A summary of issues that surround the announced restoration of Giotto's frescoes in Scrovegni Chapel. The elaborate conservation and restoration project for the Scrovegni or Arena Chapel sketched out by the Comune of Padua, who are the owners, reveal the intention is not merely to maintain the frescoes but to 'improve' them. It is also clear from the doc umentation distributed on 30 September 1995 by local Paduan officials in the presence of the Minister of Beni Culturali, Hon. Such sums hardly indicate a simple dusting. All this without determining the actual need nor spelling out the philosophy or the goals of such an intervention, after only a generation.
Measures being initiated include a new entrance construction of questionable appearance.
Instead of this band-aide approach, the issues of pollution and humidity should be part of a larger progra m that includes the elimination of auto and bus traffic in the area near the monument, for example, as well as control of the kind of heating fuel used in the zone. We must applaud the emergency interventions to prevent loss of pictorial surface. However, it is evident that the officials are seeking to restore all of Giotto's cycle, at a stage even before it is proved that such a drastic step is necessary or desirable. ArtWatch is categorically opposed to restoration of Giotto's frescoes for pure or mainly aesthetic considerations. We know that a perfectly acceptable approach for 1995 might not be so attractive a decade rom know, in 2005.