How a total novice took up medieval art restoration in the Italian countryside
- Tonio Creanza runs a workshop where volunteers learn how to renovate Renaissance paintings and frescoes
- Participants also get to enjoy the incredible food from the surrounding countryside
“Is it OK,” I ask, “to put my hand here?”
“Here” is Jesus’ brown hair, on a 700-year-old fresco of the crucifixion, in a cave church in Puglia, Italy. Jesus’ eyes are depicted as closed, giving the portrait an oddly serene feel. My task is to use a scalpel to scrape away calcium deposits on the right eye (a spider is sitting on the left one), and I need to ground my hand on the fresco to get good leverage.
Tonio Creanza glances over from the fresco he was working on. “Sure,” he says. So I start scraping.
That someone like me – well-meaning but completely untrained and unskilled – would be applying a razor-sharp instrument to an ancient treasure is due entirely to Creanza, a 50-year-old George Clooney lookalike who hails from the Puglian town of Altamura. In 1989 he launched a summer workshop designed to bring in volunteers to work on preserving and celebrating some of the treasures of his native region.
The idea has grown over the years. Today, Messors – the organisation he runs with his wife, Canadian-born Jennifer Bell – offers several workshops each summer. In three of them, the emphasis is on preserving and restoring ancient frescoes and Renaissance paintings. In the other, participants repair shepherds’ fences, make pecorino cheese from sheep’s milk, and learn to bake the local yellow bread.