Arch. Claudio Prosperi Porta
Italian Ministry “dei Beni, delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo”
Istituto Superiore della Conservazione e del Restauro
Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro – current organization,
advanced training scool, international activities
The restoration activities in the abroad countries to conserve the Cultural Heritage represent from
long time a specific contribution of my Institute: from the birth the Central institute for
Conservation and Restoration has brought around the world the “ Restoration Theory”. The projects
have always touched training aspects in a cooperative spirit wanting to sustain the cultural identity
of the countries to acquire from there a contribution of material culture and models of operational
practice.
A specific our interest supported by international norms is the restoration in crisis areas - urgent
interventions to preserve the world Cultural Heritage in case of war events or natural calamity.
(Fig.1 – headquarters of ISCR in Rome) The methodologies for the Cultural Heritage
conservation, based on theoretical principles, are among the aims of the Istituto Superiore per la
Conservazione ed il Restauro (ISCR) ex Central Institute for the Restauration (ICR), that is
technical organ of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Activities and the Tourism. The institute, founded
in 1939 by 2 great historians and critics of art, Giulio Carlo Argan and Cesare Brandi, is the answer
to the demand to plan the activity of restoration on scientific bases and to unify the methodologies.
ISCR want to give a correct formulation historical-critic and technical-scientific to the activity of
expecially conservation and restoration, to overcome an idea of the restoration type "artistic" or
"handicraft" tied up to the figures of the restore-artist of Fine Arts or the renovator-repairer, toward
a complex of activity planned on a "Restoration Theory."
The activity from the beginning was founded on a systematic scientific search to investigate
phenomena and causes of decay of artworks and on the historical-scientific and technological
search on ancient and modern materials to connect experimentation and tradition. Besides the
systematic activity of restoration and applied search has been apply at the base of the
formation of the restorers, because only an interdisciplinary approach can guarantee a
practice of the restoration with attention to the values of the artwork.
(Fig.2 – restoration lab. ) The ICR school is active from 1944 and on '98 have become a five year
School of High Formation (SAF) for the teaching of restoration with a title like an university title.
Didactic activities foresee 4 formative runs on:
1) – stone material and architectural surfaces;
2) (Fig.3 - wooden labs.) -Painted handworks on wooden and textile support. Graven handwork in
wood, handwork in synthetic materials, assembled or painted;
3) - in textile, paper and in skin;
4) - ceramic and glassy materials. handwork in metal and leagues;
( Fig. 4 - chemistry and biology lab with optic instruments, FTIR for thermal analysis and GCMS
.gas chromatography with revealing of mass.)
In the Institute are present historical of the art, architects, archaeologists, physicists and experts in
the environmental controls, chemist, biologists, restorers of the different typologies of handworks of
historical, artistic and archaeological interest which collaborate, each with own competence, to the
realization of restoration and to define the best environmental conditions for the conservation
process. Currently the institute is busy in activity of:
• prevention and maintenance for the control in the time of the handwork decay condition; Among
the activities: (Fig.5) the works of maintenance after the restoration of the "Fountain of the Rivers"
in Navona square in Rome; (Fig.6) the maintenance of the restauration on the Temple of Neptune in
Paestum, and the restoration conclusion (Fig.7 and 8) of the Tower in Pisa.
• technological and scientific updating applied to the conservation and restoration;
• definition of politics programmed on the cultural heritage, based on the vulnerability. (Territorial
Informative Risk/System Card); important for the institutional answers in case of seismic events on
the national territory.
The institutional tasks concern besides: (1) systematic investigations on the incidence of the
environmental factors in the decay for preventing and to inhibit their effects; (2) to formulate
normalization on analytical methodologies and interventions with specific techniques in the
restoration field at the national level to be proposed to European level as contribution to the
"European committee for Standardization" CEN-Comité Européen de Nomalisation;
the purpose is to harmonize at the European level the normative specification for the maintenance
of inalienable Heritage. Italy is the first country endowed with a specific norms in the sector of the
conservation; (3) to lend consultation and scientific and technical assistance to the peripheral organs
of the Ministry; (4) and besides the SAF courses of updating for the technical-scientific personnel
of the public administration.
• Besides to realize very complex cases of restoration, in conformity with to demands of search
or training finality;
• to develop restoration activity or consultation for the abroad countries. Yards of international
cooperation with formation finality: this is the case of restoration of the Mar Musa monastery in
Siria, in Iran, in Giordania, in Lybia, a Belgrado and many other countries. (Fig. 9 and 10).
ISCR is organized in 5 services: teaching, documentation, archaeological, historical - artistic,
architectural and environmental heritage;
5 restoration labs: a) mural paintings, musealized handworks, stone materials, stuccos and
plasters; b) paintings on canvas or wood, wooden polycrome sculpture and wooden handworks,
contemporary art; c) handworks in metal; d) in glass, ceramic, organic and polymateric; e) in
textile, in skin and leather gilded or painted, paintings and graphics on paper and parchment;
4 scientific laboratories: Chemistry, tests on materials, biological investigations, physics and
environmental controls. On the model of ISCR labs in 2010 the Restoration labs have been realized
in the National Museum of Damask in Syria, in Beograd, in Matera - south of Italy; also in Iran, in
the site of Pasargadae, we are carrying out the site labs to support the diagnostic oriented to the
problems of stone materials decay.
Therefore diagnostic for restoration or diagnostic and restoration as connected activity to answer the
questions or to satisfy applications to reach an objective that is the defence and recovery of the
value that we want to safeguard.