-recumbent individuals or the deceased with a winged female demon.
It was discovered in 1864 in Bottarone, a small village in the province of Perugia, and after passing through several private hands, it was acquired by the National Archaeological Museum of Florence (MAF) in 1887. It was on display on the first floor of the museum on November 4th, 1966, when the Valdarno damn burst and the Arno River poured into Florence. At the high water mark in the Santa Croce neighborhood, it reached a height of 6.7 meters (22 feet). A hundred people lost their lives and thousands lost their homes and livelihoods.
The destruction was incalculable. Florence is not particularly prone to flooding, so they had to go back centuries to 1557 to find a flood as bad as this one, and the city had collected a lot of art, books and artifacts since then. As estimated 600,000 tons of toxic sludge from mud, sewage, oil and naptha invaded the city, damaging or destroying millions of books, manuscripts, archives and about 14,000 artworks. Thousands of volunteers known as Mud Angels came to Florence from all over the world to help sift through the mud for precious fragments of artworks and clean them off as best they could with rudimentary materials in makeshift facilities.
The toll the flood took on Florence’s immense cultural patrimony spurred the development of new technological and methodological approaches to conservation. It was a tectonic shift on the whole premise of restoration, permanently abandoning the reconfigurations and harsh treatments that began in the Renaissance and flourished in the Grand Tour era into the non-invasive preservation outlook that defines conservation today. The pioneer in this new approach, the Center for Archaeological Restoration of Tuscany, was inaugurated that very year in the same building as the National Archaeological Museum. The new laboratory was immediately put to use documenting the damage, cleaning toxic flood sludge and getting artifacts to the point of stability as much as possible without making the mistake of taking on ambitious restorations beyond its capabilities at the time.
The mud reached more than six feet high inside the National Archaeological Museum, and hundreds of artifacts were damaged by the catastrophic event. The Bottarone Urn took a direct hit from the muddy waves when they struck the building. Its first post-flood treatment was completed and published in 1969. The mud was cleaned, but in an attempt to protect the surface, a sealer was applied that over time has darkened. The painted surfaces had grayed, obscuring the original intensity and variety of the color, and the head of the male was becoming structurally unsound. With the condition of the urn increasingly precarious, it was removed from public display for its safety.
In 2022, the urn began undergoing a comprehensive new scientific study and conservation.
The intervention led to major results, including the identification and mapping of Egyptian blue, as well as ochre and cinnabar, allowing for a more precise reconstruction of the work’s original polychromy. “The imaging investigations yielded exciting results: we identified the Egyptian blue and were able to map the polychromy, imagining the urn in its original appearance,” said Giulia Basilissi, Conservator Restoration Officer at the Museum.
The urn is on display this weekend at a special exhibition dedicated to its 60 years journey from disaster to renewal at the Palazzo dei Congressi before it returns to the National Archaeological Museum.
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