Preserving Giorgio Vasari's 'Last Supper' 50 Years After It Was Nearly Destroyed

(ZEPstudio/Opera di Santa Croce)

In November 1966, the Arno river flooded, ravaging the historic city of Florence, Italy, destroying countless, irreplaceable pieces of art. (Some 7,000 acres of Florence were submerged in water and sewage.) With waters reaching 22 feet high in the area of the Santa Croce Basilica, the church’s centerpiece—an 8-by-21-foot panel-painting by Giorgio Vasari depicting “The Last Supper”—was greatly damaged. It would be removed.

You’re likely most familiar with Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, which is presumed to have been painted at the tail-end of the 15th century. You could say that Vasari’s is a chip off the old block; in 1550, he published a book called Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, which is one of the earliest art history tomes and an early source of da Vinci’s work. Vasari, himself an accomplished Renaissance painter, painted his version for a monastery in Florence in 1546, and it eventually found its way to Santa Croce by 1815.

Last stages of restoration at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence for Giorgio Vasari’s ‘Last Supper’ (adicorbetta/Opera di Santa Croce)

(adicorbetta/Opera di Santa Croce)

Where did the flood-damaged work go? Well, it eventually found its way into the arms of art conservators in 2010, who started the laborious task of preserving the paneled artwork, which had been so waterlogged that it was literally in pieces. (In the above images, conservators are working on the painter at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure—the Workshop of Semiprecious Stones—in Florence.) And now 50 years later, Vasari’s The Last Supper has finally been returned at Santa Croce. The restoration was accomplished by an international partnership between the Getty Foundation, Prada, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage in Florence (where the aforementioned workshop is), and Italy’s Civil Protection agency.

Said Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation, of the restored painting project:

“The unveiling of The Last Supper is the culmination of years of collaboration across continents and across fields to save one of the most significant and challenging examples of a flood-damaged painting….Not only is the painting at home in Santa Croce once again, but a new generation of panel paintings conservators have been trained through these efforts so that other paintings can receive the same excellent care and treatment.”

For more on Getty’s Panel Paintings Initiative, click here. To watch the conservators in action, watch the PBS News Hour‘s video on the painting’s restoration below.