Arezzo, Piero della Francesca died 530 years ago and the frescoes of San Francesco remain closed
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Mysteries of the ministries. And also of the museum centers, when the ordinary bureaucratic routine prevails over anniversariesincluding the most important. October 12therefore, not only that of the discovery of America, as any elementary school pupil knows, but also of the death of Piero della Francescaone of the giants of the Renaissance. Round anniversary, in this case, the 530 from 1492which then coincides with the day on which the caravels of Christopher Columbus sighted land. Yet the frescoes of the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo, Piero’s most important pictorial cycle and one of the most famous in the world, remained closed to tourists for the whole day.. Wednesday, the weekly closing day and it never occurred to anyone that perhaps it was appropriate to make an exception. Much to the disgrace of the tourists who flock to it every year by the tens of thousands Legend of the True Cross, the story in images of the story of the Cross of Christ, taken from the medieval work of Iacopo da Varagine. And much to the anger of the Arezzo tourist guides, the first to raise the case, forced to explain to their groups that, despite the symbolic date, the fascinating paintings by Piero, in the Bacci Chapel, loved and cited by internationally renowned artists and writers, could not be visited. Only visible, but far away, from the entrance to the church of San Francesco, the one was open to the public yesterday too, but from which you can guess at most some distant glimpse of the frescoes.
How it could have happened difficult to understand, but the only explanation that no one has noticed the coincidence of the dates: those of the weekly closing and the anniversary of death. The Legend of the Cross, which Piero painted from 1452 until 1466, a colossal and majestic work, a state museum, which depends on the museum center of Tuscany. The forgetfulness also allows you to guess the first reaction of the director Stefano Casciu, who is also a serious scholar and an attentive manager: Thank you for the report, he says puzzled after a significant silence. Casciu tries to muffle the echo of the gaffe: Recurrences are always artificial, there is no need for an anniversary to remind the world of Piero’s greatness. And he also remembers the conference, scheduled for late afternoon, organized by the order of architects with the pole. At the end, participants will be able to visit the frescoes. Only them for.
And the hundreds of tourists, distributed throughout the day, who stare at each other in the square in front of the church remain. Just as oblivion fell on such a date. The square, incidentally, is also that of the Caff dei Costanti, a historic venue where Benigni’s “La vita bella” was filmed, now closed for a year. The square of silence, in short, like D’Annunzio’s cities of silence, among which there were also Arezzo and the frescoes. The mayor Alessandro Ghinelli also intervenes on the very untimely closure, gracefully but decisively, which just a few days ago had relaunched the battle for the inclusion of the frescoes in the Unesco world heritage. An opportunity certainly lost to remember Piero. He knows that the ticket office is not managed by the municipal administration… perhaps with a little more sensitivity he could have remembered what date. This sensitivity should push those who today hold the buttons of the ticket office to share the responsibility with those who have a direct interest in the enhancement as well as in the conservation of the frescoes themselves…. Too late to fix it now. Disappointed tourists will be able to make up for it with Piero’s other masterpieces preserved in the province, from the “Madonna del Parto” of Monterchi to the “Resurrection” of Sansepolcro. Those at least aren’t closed for shift.
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12 October 2022 | 16:43
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