Stefano Garosi, one of the best known Florentine restorers tell us about his long experience in the field
Stefano, how did you become a restorer? What was your training path?
It was a tortuous journey, a bit like being on a roller coaster. I come from a dynasty of decorators and gilders: my great-grandfather was trained in the Grand Ducal workshops around the Pitti Palace. I was initiated to restoration at the age of 12, after having met Ennio Regola. I was fascinated by this activity that I encoutered in his studio. A spontaneous choice for me, I had a workshop training, also because restoration schools did not exist at the time. While working in the workshop I also attended the art institute, but my training as a restorer was a real old-fashioned apprenticeship.
Let’s talk now about your work. With Art-Test there have been many opportunities for collaboration, do you want to remember some of them?
We have been working together for a long time, many many years. For me it has always been pleasant the way in which we have been able to establish a real dialogue between diagnostics and restoration.
We have worked on many works by private owners, including a painting attributable to Andrea Del Sarto, perhaps one of the first done together, together with the one by Marco Pino, and many others. One of the most important pieces, publicly owned, was Vasari‘s “La Pazienza” or the Frans Floris, “Adam and Eve”, both from the Palatine Gallery. In the reflectography of this last work we discovered that the painter initially planned to include a cat, an idea which the artist later abandoned.
This last example perfectly explains the relationship that must exist between the diagnostician and the restorer: certain things the restorer alone can only guess, but he cannot see them. How would it be possible to see that there was a cat drawing underneath?
You can understand if there are repentances, you can distinguish the repaintings, but it is precisely in such cases that you need tools that a restorer does not have. This is where another professional figure comes into play: the diagnostician, and it is fundamental for a restorer to have this contribution.
In general, what are the most common problems encountered during a restoration in which diagnostics are most useful?
As in the case we were talking about before. Or as in the case of the painting that we are going to study together in the coming days, which is totally repainted. It is a Madonna attributed to Lorenzo di Credi. Observing carefully the painting, even with the microscope, what I see is that there is little, very little left of the original painting. It is probably an artwork that underwent an unfortunate cleaning and was completely repainted. It is a beautiful repainting, whoever did it was a good painter.
However, now you cannot venture into removing what we have now with the risk of finding nothing. There is a need for a thorough and precise investigation to understand what condition the underlying painting is in, and how much is left of it. If you can understand from the investigation that it is worthwhile to remove what you see now, it is good. But if the investigations confirm my doubts, it is better to leave everything as it is. The analyses can be considered as a preventive restoration, a way to avoid making mistakes, avoiding excesses.
You have been working in this field for many years, what changes have you noticed, for example in terms of customers, prices and clients?
In recent years, everything has changed. In over half a century, everything changes, in any sector, but above all in this.
The training of restorers has totally changed. In the workshop there was training right on the job, although very often the average restorer had a low field specific education, not to mention education in general. Then there were those exceptions, recognized as masters, who, in addition to having an excellent operational capacity, possessed a great specific and general culture: characters such as Leonetto Tintori, Alfio Del Serra, Paolo Gori, who worked in Florence in the period before the war or immediately after.
Then the market changed. The antiques market, here in Florence, is in agony; for economic and bureaucratic reasons, and also because there is little desire on the part of the operators, and the best operators go to work abroad. Most of my customers come from abroad.
The taste has also changed. There are no young collectors of ancient art, they prefer to collect the contemporary. I believe that it is easier for a young person to understand the contemporary than the ancient, obviously he is closer to the time in which he lives, he understands it better, it is natural to him and this is then reflected in the choice of works of art to buy.
