Dario del Bufalo

BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE dal Giornale dell’Arte February 2016 “Problematic crates”

Dario Del Bufalo — Tue, 24 May 2016 14:33:44 +0000

In July 2015, the Public Prosecutor’s office of the Republic of Geneva (Switzerland) ordered in Italy’s favour for the release of 45 crates containing “archaeological finds of inestimable value”, which had been locked in a vault of the free port of Geneva for over 15 years.
The prosecutor of Rome and the Carabinieri for Cultural Heritage Protection, upon request for assistance from the prosecutor of Geneva, Dr Claudio Mascotto, had obtained permission to receive this windfall back, but at the very moment of re-entry (last week) a massive snowfall blocked the means of transport carrying it, forcing it to turn back…Maybe the curse by the antiquarian who had hidden them…?
In 2000, the British art dealer, Robin Symes, had deposited 45 cases in storage in the name of a Panama-based company. Following dishonest vicissitudes, in 2005 the famous antique dealer ended up in jail for tax issues. Are we actually certain that this restitution is made up of priceless works..?
Why would such a clever and knowledgeable antiquarian, such as Symes, have left these masterpieces unsold for so many years..?
Amongst the reliefs, heads, busts, vases and frescoes (rather ugly) we know of two “sarcophagi in terracotta” (see photo) described as “masterpieces of Etruscan art”. But studying them well they seem to me to be rather curious and I would not swear to their authenticity. I wonder whether with this restitution (as has occurred with other restitutions) if we are actually receiving ‘dodgy goods’.

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BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Giornale dell’Arte January 2016 “BETTER NOT TO DIG!”

Dario Del Bufalo — Tue, 24 May 2016 14:21:50 +0000

I went back to visit the so-called Villa of Pliny in Ostia (I-II century AD) and I must say that it is getting worse…a disaster. Firstly, it is closed to visitors, the signs to find one’s way to the site are non-existent, the barriers are destroyed despite the gate is still standing with a dissuasive sign that reads ‘lorries maneuvering’ (see photo 1), cyclists and motocross-cyclists screech all around the buildings, the “ruins” are increasingly in ruins because of vandals, but also for the destructive nature of boars that have invaded the site; rubbish, waste and neglect everywhere (see photo 2).
But why in Italy do they have to excavate archaeological sites which are subsequently abandoned..?
It would be much better not to excavate at all if you can’t enhance it or protect it from the elements or from local vandals, who are no better than the ISIS barbarians who blow up the temples of Palmyra and who will soon destroy Sabratha as well.
The conservation departments with their inefficiency and these new barbarians with their lack of culture are both guilty: whether they are dictated by Italian ignorance with the indifference of national institutions or whether they are Muslim fundamentalists with the indifference of international institutions.

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BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Giornale dell’Arte December 2015 “Rome: a closed city”

Dario Del Bufalo — Tue, 24 May 2016 13:52:47 +0000

Once you could visit the Roman Forum without having to pass through gates or pay an entrance fee, you could freely enter the Colosseum without crossing those hideous Innocenti tubes (placed there provisionally and that then became permanent…like everything in Italy), you could stroll along the Colle Oppio (the Oppian Hill) in the evening or take a walk under the Arch of Janus and into the square, you could either discover a fragment in the ruins and the marble blocks in the area around the Theatre of Marcellus or maybe pass through the Porticus Octaviae… Now you can’t do any of this… It’s all closed..! In the same way as with the Imperial Forums: it starts by banning private traffic, then some areas are closed off and then a ticket office is established… over the last few days, the wretched Marino administration has declared the beginning of the “pedestrianisation” of the Ancient Appian (in other words the Via di Porta S. Sebastiano) closing it to traffic, but not for the VIP residents such as Roberto Benigni…Will it have been him, disturbed by the traffic noise, to suggest the inauspicious idea of “seclusion” to his friend Ignazio..?
Rome is becoming a closed city; open only to the mafia and terrorist attacks… We have seen all this happen in just the last 40 years. But wasn’t Rome once an open-air Museum…?
Then we must open all the museums, take down the barriers around the archaeological sites and create a huge, archaeological museum site free of charge, by charging an initial tourist tax, like a “ski pass” valid for all the sites and museums….but then remove from the historic centre all those unnecessary public or governmental offices that engulf and kill our Eternal City.

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BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Giornale dell’Arte November 2015 “ISIS and ISIAO”

Dario Del Bufalo — Tue, 24 May 2016 12:52:34 +0000

ISIS advances and brutally murders the courageous “Guardian of Palmyra”, 81-year old archaeologist Khaled Asaad, who refused to reveal the hiding place of the artworks in the Antiquarium at Palmyra to the ISIS brutes. Equally atrocious was the killing of the cultural dialogue between East and West that Asaad promoted for years and that was also promoted for 80 years by ISMEO (the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East founded in 1933 by Giuseppe Tucci and Giovanni Gentile), which then merged to become the ISIAO (Italian Institute for Africa and the East, 1995).
Good, now that ISIAO no longer exists..! It is the first and only “useless” institution to have been actually got rid of (under the supervision of the “useless” Ambassador Armellini at the Farnesina) as of 2011 and up to a few days ago when a Tuscan ‘scrap dealer’ agreed to disposing of the last piece of furniture in the head office in Via Aldrovandi 16 in Rome. What will happen to the extremely rare collections..? To the all-important Library and the Tucci Fund..?
If the ISIS advances so quickly and stupidly this is also due at the end of the dialogue between the West, Middle East and Africa. The ISIS leaders want to keep its militants in ignorance and in cultural isolation and has convinced them to destroy images of Palmyra and who protects these images, accusing them of pagan idolatry, not knowing that this idolatry was already stopped over 2,000 years ago and that it can no longer harm the “true” message of the Qur’an.
In 80 years of activity, ISMEO and ISIAO have brought western culture closer to the Middle East and East with cooperation, archaeological missions, conferences, exhibitions, important publications (it suffices to recall the Serie Orientale Roma) and agreements with over 100 countries, I would not say therefore that it is a “useless” organisation… from Giuseppe Tucci to Gherardo Gnoli, on the contrary, it was something for Italians to be proud of. Everything dissolved in a (political) operation of “compulsory administrative liquidation”, hardly administrative but certainly compulsory..!

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BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Giornale dell’Arte October 2015 “Tut remain in his apartment ”

Dario Del Bufalo — Tue, 24 May 2016 12:35:21 +0000

Egypt: the Minister of Antiquities, Mr Eldamaty, decided a few days ago that Tutankhamun’s mummy (i.e. the real body) will remain in his tomb, the KV62.
According to the Ministry, after many technical debates, this decision was taken for conservation reasons and problems.
A side chamber in KV62, discovered by Howard Carter in 1922, will host a super technological case designed by the Getty Foundation and it will be open to the public – one that is less and less numerous – in the Valley of the Kings.
Would it not be safer and better to keep an eye on it in a laboratory in the Museum of Cairo?
In nearly 100 years, no one has had the foresight (or courage) to move the Pharaoh’s body to a suitable structure away from the Valley of the Kings.
I suspect that behind the technical conservation reasons there is a bit of a fabrication of the truth… I don’t believe I’m wrong to think they’re all scared of the bad luck that the boy’s little, withered body could generate!

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BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Giornale dell’Arte April 2015 “Obsessed with integrations”

Dario Del Bufalo — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 14:13:51 +0000

Obsessed with integrations

The restoration of the Parthenon in Athens has been going on for more than ten years with financing and tight surveillance by Unesco and, despite some criticism (always too little) we continue to call them «restorations»: why? We should we call them «maniacal exercises in stone integration» or «works that are too remunerative to be able to conclude them». They are in fact integrating and reconstructing every little hole in the Parthenon, every missing corner, without a true static reason, with new, straight, perfect, very white, very square, very smooth…ugly pieces! I have already had reason to write about the terrible Unesco restorations on the theatre in Myra, Turkey (cf. no. 349, Jan. 2015, p. 11) or those at the temple of Bassae in Arcadia (www.dariodelbufalo.it), so it could seem to be a romantic, Ruskin-like notion, but with all those white patches these monuments lose their charm of classical architecture, as ruins. Almost three centuries ago, with the approval of J.J. Winckelmann (inventor and archaeological theorist), the sculptor-restorer Bartolomeo Cavaceppi restored the classical sculptures in Rome by integrating and reconstructing every minimal, anatomical detail that was missing. Today, those reconstructions (including those of the nineteenth century) are removed as barbarities of a past era. How many centuries will have to pass before removing the «Unescian» horrors at the Parthenon?

For info or to report something: bufalearcheologiche@gmail.com

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BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Giornale dell’Arte March 2015 “A Roman basin conserved in an Etruscan museum ”

Dario Del Bufalo — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 15:19:49 +0000

A Roman basin conserved in an Etruscan museum

The black and white photo illustrated here depicts the oil tycoon, John Paul Getty (1971) at his residence in La Posta Vecchia at Palo Laziale. He poses proudly for the photographer Milton Gendel near a Egyptian red Porphyry basin (labrum) from the Roman period, which he acquired in 1968 from an antiquarian in Florence. In 1974, when Getty decided to leave Italy and return to California, among other things, he wanted to take with him this much-loved object, but the export permit was denied and the basin seized. The competent body wanted (and still inexplicably wants) that the seized basin be placed in judicial custody in Villa Giulia home to the Etruscan Museum, which has the jurisdiction over the territory of Southern Etruria, as if all the finds from Southern Etruria are Etruscan! The two photos on the right, taken last 7^th February, show the condition of the basin today, forty years on: it is abandoned behind the bar, under a gazebo that, rather than protect it, is destroying it, it is full of bird guano and is very cracked due to the excessive summer heat, the humid climate and cold winters. What a shame…. Who knows now that the valorization of the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome passes over to the Fine Arts Council, if the «Etruscan» basin will finally find a worthy place in a Roman art museum? I also wonder if, given that in forty years no one has been able to admire it and now it is in ruins, it would not have been better exhibited and conserved by the magnate.

For info or to report something: bufalearcheologiche@gmail.com

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BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Giornale dell’Arte February 2015 “Sign the restoration”

Dario Del Bufalo — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 10:34:03 +0000

Sign the restoration

The photograph illustrated here is of a 2nd century AD marble Roman sarcophagus conserved in the Archaeological Museum of Albano, a few kilometres from Rome. The curiosity (and at the same time, the horror) is that the «integrative» restoration carried out on the strigil decoration has been documented in a violent and indelible manner with the epigraph of a certain Mr R. Montineri from Cortona. This «vandal» restorer, wanted to chisel his name directly on the original Roman marble, also to highlight the fact that he did the work for free. The mad things done in 1965! And what luck that two years before Cesare Brandi’s book Teoria del restauro had come out… If these are the immediate results of the theories of restoration, I would say let’s reject Mr. Montineri from Cortona, the Fine Arts Council and Brandi too.

For info or to report something: bufalearcheologiche@gmail.com

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UNESCO Restoration at Bassae: ugly and costly

Dario Del Bufalo — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 10:58:08 +0000

A GdA reader reports a UNESCO fiasco in a place as poetic as Arcadia:

Dear Mr Del Bufalo,

I fully agree with you about damage done by UNESCO. The fiasco that they are carrying out with the “restoration” work on the Temple of Bassae in Arcadia has left me bewildered. A circensian shelter in the Arcadian mountains (and I painfully remember the shelters in Lalibela, Ethiopia), with enormous concrete plinths so close to the ancient (and delicate) base (just imagine the drilling vibrations to build the casting), the criminal reintegration both for the visual aspect and for the methods used (in image no. 3012, one can clearly see the hammering of the original block to adapt it to the reintegration) and the squalid, peripheral-type warehouses situated only 50 mt. from the temple, etc. etc. Of course, they then say that it’s all temporary and will be removed once the restoration has been completed, when they’ll have discovered how to conserve the monument differently.  

Thank you for your attention.

Best regards,

Piervaleriano Angelini.

Dear Mr Angelini,

Thank you for the wonderful photographic contribution in your report on another UNESCO fiasco that I didn’t know about… Indeed, at Bassae they are rebuilding using blocks that have been “polluted” by poorly cut pieces of modern limestone and which have an unpatinated colour, disturbing the whole monument and the poetic landscape of Arcadia..!

Why is it necessary to rebuild in this senseless and mistaken way..? They could have used the original blocks and those that were too broken up, could have been left on site. But the worst thing is that in such a poetic place – as it was before the UNESCO intervention (see the above b/w photo) – they have built these ugly warehouses (and we know that they will remain there..!) and that huge tent, with reinforced concrete foundations that no one will remove..! Spending a lot of our money, in vain and causing serious damage..!

They have even mechanically chiselled and scraped away at an original block (see the last photo below) so that it adheres better to the ugly modern block in the recovery. This erroneous interpretation of the theory of restoration is an international slippery slope that is impossible to stop, because in doing such a reintegration and in rebuilding, more money is spent and thus there are more interests at stake and therefore more corruption. Instead, if a restoration had been carried out that respected the materials, styles and colours, less money would have been spent and therefore less bribes. What a pity…

Thank you.

Dario Del Bufalo

BVFALE
ARCHEOLOGICHE

Il Giornale dell’Arte

www.dariodelbufalo.it

BUFALE ARCHEOLOGICHE in Il Giornale dell’Arte January 2015 “I’m leaving UNESCO”

Dario Del Bufalo — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 10:36:31 +0000

I’m leaving UNESCO

I have seen many ugly and incorrect restorations and integrations around the world. Many under the auspices of UNESCO, with their big brass plaque, such as the reconstruction of the walls of Samarkand using «fake» materials and incorrect drawings or as in the two examples of «integrative» restoration carried out in Turkey that I illustrate this month. The first is in Xanthos (see photo to the left), a UNESCO site and capital of ancient Lycia, where we find a series of reconstructed columns in the Forum that have been integrated with horrendous, new, extremely white stone segments that seem to be mechanical cogwheels. Why?
The second is the Greek theatre of Myra that is object of enormous architectural reconstructions (see photo below) that leave one speechless. The intervention seems to have been done with polystyrene blocks or huge meringues, which have also been cut incorrectly compared to the original style. What a horror!
A few months ago, UNESCO declared that if Pompeii did not reach the maintenance standards stated in the UNESCO protocol, it will be excluded, along with the other Vesuvian cities, (established only in 1997) from the list of World Cultural Heritage sites.
If the controls are such that UNESCO allows these «monstrous» restorations, I could almost leave UNESCO!

For info or to report something: bufalearcheologiche@gmail.com

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