An allegorical figure painted by Artemisia Gentileschi in 1615. It commemorates Michelangelo’s ‘Inclination’ for art. Artemisia was paid three times her male counterparts to create her angel, part of a 15-piece series completed by several artists.

AWA Director L. Falcone studies Codexes at in storage of the San Marco Museum. They features the earliest example of Nelli’s art, as the artist began by painting miniatures in choral books at her convent of Santa Caterina.

Eighteenth-century portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici at CR Firenze in Florence, monumental stairwell, first floor. This depiction was compared to its similar Palazzo Vecchio version, during its restoration, completed in 2018.

Gold cartouche with dedication, under the frame of CR Firenze’s portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, in via Bufalini. The last Medici Princess was well-loved in Florence, to which she bequeathed her entire estate.

Filmmaker K. Hills documenting portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici at Ente CR Firenze, in order to compare it with sister portrait from Palazzo Vecchio, in restoration studio, 2017. Both paintings were painted after her death.

Nelli’s Annunciation (attributed), pre restoration. The painting was characterized by yellowing varnish and stains. Old pictorial restorations that had altered over time needed to be corrected.

Reflectography of Plautilla Nelli’s Lamentation with Saints from Italy’s National Institute of Applied Optics which allowed researchers to view Nelli’s charcoal preparatory drawing underneath the painting layer.

Museum curator F. Navarro and AWA founder J. Fortune reveal Nelli’s lunettes. Dr. Navarro would go on to study a wide-ranging series of Nelli attributions and curate the artist’s monographic show at the Uffizi in 2017.

Zeroing in on Mrs. Della Ragione’s bronze portrait by twentieth-century sculptor Antonietta Rafael Mafai, restored at the hands of AWA conservator Merj Nesi, Museo Novecento. Docufilm during filming for Monuments Women.

Film director G. Carreri and S. Casciu, Director of the Tuscan Regional Museum Circuit led AWA on a tour of Medici Villa La Petraia, centered on art by women. The courtyard-style ballroom was TV ready, captured on film, for Monuments Women.

British ensemble Musica Secreta, specialized in convent choral music from Nelli’s era performs at the inauguration of the artist’s Crucifixion at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto (see fresco in the background).

In her Oltrarno studio, conservator R. Lari debates painting attribution with City and Superintendent curators S. Pini and J. Cellani and AWA Director L. Falcone. Once on display in Palazzo Vecchio, the painting was credited to Nelli’s workshop.

Conservator R. Lari traces Nelli’s Palazzo Vecchio painting to see if more detailed studies are necessary. The final aim? To compare this painting with the Uffizi’s Annunciation, also believed to be from Nelli’s school.

Conservator R. Lari reflects on the placement of Saint Catherine Receives the Stigmata. It is to be moved to accommodate the Crucifixion, whose restoration completes the series by Nelli at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto.

R. Lari disinfests frame, as a precautionary measure to avoid the nesting of xylophagous insects. The Annunciation waits in the background.

Pictorial restoration using watercolor on stucco. The intent is to correct spaces separating the panels comprising Nelli’s Saint Catherine Receives the Stigmata. They are horizontal, unlike the vast majority of panels from Nelli’s era.

Printing of exhibition catalog ARTISTE. Women Artists, Florence 1900-1950, September 2018, Polistampa. The show was organized by AWA and Fondazione CR Firenze.

Author and AWA founder Jane Fortune celebrates the second edition of her book, To Florence, con Amore: 90 Ways to Love the City at the historic ‘Rotunda’ in via il Prato, with The Florentine Press.

A grayish layer of deposited environmental dirt puts a damper on the artist’s usually colorful palette. The canvas had warped over time and the whole surface was characterized by missing paint flakes and fragmented color.

Post-restoration. Nelli’s scene recalls Saint Dominic’s mother who dreamed she would give birth to a torch-carrying dog. It was seen as a symbol for Dominic whose teachings would light up the world.

The audience awaits the first-ever screening of When the World Answered, PBS documentary featuring AWA’s work in Florence, continuing the restoration tradition surrounding the 1966 flood—from a female perspective.

Film director F. Zeffirelli at his Roman villa, during an interview with When the World Answered authors L. Falcone and J. Fortune. Whilst filming PBS documentary of the same name, troupe assistant K. Morikawa joins the souvenir photo.

Curator Cristina Gnoni led the restoration of Nelli’s Crucifixion. She welcomes guests on inauguration night, at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto, where the painting is displayed in the former monastery’s ‘kitchen’.

A detail of the oil-on-canvas portrait of the Electress Palatine Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici the family’s last descendent, decorative details of ornate sleeve.

Detail, of the oil-on-canvas work that was compared to similar Palazzo Vecchio portrait, restored by AWA in 2018. Known as the ‘Sage Princess’, Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici’s face is framed by ornate pearl jewelry.

Pre restoration. The portrait’s pictorial surface was affected by darkened, yellowing varnish which had altered over time making the image dishomogeneous and reducing its readability.

Conservator Rossella Lari tracing portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, oil on canvas, at the Fondazione CR Firenze, to compare it with sister portrait at Palazzo Vecchio, restored in 2018.

Tracing portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici at Fondazione CR Firenze. Via this research, scholars began the process to confirm the similar Palazzo Vecchio depiction AWA restored in 2017 was painted off the same drawing.

Palazzo Vecchio curator S. Pini and conservator L. Lari execute preliminary study on Portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, pre infra-red reflectography analysis (Fondazione CR Firenze).

Curator and conservator verifying the similarities between two portraits at Palazzo Vecchio and Fondazione CR Firenze; preliminary studies prior reflectography analysis.

Researchers comparing two Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici portraits at Palazzo Vecchio and Fondazione CR Firenze. At this stage, it appears they were likely painted off the same cartoon.

Preliminary analysis. Before executing infra-red reflectography, restorer L. Lari compares two Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici portraits by tracing on transparencies (Palazzo Vecchio and Ente CR Firenze).

Monumental frame, Portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici at Fondazione CR Firenze. The upper part of the frame depicts two high coat of arms with ornate carvings on both sides.

Gold cartouche, under the frame of Portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici at Fondazine CR Firenze. It’s twin painting at Palazzo Vecchio, restored in 2018 has a similar dedication.

Gold cartouche, under the frame of Portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici at Fondazine CR Firenze. The last Medici heir was famous for her ‘Pact of the Family’ by which she left her art and property to the City of Florence.

Florence Mayor D. Nardella welcomes major donor D. Clark and AWA Sojourners to Palazzo Vecchio. Also pictured in foreground B. Hunt and M. Laurens.

AWA sojourners with Florence Mayor Dario Nardella, in his reception room at Palazzo Vecchio, posing in front of newly restored Portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici.

Full view of oil-on-canvas portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici. The portrait shows the Princess wearing her widow’s veil, a dress with lace ornaments in the German fashion, perhaps acquired from Düsseldorf.

AWA with Mayor Dario Nardella and Vice Mayor Cristina Giachi in R. Lari’s restoration studio to visit work-in-progress. The portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici was displayed in the Mayor’s reception room as Palazzo Vecchio months later (2018).

Portrait of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici ‘stands’ between Florence Mayor Dario Nardella and conservator Rosslla Lari. Stucco work is visible on the in-progress painting that is now displayed at Palazzo Vecchio (2018).

J. Celani, S. Pini and R. Lari discuss Plautilla Nelli’s Annunciation. AWA’s restorations are led by museum curators and superintendent officials which guide each phase of the process.

J. Celani and S. Pini and R. Lari discuss Plautilla Nelli’s Annunciation in comparison with its ‘twin work’ in storage as part of the Uffizi Galleries collection. Its fifteenth-century style was common among devotional painters of Nelli’s era.

S. Pini, curator for Palazzo Vecchio Museum in Florence views Nelli’s Annunciation at R. Lari’s workshop. Post restoration, the painting was displayed in the palace’s mezzanine.

AWA’s Board and Advisory Council view Nelli’s Annunciation before it leaves R. Lari’s restoration studio. From front to back: D. Volpini Maestri, D. Clark, M. MacKinnon, C. Clark, A. Vogler.

Conservator R. Lari, in studio. Phase one of the restoration process: Creating a base using watercolor, prior application of varnish.

Conservator Rossella Lari restoring arch of portico where the Virgin Mary is praying, when visited by the Archangel Gabriel.

Conservator Rossella Lari executes first stages of cleaning process on Nelli’s Annunciation which will presented as a Christmas gift to the City of Florence in 2017.

Conservator Rossella Lari executes watercolor integration of missing flakes of color on Nelli’s Annunciation. A painstaking process.

Detail, face of the Madonna. Lightness of veil, painted with sparse brushstrokes. This work was attributed to Nelli by US Scholar C. Turrill-Lupi, as one of the two Annunciations that Giorgio Vasari cites in his Lives.

Nelli’s Annunciation, post restoration detail. The red coverlet on the Virgin Mary’s bed is visible in the background. According to art traditions, she receives news of Christ’s conception while in her room reading Scripture.

Nelli’s Annunciation, Post restoration, detail. The draping of the Virgin Mary’s robes is executed with a marked chiaroscuro technique. In many of her works, Nelli pays close attention to robe-work.

In this pre-restoration detail of Nelli’s heavily cracked Annunciation, note the six fingers on the right hand! The artist did not properly erase her ‘second thoughts’ or ‘pentimento’. The left hand is placed over the right, a true rarity.

Post-restoration. The iridescent colors of the Angel’s cloak and sleeves bring out the nuances in his wings, which are a ‘throwback’ to the reds of the Madonna’s robes. The artist achieves chromatic balance.

The gravity of the Annunciation announcement is rendered more poignant by Archangel Gabriel’s serious profile. He is holding a lily, a flower commonly featured in Nelli’s work.

The richness of the Angel’s robes creates luminosity that reflects the strength of his announcement, in juxtaposition with the simplicity of the Madonna’s robe.

Restoration of Nelli’s Annunciation allowed conservator R. Lari to study the artist’s techniques. Each single feathers is rendered with subtle white brushstrokes, superimposed over her base colors.

Detail of Angel’s robes, Nelli’s Annunciation. Once the painting was cleaned and restored, its colors acquired depth and three-dimensional plasticity.

Post-cleaning. A rare example of architectural detail in Nelli’s oeuvre. The capital’s details are well-studied with shading that establishes prospective.

Coat of arms in gold and black. According to US art historian C. Turril-Lupi, the painting possibly belonged to the wife of A. De Fedini. Frame restored by Florentine conservator F. Spagnoli.

Detail, Plautilla Nelli’s Annunciation. Frame restored by Florentine conservator F. Spagnoli. Back and gold decorations, typical of 16th and 17th century styles.

Final pictorial restoration to harmonize the overall look of Nelli’s Annunciation. The tiny cracks and crevices in the painting were not filled to avoid adding heaviness to the painting’s texture.

Conservator R. Lari cleans Nelli’s Annunciation. Note the Brunelleschi-style columns and arches of her indoor ‘Florentine’ scene, where the Madonna receives the Archangel Gabriel.

Florentine conservator R. Lari works on Nelli’s Annunciation, a work attributed to the painter by US Scholar C. Turrill-Lupi, as one of the two that Giorgio Vasari sites in his Lives.

Nelli’s Annunciation is covered with a sheet of melinex, to execute preliminary tracing studies that will help researchers compare the painting with another at the Uffizi, also attributed to Nelli.

Painting positioned horizontally, prior tracing so that it could be compared to a second Annunciation also attributed to Nelli, in storage at the Uffizi Galleries’ external deposit.

R. Lari traces The Annunciation, creating a graphic relief which will be compared to the second painting on the same theme, attributed to Nelli, in storage at the Uffizi Galleries. Weights keep the Melinex from sliding.

Conservator R. Lari examines Melinex film. Architectural elements are visible in this tracing of Nelli’s Palazzo Vecchio painting. This handmade graphic was compared to the Uffizi Galleries’ Annunciation, also attributed to Nelli.

Perxil was used on Nelli’s Annunciation, to chemically disinfest the panel painting. The same substance was applied to the wood frame.

Nelli’s Annunciation waits in the background while conservator R. Lari uses Perxil to disinfest its wooden frame. Several coats proved necessary to complete the process.

Post restoration, Nelli’s Annunciation acquired luminosity and depth. It is exhibited in Palazzo Vecchio’s mezzanine, once quarters of Cosimo I de’ Medici, who was Duke of Tuscany in Nelli’s time.

Nelli’s Annunciation was exhibited in the artist’s monographic Uffizi show in 2017. Prior display, R. Lari did stucco work to fill holes made by woodworms. After the exhibition, it was returned to the studio for pictorial conservation.

A conservators cupboard, with products and portions from every era, often from the 13th century onwards, modern inventions include ‘artificial saliva’.

Brushes in R. Lari’s conversation studio, divided by size and function: Dust removal, pictorial restoration and varnishing.

Nelli’s Annunciation, displayed. This portion of Palazzo Vecchio was not renovated by Cosimo I de’ Medici in the 1540s, so it exudes a medieval feel. Nelli’s work is displayed in the portion of the palace that hosts the Loeser Bequest.

Conservator M. Nesi cleans Portrait of Mrs. Della Ragione by Antonietta Raphael Mafai. Interestingly the artist signed it with her maiden name, De Simon (1959).

Conservator Merj Nesi executes restoration onsite in the loggia of Florence’s Twentieth-century Museum. She cleans the bronze surface using a cotton swab.

AWA conservator Merj Nesi carried out the restoration of Mrs. Della Ragione on the first-floor loggia of Florence’s Museo Novecento. Visitors could ask questions about the process and school groups gathered for ‘restoration lessons’.

By studying Raphael Mafai’s notebooks, Nesi made an important discovery: ‘The artist wanted her statues to have their greenish or rusty effects. I realized she was aiming for the varied textures and colors that only corrosion can provide.’

Conservation on-site at Museo Novecento. To reach desired level of cleaning, conservator Merj Nesi used a magnifying glass and passed over the statue with cotton swabs several times.

Plautlla Nelli’s Saint Dominic Receives the Rosary displayed at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. Its sister lunette, The Crucifixion awaits transport to R. Lari’s restoration studio in Florence’s Oltrarno district.

Saint Dominic’s wooden support was originally restored in 1995 by R. Olivastri who reassembled the panels, as Nelli’s lunette is made up of several blanks. During pictorial restoration, R. Lari’ stucco work minimizes spacing.

Cleaning. During removal of thick darkened varnish and old pictorial restorations. Surfaces were partially restored in 1999; a decade later, R. Lari completes the process.

Conservator R. Lari cleans Saint Catherine Receives the Stigmata, while working under a optical microscope. With a scalpel, she removes layers that overlay Nelli’s original. Saint Dominic Receives the Rosary plays backdrop.

Nelli’s Saint Catherine was darkened by a thick patina and large drops of excess paint. Non original layers had been removed in the past, causing peeling. It was so damaged curators hesitated approving conservation efforts.

Post restoration, detail of Saint Catherine’s face. Conservator R. Lari harmonized her face using imitation techniques to minimize the effects of paint loss.

Frame maker L. Mecocci constructs frame for Nelli’s Saint Dominic at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. The lunette was frame-less and inside a niche. It was crafted and designed to reflect the tastes of Nelli’s time.

Two points of light in the painting shine forth, post restoration. The sun’s rays illuminate the sky in fanlike brushstrokes typical of Nelli. The Divine Light, once hidden by grime, is now the visible source of the Saint’s stigmata.

Museum curator F. Navarro and AWA founder J. Fortune present Nelli’s lunettes, at autumn unveiling at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. Both paintings presented were comissioned by Suor Arcangela Viola in the 1570s.

AWA founder Jane Fortune admires newly restored lunette by her muse and inspiration: Plautilla Nelli. Advancing Women Artists has played a fundamental role in safeguarding Nelli’s body of works for posterity.

AWA founder Jane Fortune revels in newly restored Catherine. The lunette’s placement was not as high as the artist originally intended, yet curators displayed the work at a height that did not substantially alter Nelli’s intended perspective.

A newly restored Nelli, displayed in the corridor at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. The panels in Saint Catherine’s lunette still show signs of warping, as wood ‘moves’ with the passing of centuries.

Pre-restoration. Through analysis, conservator R. Lari discovered that Chaplin’s canvas had been created using a different support and placed on its current stretcher only later.

Pre-conservation diagnostics for Chaplin’s The Three Sisters. Raking lights emphasizes canvas warping and cracks on the pictorial surface.

Presentation of new pocket guide, Art by Women in Florence: A Guide through 500 Years. AWA’ seminal text: Invisible Women Forgotten Artists of Florence in the background.

The Florentine and Advancing Women Artists present Art by Women in Florence: A Guide through 500 Years, at Santa Croce’s Sala del Cenacolo, October 15, 2012. A pocket guide with Women’s Artist Trail map, first of its kind.

Presenting the guidebook. Art by Women in Florence: A Guide through 500 Years. AWA Advocate V. Grossi Orzalesi at the podium. Sala del Cenacolo, Santa Croce. Taddeo Gaddi’s Last Supper fresco presiding.

Art by Women in Florence: A Guide through 500 Years (The Florentine Press, 2012). Co-authors Linda Falcone and Jane Fortune on the speaker’s panel at Santa Croce book presentation, October 2012.

J. Fortune, S.N. Kraczyna and L. Falcone at Fondazione Il Bisonte, center ‘on the other side fof the river’ specialized in print-making, during filming 2014 PBS documentary When the World Answered: Florence, Women Artists and the 1966 Flood.

Cameraman V. Manganello captures art-in-action at Fondazione Il Bisonte during filming for the 2014 Emmy-nominated television special When the World Answered: Florence Women Artists and the 1966 Flood.

November 6, 2009, author Jane Fortune awaits presentation of her book Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence at the Uffizi Gallery Library, with Director Claudio Di Benedetto.

Presentation of J. Fortune’s Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence, Uffizi Library, 2009. C. Acidini, Superintendent of Florence’s Museum Circuit (Polo Museale Fiorentino) introduces the publication.

Uffizi Library, November 2009. The public enjoys the launch of J. Fortune’s Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence. Front-row: AWA Advocate T. Carrari, journalist E. Duranti, The Florentine editor-in-chief, M. Badiani.

J. Fortune welcomes guests as Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence makes its public debut at the Uffizi Library in Florence. A seminal text, with the first-ever inventory of art by women in Florence. (The Florentine Press, 2009).

J. Fortune flanked by co-author L. Falcone presents Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence at the Uffizi Library, November 2009.

Jane Fortune presents Invisible Women at the Uffizi Library with co-author L. Falcone, Superintendent of Museum Circuit, C. Acidini and Uffizi Library Director, C. Di Benedetto. The man pictured behind the camera: AWA co-founder R. Hesse.

Invisible Women author J. Fortune, Uffizi Library Director C. Benedetto and Florence Museum Circuit Superintendent C. Acidini celebrate the book’s launch at the Uffizi Library, November 2009.

Invisible Women author J. Fortune, Uffizi Library Director C. Benedetto and Florence Museum Circuit Superintendent C. Acidini celebrate the book’s launch at the Uffizi Library, November 2009.

Uffizi Library, Florence. 2009. The public awaits the presentation of Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence, published by The Florentine Press, also creator of The Florentine, Tuscany’s English-language newspaper.

AWA founders J. Fortune and R. Hesse welcome a fan of Fortune’s book Invisible Women at the Uffizi Library launch, The Florentine editor-in-chief M. Badiani (also co-owner of TF Press) and digital marketer A. Korey look on.

Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence by J. Fortune. The Florentine Press, 2009. The book, sent to the printers here, became an Emmy-winning documentary in 2013.

Printing Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence by J. Fortune. Published by The Florentine Press, 2009. ‘The Women’s Artists’ Trail’, included at the back, is the first-ever inventory of art by women in the Florentine State Museums.

Saturday at Florence’s English-language bookshop, the Paperback Exchange. Jane Fortune gives a talk about the book Invisible Women with co-author L. Falcone.

J. Fortune and L. Falcone at The Florentine press office in Florence’s via dei Banchi, editing the proofs of Fortune’s luxury guide book To Florence con Amore, reprinted in 2013, with ‘13 more ways to love the city’.

Author J. Fortune at the launch of To Florence, con Amore: 90 Ways to Love the City (a reprint from an earlier edition). Editor L. Falcone and publisher M. Badiani from TF Press, flank the author at the historic rotunda in via Il Prato.

A publicity shot of J. Fortune’s To Florence, con Amore: 90 Ways to Love the City during its launch in 2013 (a reprint from an earlier edition featuring ’77 ways’). A celebration at Florence’s historic ‘rotunda’ in via Il Prato.

The Florentine presents the launch of When the World Answered at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, Europe’s historic academy whose first female member was Artemisia Gentileschi in 1616. A fresco by Pontormo in the background.

Audience members at the book launch of When the World Answered: Florence, Women Artists and the 1966 Flood at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, which has accepted female members since the early 1600s.

October 20, 2015, the Odeon Theater in Florence’s Piazza Strozzi welcomes the world premiere of When the World Answered, an American Public Television special based on the book by the same name.

Guests await the world premiere of When the World Answered, a documentary TV special on Florence, Women Artists and the 1966 flood, created by WFYI Media, Kim Jacobs and Clayton Taylor producers.

October 2015 premiere for When the World Answered TV special, based on a book on AWA’s work by The Florentine Press. The Florentine plays co-host with managing editor H. Farrell, co-owner G. Giusti and editor M. Gray.

A sold-out premiere, in support of AWA’s work in Florence, as art aficionados ‘lined up’ to see ‘When the World Answered’ PBS TV documentary based on J. Fortune and L. Falcone’s book. (WFYI Media).

The Odeon Firenze audience watches ‘the Flood Ladies story’ at the premiere of the documentary When the World Answered, spotlighting AWA’s restoration of art by female artists who gifted their works to Florence after the 1966 flood.

Marco Badiani, Editor in Chief at The Florentine and co-owner of The Florentine Press, congratulates authors L. Falcone and J. Fortune, on stage during the premiere of PBS documentary When the World Answered, based on their 2014 book.

Authors Jane Fortune and Linda Falcone leaving the question-answer session at the world premiere of When the World Answered, at Florence’s Odeon. AWA’s work is center-stage in the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary, created around their 2014 book.

S. Funaro, Councilor for Equal Opportunity at premiere of When the World Answered. On stage:Author L. Falcone, Tuscan RC President E. Giani, author J. Fortune, S. Funaro, US Consulate Programs Manager K.Rakich and US Consul General A. Rupp.

Author L. Falcone welcomes guests at premiere of When the World Answered, on stage with Tuscan President E. Giani, author J. Fortune, Equal Opportunity Councilor S. Funaro, US Consulate Programs Manager K. Rakich and US Consul General A. Rupp.

Always an advocate to safeguard and display art by women, author and AWA founder Jane Fortune on the silver screen at the world premiere of When the World Answered in Florence.

Co-hosts The Florentine at world premiere of When the World Answered in Florence, the documentary. The folks behind the book: The Florentine Press co-owners M. Badiani, G. Giusti and L. Cardini, with managing editor H. Farrell.

Author and AWA founder Jane Fortune with her a regional Emmy Award, earned in 2013 for Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence, the documentary based her book by the same name. (Producers T. Gould, C. Taylor, WFYI Public Media).

G. De Micheli, Segretariat of Opera di Santa Croce, discusses the 1966 flood in the city’s hardest-hit locations with J. Fortune and L. Falcone during filming of When the World Answered, PBS documentary produced by K. Jacobs and C. Taylor.

Producer K. Jacobs and cinematographer V. Manganello with G. De Micheli, from Opera di Santa Croce, and authors as they discuss the 1966 Florence flood. Filming of When the World Answered, PBS documentary 2015 (WFYI Public Media).

Interviewing museum curators V. Gensini and A. Nesi (in red) during filming of Emmy-nominated When the World Answered, PBS television special, on the first-floor loggia of Florence’s Museo Novecento. Troupe led by producer K. Jacobs.

J. Fortune interviews A. Bargellini, as she describes November 1966, as daughter of ‘Flood’ Mayor P. Bargellini. In documentary When the World Answered, Bargellini recounts rooftop cries as citizens grappled with the fate of flooded Florence.

AWA co-founders J. Fortune and R. Hesse with film director F. Zeffirelli, at his Roman villa, during a 2014 interview for When the World Answered, about the maestro’s real-time documentary Per Firenze, documenting the 1966 flood.

Author L. Falcone and AWA co-founder R. Hesse chat with Florentine film director F. Zeffirelli, sharing thoughts on the 1966 flood, which he immortalized in Days of Destruction. During filming of When the World Answered, TV special.

Film director Franco Zeffirelli has a look at When the World Answered, the book, pre-filming the documentary by the same name (WFYI Public Media). Pictured with AWA co-founders J. Fortune and R. Hesse and AWA director L. Falcone.

In Rome with Franco Zeffirelli. US producer K. Jacobs interviews famed film director, for her 2015 documentary When the World Answers, troupe and co-authors J. Fortune and L. Falcone look on. (V. Manganello on camera).

Producer Kim Jacobs with Florentine film director Franco Zeffirelli, after an interview in his Roman home for Emmy-nominated When the World Answered, a documentary on Florence, Women Artists and the 1966 by WFYI Public Media.

AWA’s Emmy nomination for Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence (2013) was received just ten days after the program’s screening at the US Consulate in Florence. J. Fortune speaks at event hosted by Consul General Sarah Morrison.

Invisible Women co-authors L. Falcone and J. Fortune on stage at the Odeon Theater in Florence with US Consul General Sarah Morrison. The full-house screening was a celebration of the documentary’s Emmy-win, weeks earlier in June 2013.

A full house for Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence, the Emmy-winning documentary based on the book. In June, 2013 co-authors L. Falcone and Jane Fortune took the stage with Consul General Sarah Morrison for a Q-and-A session.

It’s opening night at the Odeon with AWA Cultural rep L. Jmaeff, AWA founder J. Fortune and organization director L. Falcone, as they await the Florence premiere of Invisible Women… to see ‘the Invisible’, as the billboard suggests.

US Consul General S. Morrison, with authors J. Fortune and L. Falcone during Q-A Session after Odeon screening of Emmy-winning Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence.

June 25, 2013. Summer sweltering for the crowds who came to see the Odeon premiere of Emmy-winning Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence. A full house for art by women and AWA’s rescue work in Florence.

L. Falcone presenting When the World Answered, with co-author J. Fortune. Palazzo Tornabuoni hosts the signing, an event to remember the female artists who donated ‘new works’ to replace the 14,000 damaged during the Arno’s flooding.

AWA director L. Falcone studying sixteenth-century manuscript with Plautilla Nelli’s earliest artwork. Inside San Marco Museum, whilst filming Monuments Women, documentary for Italian TV, produced by laeffe-TV, G. Carreri, director.

AWA and Natia Docufilm at premiere screening of Monuments Women. 39th ‘Festival Internazionale di Cinema e Donne’, Teatro della Compagnia. Episode 2 of an eight-part series called ‘Noi Siamo Cultura’ (We are culture) features AWA and its work.

AWA advocates T. Carrari, S. Barker, L. Jmaeff, P. Masse, J. Strazzulla at the premiere of the TV special, Monuments Women, Episode Two of an 8-part docu-film series ‘Noi Siamo Cultura’, released November 2017.

AWA peeks out from the Silver Screen at Florentine cinema festival with Monuments Women. L. Falcone speaks at inaugural festivities of the 39th edition of ‘Festival Internazionale di Cinema e Donne’. (laeffe TV, director: Giuseppe Carreri.

Monuments Women director Giuseppe Carreri followed AWA through Tuscany to track down invisible women artists. L. Falcone on screen at Teatro della Compagnia premiere, during 39th international festival ‘Cinema and Women’.

AWA in the attic at Medici villa Cerreto Giudi scouting out works by twentieth-century artist Emma Bardini, during filming of Monuments Women, a for-Sky documentary, produced by leeffe TV and directed by G. Carreri.

2014 at the newly opened Museo Novecento, whilst filming When the World Answered. Producer K. Jacobs leads interview with authors J. Fortune and L. Falcone and Flood Lady artist Paola Troise (in red).

Whilst filming Monuments Women, Natia Docufilm followed AWA and its many partners on the trail of Research, Restoration and Exhibition. On camera: Antonietta Rafael Mafai’s View of Olveano at the Museo Novecento, restored 2014.

Director G. Carreri heads Natia Docufilm during filming of Monuments Women, Italian TV special. AWA’s featured conservator: Merj Nesi, with twentieth-century bronze by Antonietta Rafael Mafai, at Museo Novecento.

AWA conservator M. Nesi restorers sculpture by Antonietta Rafael Mafai for display at Florence’s Museo Novecento. The in-museum conservation treatment was filmed for Monuments Women, an Italian TV documentary in 2017.

Filmmaker Giuseppe Carreri and crew with S. Casciu, director of the Tuscan Regional Museum Circuit and AWA director L. Falcone. Filming on location for Monuments Women, at Villa La Petraia, a Medici ‘secret’ whose collection boasts female artists.

Natia Docufilm crew corrects lighting while S. Casciu, director of the Tuscan Regional Museum Circuit awaits ‘Action!’ at Medici Villa, La Petraia, one location featured in Monuments Women, produced by laeffe TV.

Tuscan Regional Museum Circuit director S. Casciu interviewed by director G. Carreri during filming of Monuments Women at Villa La Petraia. The program was Episode Two of the ‘Noi siamo cultura’ series on Sky.

Lecture ‘Contemporary Passions and Invisible Women’ organized by Il Palmerino with author J. Fortune and C. Acidini Superintendent of Florence’s Polo Museale (Museum Circuit). Mediators: Il Palmerino advocate S. Cenni and AWA director L. Falcone.

Conservator R. Lari and AWA director L. Falcone at the restoration lab with a mud-caked artwork, damaged in the 1966 flood Florence flood, during filming of PBS TV special When the World Answered.

Co-author L. Falcone signs When the World Answered for Florence-based Canadian filmmaker D. Battistella at Palazzo Tornbuoni book-signing, autumn 2015.

Audience during presentation of When the World Answered: Florence Women Artists and the 1966 Flood by J. Fortune and L. Falcone (The Florentine Press, 2014) at Florence’s newly opened Museo Novecento.

‘Everything might be different’, the neon message by artist Maurizio Nannucci seen from the courtyard of Florence’s Museo Novecento is a relevant mantra for AWA, in its quest to rediscover art history’s forgotten half.

Evening falls on Florence’s Museo Novecento, during the presentation of When the World Answered, the book featuring numerous ‘flood ladies’ whose works AWA restored to the museum spotlight.

Presenting When the World Answered at the Museo Novecento. Speakers: Museum curators A. Nesi and V. Gensini with authors J. Fortune and L. Falcone, AWA advocate M. Psicharis interpreting. Recently restored Maternity by A. Ciardi Dupre.

In the courtyard of Florence’s Museo Novecento. Vice Mayor Cristina Giachi presents the book When the World Answers which chronicles the story of several works by ‘Flood Ladies’ in the city’s art collection.

Vice Mayor Cristina Giachi presents When the World Answered, the 2014 book by J. Fortune and L. Falcone which chronicles the restoration of several artworks gifted to the Museo Novecento after the 1966 flood.

In 1966, the Arno’s flooding submerged Florence in 14,000 of mud. This book cover, designed by M. Badiani, features ‘Flood Lady’ Lea Colliva’s self-portrait. She is one of many women who gifted their art to the city. Her story and more told in WTWA.

Plautilla Nelli’s restored Crucifixion, originally hosted at Certosa di Galluzo, was reunited with its sister lunettes featuring Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine, at the The Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto.

Nelli’s Crucifixion, back of the panel, restored by wood conservator Roberto Buda, who inserted wedges between each of the panels that make up the lunette’s structure.

The name written in pencil on the back of Nelli’s Crucifixion is dated 1889 and could indicate a previous restoration project.

This carved symbol on the back of Nelli’s Crucifixion is thought to be the logo the woodworker who prepared the panel. It is similar to the one found on the back of the artist’s lunette featuring Saint Dominic.

Conservator R. Lari oversees the transport of P. Nelli’s Crucifixion from the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto to her studio. Nelli’s two other lunettes depicting Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine watch the move in autumn 2017.

Art movers from Arternativa and Apice in the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto, as they wrap Plautilla Nelli’s Crucifixion, the final lunette of the series authored in the 1570s. From here, the panel will go to the restoration studio.

Plautilla Nelli’s soon-to-be restored Crucifixion awaits in the main hall of the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. It will soon be packed for transport and restored so that it can join its sister lunettes, also by Nelli, on display here.

Nelli’s Saint Dominic plays ‘guardian angel’ to the artist’s Crucifixion, as it awaits transport. Both works were commissioned by prioress Arcangela Viola and are a unique example of female patronage inside a sixteenth-century convent.

Conservator R. Lari at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. Nelli’s Crucifixion has been packed up and is ready to be taken to her atelier for restoration.The artist’s Saint Dominic, a work Lari restored in 2009, presides.

US Consul General in Florence Ben Wohlauer welcomes guests at the unveiling of Plautilla Nelli’s newly restored Crucifixion. Andrea del Sarto’s Last Supper in the background gives its name to the Florence Museum.

Honored guests at unveiling of Nelli’s newly restored Crucifixion, Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. AWA 2018 Sojourners in the front-row foreground: M. Schober, D. Malin, J. and S. Jacobs, V. Slichter.

The three lunettes commissioned for Nelli’s convent in the 1570s together again after centuries. The side lunettes were restored nearly 10 years before central painting. On the right: Conservator R. Lari, curator C. Gnoni, museum custodian B. Pini

Nelli’s precious miniature, found in Codex number 565 at the San Marco Museum, is inspired by the Gospel of Luke and depicts a scene from the childhood of Christ, namely his presentation at the Temple in Jerusalem

This newly restored choir book, dated 1558, contains one of the earliest known documents associated with Nelli as a painter. This work is not signed because manuscripts were considered community-building acts and not works of individual inspiration.

AWA restored two choir book with Nelli’s gold-leaf-and-ink miniatures on parchment at Florence’s San Marco Museum. Presented during the artist’s show at the Uffizi Galleries in 2017: “Plautilla Nelli:Art and Devotion in Savonarola’s Footsteps”.

The restoration of San Marco choral books featuring Nelli’s miniatures was curated by curator Marilena Tamassia, head of the San Marco Museum (2017). Florentine restorer Simone Martini masterfully executed this multifaceted project.

The book was placed inside a horizontal press in order to carry out a process known as ‘backing’ which strengthens the structure underlying the visible spine, which enables the book to open and guarantees its solidity.

The term codex comes from the Latin word meaning ‘trunk of a tree’ or ‘block of wood’ (later, book). It is used today to describe handwritten manuscripts. The restoration process, by conservator S. Martini, was painstaking and immensely detailed.

During restoration, the damaged threads holding the binding of San Marco’s choral books together were cut, and a warm-water solution was applied with an ultrasound device and vaporizer to detach the parchment from the poplar axes.

Museum curator F. Navarro examines Nelli’s Saint Catherine Receives the Stigmata, pre-restoration, in storage at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto whose deposits were renovated in the 1980s.

AWA Board and Advisory Council visit art in storage at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. Pictured here: D. Malin, D. Volpini Maestri, C. Clark, A. Vogler, D. Clark, accompanied by museum curator Cristina Gnoni, in 2018.

AWA Board and Council visit the attic at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto, which is a storehouse devotional works from the sixteenth century, many of which became state property through Napoleonic reforms.

Museum curator Cristina Gnoni (in yellow) accompanies AWA Board and Advisory Council (2018) into the lofty attic at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. Note paintings hanging on the grate and their visible conservation needs.

Curator Cristina Gnoni and Museum custodian Barbara Pini in the deposits at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. The former monastery is also a repository for sixteenth-century art, mostly of a devotional nature.

The ‘Art of Museums’, German documentary series. Episode III, featuring Uffizi Galleries and AWA’s work in Florence. Artemisia’s Judith beheading Holofernes caused a ripple then and now.

PBS troupe visits Il Bisonte, a center for the graphic arts, in When the World Answered: Florence Women Artists and the 1966 Flood. Producer K. Jacobs and co-authors J. Fortune and L. Falcone pictured with Florence-based artists and students.

Pre-restoration. Plautilla Nelli’s Annunciation, a much-loved theme for sixteenth-century artists. Nelli, as a painter linked to the School of San Marco, would have been familiar with Beato Angelico’s rendition.

The angel’s wings exhibit a palette of colors found elsewhere in The Annunciation and their intensity balances the other half of Nelli’s composition which features the reading Madonna.

Nelli’s dove in flight. Three serpentine rays emerge from the bird’s month, as a symbol of the Holy Spirit and the Divine Word.

La revision of the frame was carried out after the restoration post frame restoration by F. Spagnoli as a precautionary measure

Upholding a tradition that is part of Florence’s uniqueness. The first batch of AWA’s ‘signature’ perfume was produced in 2017, in collaboration with Aquaflor, in the Santa Croce district.

“Aquaflor recommended using a rare flower from India called osmanthus. Few people are familiar with it, but it is extremely valuable, just like the artists whose works AWA is trying to save,” explains Jane Fortune co-creator of Invisible.

In December 2019, women in the Oncology Ward and Day Hospital at Santa Maria Nuova received a bottle of the fragrance ‘Invisible’, created by our founder Jane Fortune (1948–2018). The spirit of Christmas is ‘Invisible’.

AWA presented “Invisible” in June 2017, during an olfactory performance, with creator Sileno Cheloni, mirroring an ancient ritual that revealed the origins of the word ‘perfume’… scents released into the Universe by burning.

The essence-burning ceremony held at a press conference for Lifestyle and Fashion journalists allowed members of the media to experience the perfume, Invisible, first hand.

“Perfume is conceived in the realm of the invisible and it evokes all that is felt but not seen.’ said Nose Sileno Cheloni during the essence-burning ceremony at the launch of Invisible, the perfume commemorating art by women.

Sileno Cheloni prepares an ‘altar-of-sorts’ inside the waterless stone well at the center of Palazzo Serristori Corsini Antinori’s courtyard to burn ‘Invisible’. ”In ancient Rome, they would say ‘Pro fumo tribuere, ‘to offer by smoke’.

“Invisible”, the art perfume, is AWA’s tailor-made tribute honoring the women artists whose works have been ‘invisible’ for centuries. Proceeds from the sale of the perfume support the organization’s restoration of art by women.

Hundreds of glass bottles lining each shelf of Acquaflor’s atelier. They represent a full world tour in seven square meters: essences from Tibet, Columbia, Oman, Ireland. AWA’s Board and Advisory Council experiment.

After Catherine de’ Medici’s marriage to Henry II of France, perfume began to be conceived as a personalized rather than medicinal product. AWA’s Board and Council at the Aquaflor workshop, post the production of Invisible, the perfume.

AWA Board member Connie Clark experiments with her own version of Invisible, at Aquaflor’s atelier in Florence.

Any professional ‘nose’ will tell you, that a perfume is usually made from a blend of 30 to 80 different essences. Florence-based journalists try their hand at perfume-making as part of the press conference presenting, ‘Invisible’, AWA’s perfume.

Presenting Invisible, the perfume, whose top notes recall lemon leaves and violet, followed by an accord of jasmine and osmanthus. It’s endnotes exude the fragrance of iris and rose.

Wearing perfume as part of one’s personal toilette was perceived as sinful practice in the Middle Ages, because it was considered potentially seductive. Caterina de’ Medici would change all that come the Renaissance. A close-up shot of Invisible.

The perfume’s Invisible’s ‘posterchild’ is a Florentine work by Artemisia Gentileschi, that is thought to be a preparatory drawing for David and Bathsheba, a painting at the Pitti Palace that AWA restored in 2009.

Lea Colliva’s early self-portrait was restored as part of ‘Women Who Drew’, a workshop spearheaded by Beatrice Cuniberti, conservator at the helm of the Atelier degli Artigianelli. a workshop aimed at upholding Florence’s ancient trades.

AWA awarded one of two program grants for ‘Women Who Drew’ to Sharifa Lookman, a graduate student in art history at Syracuse University in Florence, pictured here in stripes, with fellow awardee Sofia Ferrari.

The ‘Women Who Drew’ paper restoration workshop was designed to raise awareness about Florence’s growing archives on female heritage through the conservation of prints, drawings and photography.

The workshop ‘Women Who Drew’ at Atelier degli Artigianelli was brainchild of AWA and Il Palmerino and part of a larger initiative to create a Florentine archive for art by women on paper, including drawings, photography and graphic art.

The Women Who Drew workshop at Atelier degli Artigianelli was open to eight art-loving participants from all ‘walks of knowledge and expertise’. Training sessions were led by restorer and center director Beatrice Cuniberti.

“A restorer is like a physician,” explains paper conservation workshop leader Beatrice Cuniberti. “Diagnosis is key and, therefore, so is observation. Before technical choices
are made, you must attempt to understand the artist’s psychology.”

Florentine wood conservator Roberto Buda, in his workshop in front of Nelli’s Crucifixion, for which he provided wooden supports.

The Crucifixion was veiled with Japanese rice paper and glue in order transport it safely to Roberto Buda’s Florentine workshop, because its pictorial layers were considerably fragile.

Wood conservator Roberto Buda works on the back of Nelli’s Crucifixion, to remove the cross beam on one side of the lunette.

The crossbeams on the back of Nelli’s Crucifixion were attached to the panels with screws, creating unsuitable clamping. Florentine wood conservator Roberto Buda corrects the problem.

Making the acquaintance of a new arrival in the studio. Wood restorer Roberto Buda examines the front on Nelli’s Crucifixion before turning his attention to the back of the lunette.

Roberto Buda and Alberto Di Muccio during the handling of Nelli’s lunette in the wood conservation studio. During the restoration restoration process, team work is essential for diagnosis and logistics.

Wood conservator Roberto Buda wears magnifying glasses to check the state of Nelli’s Crucifixion, composed of several panels. A fundamental, not often discussed phase of recovery.

Nelli’s Crucifixion on the verge of being laid face-down for panel analysis. Any maneuvers to move the painting are extremely risky and have to be executed with great care.

Detail of wood shavings, due to the planing of new crossbars placed on the back of Nelli’s seventeenth-century lunette, The Crucifixion. A mix of old and new wood to strengthen the structure.

Arternativa’s fine-art movers are preparing to pack it Nelli’s thrid lunette for transport to the laboratory. The collaboration between restorers and transporters is very important for conservation purposes.

Conservator R. Lari during the Crucifixion‘s cleaning phase, which included the removal of altered varnished that obscured the original colors, not allowing for a correct reading of the painting.

Pre-restoration, the painting was impacted by environmental dirt, yellowing varnish, altered restorations of the past, insect droppings, drips of color and highly visible sponge-applied brown patina. It has also undergone aggressive cleaning.

The Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto occupies a large portion of an ancient convent founded by Vallombrosian monks that was named for San Salvi. Its titular fresco, a Renaissance masterpiece by Andrea del Sarto is in the refectory.

AWA aficionados arrive at the inauguration of Nelli’s Crucifixion. The long corridor, accessed from the entrance, hosts large altarpieces by Tuscan Mannerist painters who also worked for the nearby church of San Salvi.

Although the restored Duclos painting was created in the 1700s, it is on display in the Accademia Gallery’s nineteenth-century Salon, created to host sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini’s Gypsoteca, a tangible sign of the gallery’s academic origins.

Irene Duclos’ painting ‘covers’ Michelangelo during the conference at the Accademia Gallery. The David was transferred from Piazza della Signoria to the tribune in 1873, after architect Emilio De Fabris designed it for this purpose.

A tracing of Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna of the Sack fresco in the Cloister of the Dead at SS. Annunziata, is placed over Duclos’s copy from the Accademia. From this overlapping study, it is evident that the two images correspond perfectly.

A modern-day tracing of Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna of the Sack shows that Parenti Duclos traced her own cartoon from the original, perhaps by climbing up a scaffolding built some 200 years after del Sarto’s death for restoration purposes.

Detail of the Duclos painting. Missing flakes of color revealing a second hue underneath. The paint was probably crushed during lining and its fragments stuck unevenly on the pictorial surface.

Detail in which you can see remains of wax left over from an old restoration and numerous areas of missing color, puckering and ripples impacting the pictorial surface.

The painting was examined by the CNR ICV (Institute for the Conservation and Valorization of Cultural Heritage). Research focused on the points shown here, for pigment and preparation studies.

The Institute for the Conservation and Valorization of Cultural Heritage at the National Research Council in Florence documented the Duclos restoration with micro and macro photographs of the areas chosen for analysis.

This micro-photograph taken during the National Research Council’s noninvasive diagnostic campaign, reveals cracking on a sample taken from the Christ child’s right cheek.

This microphotograph shows a detail of the Duclos painting in which you can see a previous pictorial restoration, missing areas of paint, fragments of color and cracking.

Background lacuna on the lunette’s edge and architectural relief. Microscopic view of an old restoration, during which color fragments were improperly glued to the painted surface in an attempt to minimize color loss.

Microscopic research by Florence’s National Research Council focused on the painting’s chromatic background in order to hypothetically reconstruct the color palette used by the artist, in terms of chemical composition.

Micro-fragment sample dipped in epoxy and transversally divided using stratigraphy and subsequently polished to reveal its sections, in ultraviolet light. Several microscopes were used to allow for the morphological study of materials.

One of two micro-fragments from the lunette’s brown background, which allowed researchers to delve in techniques Duclos used while preparing the canvas. Retrodiffused electron image (BS) of the sample’s polished section (Area ID_62 (1200x).

Microscopic analysis of the Madonna’s right cheek in Irene Parenti Duclos’ Copy of Madonna del Sacco. Analysis executed by S. Bracci and D. Magrini with the National Research Council.

The Duclos painting, detail under a digital microscope. Layers of color with evident losses of the overlying background paint

Researchers compared the Duclos copy to Del Sarto’s original. Duclos’ red drop capitals were copied perfectly, and even her black lettering proves very similar to the fresco’s, although the words seem to be without real meaning.

The CNA carried out color composition analysis on Saint Joseph’s robes, hypothesizing that the artist used a mixture of ochre-red and cinnabar. For his cloak, Duclos likely used Naples yellow or a similar shade made from lead and tin.

Detail of the Madonna. Compare the two whites of her robe, before and after the cleaning process. The restored white is brighter and has acquired greater compactness.

Saint Joseph’s mouth can be considered less successful in terms of execution, yet that may be because it was particularly abraded and illegible in the original Del Sarto fresco, from which Duclos is thought to have traced her cartoon.

The superimposition of Duclos’ copy (red) and Del Sarto’s fresco (green) led to the discovery that the structure of the two works’ match significantly, despite a slight shift in in the copy’s architectural elements and other minor differences.

Pre restoration. The painting’s chromatic surface proved faded and yellowed, which mellowed its hues and distanced the painting from the original Del Sarto fresco’s technical characteristics, thwarting its truthfulness as a copy.

Restored colors, as seen in the studio. Conservator R. Lari writes, ‘Her palette ranges from light, luminous shades to darker more intense hues, carefully emulating the wealth of color characterizing the Del Sarto fresco.’

Studying the back of the Duclos painting. Its non-original frame has three crossbars and wedges. Notice the red and green inventory numbers at the bottom.

A fundamental part of the process. Stucco work restores the continuity of the painting’s layers, correcting any gaps, in order to achieve pictorial reintegration.

Colliva’s small-scale show spans 45 years of art movements in a surprising compendium that goes from traditionalist turn-of-the-century landscapes and Liberty style portraiture to works influenced by the Informal movement and abstractionism.

Il Palmerino, a fifteenth-century villa turned cultural center for twentieth-century art and literature with a focus on female creativity, played host to the show “Lea Colliva. An Artist on the Pathway of the gods” in 2018.

Sponsored by Fondazione CR Firenze and Advancing Women Artists, the exhibition ‘Women Artists: Florence 1900-1950’ spotlights numerous female personalities on Italy’s cultural stage, zeroing in on the creative and personal ties that bound them.

Conservator S. Pucci revealed the technique used on Houses in Demolition. “We utilized artificial saliva which is a chemical reproduction of the enzymes in our own salvia. It allows us to remove surface dirt without damaging the varnish.”

“To correct detachment and color loss, we secured the color and carried out stucco-work. Oil-on-cardboard tends to lose its shape, so we created a climatic chamber to expose it to humidity,” said conservator C. Mannini (left).

‘Levasti’s urban views are populated by figures who wander amidst the cube-like geometry of her buildings,’ writes curator L. Mannini. ‘Her curious gaze explored teeming everyday activities and her world straddles reality and fairytale.’

AWA restored Fillide Levasti’s Daily Life in 2018, for the exhibition ‘Women Artists. Florence 1900-1950’. It is now in storage at the Uffizi Galleries’. Shown here ‘hands on’ in C. Mannini’s conservation studio in the Oltrarno.

Conservator C. Mannini prefers restoring modern works like Levasti’s Daily Life. ‘New materials are far more reactive to solvents and, there is no time-trusted way to proceed. So, it’s exciting to be part of a pioneering field in this sense.’

Conservator C. Mannini in her studio in the Oltrarno with F. Levasti’s Daily Life. ‘Levasti is extremely technical and executes her paintings carefully,’ explains Mannini. ‘She’s keenly descriptive, as if she was telling a children’s story.’

A surface cleaning was carried out with latex sponges similar to those used to remove make-up. Because no old varnish needed removal, conservator C. Mannini proceeds with pictorial touchups, to prepare the Uffizi’s painting for exhibition in 2018.

A slice-of-life painting by Roman artist Vittoria Morelli who worked in Florence in the 1910s and 1920s. C. Mannini prepares the Uffizi painting for ‘Women Artists: 1900-1950’. Morelli’s work is a psychological portrait and a sign of her times.

Conservators C. Mannini and S. Pucci at work transferring Vittoria Morelli’s Interior with Figures. Its still-life elements reflect early 20th-century tastes and follow the tradition of women artists including daily objects in their works.

Conservator Angela Gavazzi of the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence compares two self-portraits by Leonetta Pieraccini Cecchi that belong to the Alessandro Bonsanti Contemporary Archives. Restored in 2018, for the show: Women Artists: 1900-1950′.

Conservator A. Gavazzi examines Pieraccini Cecchi’s small self-portraits. The artist does not light up her face in either painting. The smaller one, from 1910, is far more damaged than the later self-portrait with vase and flowers, from 1946.

Art historian Lucia Mannini with conservator Angela Gavazzi as they examine Leonetta Pieraccini Cecchi’s Self-portrait from 1910, the year the artist got engaged to art critic Emilio Cecchi, whom she married on February 27, 1911.

Paper conservator A. Gavazzi shows exhibition curator L. Mannini how Cecchi Levasti painted her self-portrait on cardboard. Dissatisfied, she would tear it in two before putting the pieces back together, gluing them onto a piece of cardboard.

Conservator R. Lari restores on site at the Vieusseux’s paper restoration lab. She is working on Pieraccini Cecchi’s Portrait of Emilio Cecchi, exhibited during ‘Women Artists: 1900-1950’ organized by AWA and Fondazione CR Firenze.

Conservator R. Lari restores Leonetta Pieraccini Cecchi’s 1919 portrait of her husband. Art and literary critic Emilio Cecchi is considered one of the greatest figures of Italian cultural journalism of the first half of the 20th century.

Conservators Angela Gavazzi and Rossella Lari worked together on five paintings from the Gabinetto G.P. Vieusseux, in preparation for the show: Women Artists: 1900-1950. Restoration is a craft and a science where conversation is key.

Conservator Angela Gavazzi works on the back of Leonetta Pieraccini Cecchi’s Self-portrait in Backlight. She had painted it on previously used cardboard that had been glued together, probably by the artist herself.

Paper restorer Angela Gavazzi works at the Gabinetto G.P. Vieusseux to remove glue fragments from the back of Leonetta Pieraccini Cecchi’s Self-portrait in Backlight, painted in 1946 with recycled materials.

Jane Fortune’s Fiorino d’Oro ceremony was hosted at Palazzo Vecchio, as part of the Global Mayor’s Forum called, ‘Unity and Diversity’ where 60 mayors from all over the globe met to discuss the preservation of natural and artistic heritage.

In 2016, Florence’s mayor D. Nardella presented J. Fortune with the Golden Florin for her work with AWA: ‘We consider Mrs. Fortune, one of our citizens, one of us, a Florentine in every way, and I’d even go so far as to say, a great Florentine.’

‘Lola Costa knew how to tune into various aspects of life, both in painting and in poetry. The gaze of her sitters tell us something about how they saw the world, and perhaps, how we see it as well,’ says psychologist Wanda Carcello.

‘Capturing simplicity on canvas was quest enough for Lola Costa,’ says granddaughter Federica Parretti, ‘The purple of artichoke flowers or perfumed lavender in Provence-style ceramic. That is what made her restless.’ Oil on canvas, 1973

‘Costa’s rapid brush strokes recall De Pisis, but I also see an English aura in her painting that bring to mind the early works of Sutherland. An elegant painter with an expert eye with nature,’ said critic Mario Cancelli. 1974, oil on cardboard

Entrance to Il Palmerino, artists residence and cultural association, decade-long partner with AWA for its ‘Women Artists of the Twentieth Century’ exhibitions. The last house in Florence, along the road known as the Pathway of the Gods.

British artist Lola Costa’s studio at Il Palmerino where the artist lived for more than half a century, starting in 1935. Costa’s works was primarily comprised of portraiture, landscapes and still life scenes.

Portrait of Lola Costa by her husband Federigo Angeli, during ‘Chaplin and Costa: Rediscovering Expat Women Artists in Tuscany’, an exhibition at Il Palmerino in 2014. Two of Elisabeth Chaplin’s nudes on show in the background.

Organized by the Cultural Association Il Palmerino with the Municipality of Monzuno and AWA, this exhibition featured 25 works by adoptive Florentine artist Lola Costa (1903 –2006), who had moved to Tuscany from her native England in the early 1920s.

AWA cultural representative L. Jmaeff with comedian and TV presenter Michael Palin, prior his interview with AWA founder J. Fortune, also cultural editor for The Florentine in 2015.

M. Palin interviewed founder J. Fortune, when featuring AWA’s restoration of Gentileschi’s 1653 David and Bathsheba for his program ‘The Quest for Artemisia’. She returned the ‘favor’ by interviewing Michael for The Florentine.

L. Jmaeff, L. Falcone and J. Fortune at the Fortune-Hesse home in Florence, awaiting the arrival of TV presenter and comedian Michael Palin, in town for his BBC special ‘The Quest for Artemisia’.

‘The Quest for Artemisia’ presenter Michael Palin and AWA founder Jane Fortune, on a balcony at the Pitti Palace, post their interview about AWA’s 2009 restoration of David and Bathsheba, a process featured in the BBC documentary.

AWA Board members and major donors Donna Malin and Connie and Doug Clark, during 2018 Florence Sojourn at San Miniato al Monte.

An ‘ex-pat’ view of Florence. AWA Board member Donna Malin, at San Miniato al Monte during AWA’s 2018 Sojourn. A supporter of several AWA projects, she ‘adopted’ the Christ figure in Nelli’s monumental Last Supper.

Board officer Stuart Jacobs with AWA Advisory Council member Joan Jacobs at San Miniato al Monte during AWA’s 2018 Sojourn.

AWA Vice president Nancy Hunt, with husband Bill, at San Miniato al Monte, during AWA’s Sojourn 2018. They are the ‘proud parents’ of ‘Saint Bartholomew’ in Nelli’s Last Supper at the Santa Maria Novella Museum.

The Accademia Gallery’s then-director Franca Falletti, with the Bargello’s former director Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi, awardee at the 2012 Nelli Awards, at Santa Maria del Carmine.

AWA Advisory Council member Dorothee Volpini Maestri with former US Consul General Sarah Morrison and AWA Advocate Valentina Grossi as the 2012 Nelli Awards in Santa Maria del Carmine.

AWA founder Jane Fortune welcomes Il Palmerino President Federica Parretti to the 2012 Nelli Awards at Santa Maria del Carmine, honoring modern-day women making outstanding contributions to the Florence art and culture scene.

Nelli Awards, 2012. Former US Consul General for Florence Sarah Morrison with Sheila Barker, Director of the Jane Fortune Program for Women Artists at the Medici Archive Project in Florence.

AWA founder Jane Fortune in 2018, during her final interview producer Kim Jacobs,during filming for the documentary spotlighting the restoration of Nelli’s Last Supper, a WFYI Media and Bunker Film co-production.

Donata Magrini, a researcher at the ICVBC-CNR (National Research Council’s Institute for Conservation and Promotion of Cultural Heritage), at the Accademia’s Duclos conference in 2011, where she spoke on microinvasive analysis techniques.

Equal Opportunity councilor Sara Funaro speaks at lauch event. In the 40 days, of TheFirstLast crowdfunding campaign, Nelli went from being a virtually ‘invisible artist’ to being featured in 86 international newspapers, websites and magazines.

TheFirstLast crowdfunding campaign was launched by the Advancing Women Artists Foundation on March 1, 2017 and the campaign ended at midnight on Easter Sunday. L. Falcone speaks at Florence launch.

The consolidation procedure involved moderate heat applied with an iron while the painting was inside a vacuum envelope, which optimized penetration of the adhesive and re-established cohesion between the support and the paint layers.

The painting was lightly ironed from the front to allow the consolidant resin to penetrate through the layers and reattach the flaking paint to the support.Conservator Elizabeth Wicks with Violante Siries Cerroti’s masterful copy.

After the consolidant had dried, the painting was turned over and a Mylar “envelope” was created around it in order to place the work under light vacuum pressure. Next, conservators N. Fontani and L. Wicks applied moderate heat, via ‘ironing’.

Diagnostic study carried out during conservation work. Viewing the painting under raking light helps document its condition and determine appropriate cleaning and consolidation techniques.

Inside the niche, pre restoration. In Siries’s 1768 will, she bequeathed a monetary gift to the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, asking that the nuns say masses in her name, in front of her painting in the sacristy, pictured here.

The high level of humidity caused by Florence’s 1966 flood engendered a dramatic mold attack over the entire reverse of the canvas. Conservator L. Wicks treats mold growth which weakened the painting’s support structure.

The painting’s stretcher and canvas showed visible signs of deterioration. The stretcher bars had severely warped and weakened, and a woodworm infestation had caused further weakening, with significant wood rot.

Fine-art movers Arternativa transfer Violante Siries largescale painting from the conservation studio, through nearby Piazza Santa Croce, in its way to the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi in Borgo Pinti for post-restoration exhibition.

The conservation team gathers in the sacristy of the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. The crumbling plaster was removed from the niche and replaced with new plaster, providing a secure and dry environment for the painting.

Conservators, curators and movers examine the niche, with painting in foreground Temperature and relative humidity in the sacristy continue to be carefully monitored to ensure that the newly restored painting remains in excellent condition.

On May 25, 1767 on the anniversary of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s death, Siries’s altarpiece was unveiled in the newly built sacristy of the church. On unveiling night, over 250 years later, the restored work meets Florence’s art-loving public.

R. Lari with Nelli’s Annuciation, restored 2017. Final pictorial restoration is a complex operation, in which the conservator increases the painting’s chromatic readability, without going over its original color, except for light veiling.

Conservator Rossella Lari in her Oltrarno studio, restoring Nelli’s Annunciation. Also note, the artist’s Crucifixion in the background. Restorers often work in natural light, despite sometimes using artificial lamps.

‘Having the possibility to work on several paintings attributed to the artist is important when it comes to verifying her technique and color scheme,’ says R. Lari, in the studio with Nelli’s Annunciation and Crucifixion.

Conservator R. Lari with Nelli’s Annunciation. Lari’s hand-made varnish-based colors are comprised of pigment, varnish and Canadian balsam, a turpentine made from the resin of the North American balsam fir tree.

Conservator Rossella Lari with Nelli’s Annunciation, during pictorial restoration. The paintbrushes used in this phase are of utmost importance. They have to stay pointy and are usually made from marten hair, from a weasel-like mammal.

A conservator’s palette is not often hand-held, but set on a nearby table. Rossella Lari executes pictorial restoration on Plautilla Nelli’s Annunciation, using hand-made varnish.

In the studio with Nelli’s Annunciation. Conservator R. Lari often uses a wearable magnifying glass while doing pictorial restoration. After close-up scrutiny, she steps back and views the work as a whole.

While carrying out pictorial restoration on Nelli’s Annunciation, conservator R. Lari uses a wooden arm support to avoid resting her hand on the painting’s surface. The end of this reed is wrapped in a swab-like cushion to prevent impact.

Arm rests are made by the conservators themselves in several lengths. Their purpose is to keep one’s arm and hand from getting tired, whilst protecting the painting from unnecessary touching. R. Lari with Nelli’s Annunciation.

F. Richards from Timeless Travels, AWA Board member A. Vogler and H. McGivern, from The Art Newspaper at Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin’s London retirement party, where she was honored with sponsorship of Nelli’s Saint Judas Thaddeus.

Chaplin’s The Three Sisters from Pitti’s Modern Art Gallery. Restoration detail, 2014. Rusty nails were removed mechanically and treated with anti-rust solution.

According to conservator Rossella Lari, artist Elisabeth Chaplin pulled the canvas onto the stretcher once it was already finished. This explains color flaking and falling along the painting’s perimeter.

To protect Chaplin’s newly restored but fragile painting, The Three Sisters was placed under an anti-glare safety glass and protected with distancing laths. Restoration for Pitti’s Modern Art Gallery, 2014.

Diagnostic analysis. The back of Elisabeth Chaplin’s The Three Sisters. Notice visible water stains, which were probably the cause of the painting’s deformation and numerous areas of missing color.

Extraction of nails from The Three Sisters‘ original frame from Chaplin’s era in the early twentieth century. Conservator R. Lari does the handiwork.

A cotton swab for the removal of environmental dirt. E. Chaplin (in blue) is the oldest sister in her family self portrait, The Three Sisters. A night scene where artificial light shines from the bottom of the canvas, casting a unique shadow.

R. Lari cleans Chaplin’s painting with a swab. Light from the bottom shines on Elisabeth’s long neck, leaving an intense shadow on the high part of her face and creating a mysterious atmosphere. Pitti Modern Art Gallery, restored 2014.

Discovering technique during cleaning. Conservator R. Lari cleans Chaplin’s dark background. The artist applied a single layer of paint to complete it, whereas the figures’ robes in The Three Sisters have several layors of paint.

Diagnostic analyis on Elisabeth Chaplin’s The Three Sisters, from Pitti’s Modern Art Gallery in Florence. Excessive stretching of the canvas caused numerous cracks in the color. Restored in 2014.

Wrinkles impacting the pictorial surface, under raking light. The damage was probably caused by exposure to humidity. Chaplin’s The Three Sisters is one of over of her 600 works in the Pitti’s Modern Art Gallery collection.

Cleaning tests on the frame for Nelli’s The Crucifixion. The frame had been completely repainted and thanks to the restoration, R. Lari was able to recover its original color.

Diagnostics. Detail of the back of Nelli’s Crucifixion, with a slit in the wood, several nails and two panels next to each other that are glued together.

AWA Board members D. Malin, C. Clark, D. Clark and A. Vogler on inauguration night, after Nelli’s Crucifixion was unveiled at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto, in October 2018.

The museum on inauguration night. San Salvi hosts works from the early 1500s. Plautilla Nelli’s lunettes are surrounded by the likes of Pontormo, Del Sarto, Franciabigio, Raffaellino del Garbo and Giuliano Bugiardini.

‘Irene Parenti Duclos: A Work Restored, an Artist Revealed’, conference at the Accademia Gallery in 2011. Participants surrounded by Michelangelo’s ‘Prisoners’, four unfinished sculptures, started for the tomb of Pope Julius II della Rovere.

Dr. F. Falletti welcomes guests to the conference. ‘Irene Parenti Duclos: A Work Restored, an Artist Revealed’ (October, 2011). Director of the Accademia Gallery for over 30 years, she fostered important innovations within the museum.

Portrait of Cristina Acidini, superintendent from 2006 to 2014 of the Special Superintendence for Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage and for Florence’s Museum Circuit. Facilitator at the Duclos conference 2011.

Susanna Bracci is senior researcher at the CNR’s Institute for the Conservation and Valorization of Cultural Heritage in Florence. Pictured here at the Irene Parent Duclos conference, she has performed diagnostic research on AWA’s projects for years.

Artists Lea Colliva and Lola Costa were neighbors on the two extremes of the Pathway of the Gods, an ancient pilgrim’s route linking Bologna and Florence. Event organizers at Il Palmerino braved the 6-day hike with art lovers.

An ancient Etruscan pilgrim’s trail curves through the Apennines leading from Florence to Bologna. The road links Il Palmerino, once home to English artist Lola Costa and British writer Vernon Lee, and Monzuno’s L’Ospitale, Colliva’s creative oasis.

‘Lea Colliva: An Artist on the Pathway of the Gods’ exhibition at Il Palmerino (2018). Colliva was an explosive colorist producing what the Fascists called ‘degenerative’ art at a time when rebel Italians courted the Expressionist movement.

Colliva scholar B. Buscaroli writes: ‘Lea Colliva thunders amidst figures, flowers and landscapes, meandering between Rembrandt and Soutine, in her restless expressionist quest.’ Guests at the 2018 Il Palmerino exhibition explore her paintings.

Nino Bertocchi, art critic and Lea Colliva’s mentor wrote of the artist: “Lea drew like no master at the modernist Accademia had ever drawn before or will ever draw again.” Colliva produced Savena Riverbed in 1943.

AWA’s Board and Advisory council visits the deposits at the Andrea del Sarto Last Supper museum which hosts works primarily from the sixteenth century. Many of the works became state property with Napoleon’s closure of convents in the early 1800s.

Art in storage at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto. Museum storage spaces are fundamental to art conservation. Proper display, easy access, appropriate temperature conditions are all factors to consider.

In Luigi Mecocci’s workshop in the Oltrarno artisans’ district. Painting the frame that would host one of Plautilla Nelli’s lunettes at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto.

L. Mecocci’s studio. A frame for one of Plautilla Nelli’s lunettes, during gilding. Craftswoman with cushion where she spreads gold leaf before cutting it with a knife.

AWA was invited to co-produce Santa Croce in Pink in October 2012, right after the restoration of Félicie de Fauveau’s burial moment to L. De Favreau. One year later, it was in print. Pictured here at the launch, with The Florentine.

It was a celebratory day for women in the arts, as AWA presented Santa Croce in Pink: Untold Stories of Women and their Monuments in the complex’s stunning Sala del Cenacolo, in the shadow of Taddeo Gaddi’s Tree of Life.

Authors’ panel, Sala del Cenacolo. Giuseppe de Micheli, Santa Croce’s then Secretary General discussed the Santa Croce in Pink project, a book and an outreach program, spotlighting seven centuries of female achievement at the complex.

Sala del Cenacolo. AWA director L. Falcone presents Santa Croce in Pink, which tributes historic women with monuments at Santa Croce, Pantheon of Italian Greats.

Book launch, Sala del Cenacolo. Santa Croce in Pink: Untold Stories of Women and their Monuments, G. Bagioli and D. Grossini, two of its authors.

Santa Croce has many monuments commemorating female protagonists. The journey begins in thirteenth-century Florence and continues with the 19th-century Grand Tour. P. Vojnovic leads ‘Santa Croce in Pink’ tour. Bust of Ida Botti Scifoni by P. Freccia

The first Santa Croce in Pink Tour in the Gallery of Funeral Monuments, post the book’s launch (2013). It features the women poets, singers, politicians, mystics and artists that have helped make Florence great.

Burial monument restored. Felicie de Fauveau was one of the first female professional sculptors. After a single discussion with a French craftsman who made religious statues, she stated ‘I too am a sculptor’.

Daily exposure to outdoor elements had caused irregular discoloration on parts of the monument’s surface. During AWA’s maintenance project, grime was removed and a wax polish was used to reduce the marble’s lack of moisture. Restored, 2012.

‘The Sculptural Workshop of a French Artist in Nineteenth-century Florence”, was a two-day conference organized by AWA in 2013 in the Cloister of Santa Maria del Carmine. Conservator Gabriella Tonini presents the De Fauveau restoration.

The 2013 De Fauveau conference. A Nazi grenade inside the cloister of S. Maria del Carmine disfigured the artist’s tribute to Anne De La Pierre, later damaged during the 1966 Flood. J. Fortune’s The Florentine article records the facts.

A stratified accumulation of dust and debris had destroyed sculptural details, blackening the entire structure. Due to the nature and delicacy of the original surface, the cleaning process was carried out with laser and chemical techniques.

Pre-restoration. Felicie de Fauveau’s marble tribute to her mother, Anne de la Pierre, completed in 1859. Both women established the artist’s studio in Via degli Serragli, near the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine where the monument stands today.

De Fauveau’s extended family had withdrawn their economic support considering a woman’s desire for for-pay commissions an act of ‘insolent pride’. De Fauveau had refused to give up her art, saying, ‘Know that an artist, such as I am is, a gentleman.’

Post-restoration. The marble portrait’s missing chin was re-sculpted, refinished and leveled to fit the rest of the face. A wax polish was subsequently applied to protect the work and enhance the surface’s transparency and subtle chromatic variety.

De Fauveau restored. During conservation treatment, G. Tonini and L. Pirelli, paid special attention to Anne de la Pierre’s high-relief portrait; De Fauveau had depicted her aged mother with unflinching realism using virtuoso carving techniques.

The right side of De la Pierre’s chin, destroyed during the Second World War, was modeled and reconstructed directly on the sculpture, by gauging the dimensions of the missing piece with the help of a vintage photograph showing the undamaged work.

After re-creating the missing part of Anne de la Pierre’s face, conservator G. Tonini continues her work: ‘By filling losses in the architectural elements, draperies, and other damaged features, we recovered the monument’s visual integrity.’

Pre-restorationFerroni’s Saint John of God Heals Plague Victims is the first of two ovals darkened by centuries of dirt and marred by flaking paint, tears and canvas holes. Conservation project for the Ancient Hospital of San Giovanni di Dio.

In 2019, Violante Ferroni’s oval was removed from the atrium of the Ancient Hospital of San Giovanni di Dio and transferred to the conservation studio, with conservators E. Wicks and M.Vincenti.

Art movers for Arternativa perform a balancing act at San Giovanni di Dio in Borgo Ognissanti, detaching Ferroni’s first 11-foot oval from its niche.

Would the art movers be able to slide Violante’s oval out from under the metal scaffolding built during far-reaching renovations of Amerigo Vespucci’s birthplace? That was the looming question on moving day, but they managed beautifully.

Conservators apply gentle heat and pressure to consolidate and re-adhere paint layers and smooth canvas distortions. It’s all hands of deck during this fundamental process designed guarantee the oval’s overall solidity.

The 8 by 11 ft. oval is placed on a specially cushioned ‘bed’. Gentle heat and pressure are used to diffuse the consolidant resin applied on the reverse through the canvas to smooth distortions and re-adhere the paint layers.

After stabilizing flaking paint, conservators slowly clean off a layer of surface dirt. Then, step by step, three layers of discoloured varnishes from previous restorations are carefully removed. Conservator E. Wicks, satisfied with results.

As conservator E. Wicks uses solvent gels to remove centuries of stubborn dirt, old varnish and repaints, Ferroni’s colors recover their original vibrancy.

Saint John of God Heals Plague Victims is the first of two works that AWA restoredi, in collaboration with the Robert Lehman Foundation, The Rauch Foundation and ‘The Mud Angels meet the Art Angels’, with FSU in Florence.

If you consider ‘cleaning’ one of life’s mundane tasks, consider that it is one of conservation’s most rewarding phases. Note the baby’s white robes and his mother’s golden gown emerge from under centuries of grime.

Conservator R. Lari fills out condition report documentation, during ‘the final check’ before hanging The Coral Necklace by Adriana Pincherle during the exhibition ‘Women Artists: Florence (1900-1950).

Architect L. Cuppellini and exhibition curator L. Mannini comparing works by Mori and Chaplin, while setting up ‘Women Artists: Florence (1900-1950). Paintings by Fillide Levasti already on the wall.

Pre-exhibition, ‘Women Artists: Florence (1900-1950)’. Conservator R. Lari does a bit of touching up in watercolor to improve frame condition for a painting by Leonetta Pieraccini Cecchi, Portrait of Suso, which depicts the artist’s daughter.

The exhibition ‘Lola Costa: An Artist of the Pathway of the Gods’ was inaugurated in September 2019, at the M. Marri Library in Monzuno. A continuing dialog along the ancient Roman footpath in the Apennines leading from Florence to Bologna.

AWA co-founder Robert Hesse with comedian and TV presenter Michael Palin, in Florence for his 2015 BBC documentary, ‘The Quest for Artemisia’.

AWA board member D. Malin, with Florence’s Ponte Vecchio. ‘By salvaging art by women, I think we all experience a real feeling of community,’ Malin says about she and her colleagues’ work with the organization.

Exhibition curators C. Toti and L. Mannini (left) with AWA director L. Falcone and Regional Council President E. Giani for the ribbon-cutting ‘Colors of an Artist’ at Palazzo Panciatichi (2016).

AWA gathers at the opening of ‘Adriana Pincherle, Colors of an Artist’ with project co-creator Il Palmerino and additional partners: Regional Council of Tuscany, Michelucci Foundation, Archivio Contemporaneo A. Bonsanti and Gabinetto Vieusseux.

Il Palmerino’s 2016 exhibition ‘Art and Memory’ juxtaposes A. Pincherle and E. Pacini, two artists whose creative languages are different to the point of being divergent. Atendees watch AWA’s video ‘Rediscovering Two Italian Artists of 1900s’.

‘Adriana Pincherle: Colors of an Artist’ at Palazzo Panciatichi marked the twentieth anniversary of Pincherle’s death. The exhibition was part of the ‘Women Artists of the 1900s’ calendar, a biennial project for AWA and Il Palmerino.

AWA restored a series of colorful portraits that represent Italy’s top authors from the 1920s to the 1960s. (Morante and Moravia pictured). In 1977, Pincherle donated them to the Gabinetto Vieusseux’s Contemporary Archive, where they are exhibited.

The first phase of restoration included removing as much dirt and dust as possible using a ‘dry method’ followed by micro-aspiration on both sides of the paintings, with the help of soft brushes used repeatedly.

One of Pincherle’s self-portraits during stucco work on small areas of missing color. Conservator R. Lari prepares the work for ‘Adriana Pincherle: Colors of an Artist’, a commemorative show at Palazzo Panciatichi, headquarters of the Tuscan Region.

“The difficulty of cleaning Pincherle’s paintings can be traced back to her application of color, characterized by relief-like sharpened peaks. They are extremely fragile and, in many cases, already cracked,” says conservator R. Lari.

Conservator R. Lari at work with Adriana Pincerle’s Self Portrait from the 1950s, to make the painting ready for her ‘Colors of an Artist’ show at Palazzo Panciatichi The gesso has to be kept warm during stucco work, using a bain-marie method.

The ‘Art and Memory’ exhibition at Il Palmerino (Spring 2016), was part of the ‘Women Artists of the Twentieth Century’ series. Pacini’s placid pastels are a contrast to Pincherle’s vigorous coloristic component and openness towards European trends.

‘When it comes to treating Adriana Pincherle’s twentieth-century works the risk lies in cleaning the smooth areas of color more than other areas, creating even more contrast with the grooves darkened by dirt,’ says Rossella Lari about the process.

Removing the gray layer that blurred the painting’s colors, making them flat. A major exponent of Magic Realism, Edita Broglio (1886–1977) gifted Oranges to Florence in 1967, in response to the tragic 1966 flood.

The cleaning phase. As layers of dirt are removed, the face in Edita Broglio’s Oranges acquire depth and brightness. Note the difference around the nose and left cheek. Restored in 2014, Twentieth-century Museum in Piazza S. Maria Novella.

Rosella Lari at work with Edita Broglio’s frame. She securely positions Oranges inside its frame with strips of rubberized paper. Its torn strips were first detached and the back was cleaned, removing glue residues.

While cleaning Titina Maselli’s Greta Garbo, conservator R. Lari removed fragments of cardboard that stuck to oil drops present on the painting.

Conservator Rossella Lari removes insect dropping on Titina Maselli’s Greta Garbo, using a scapel and humid cotton swabs. The restored painting was exhibited at the ‘Beyond Borders’ exhibition in 2016.

The exhibition ‘Beyond Borders’ at the Twentieth-century Museum was the final phase of AWA’s Flood Lady project, with the exhibition of works by Titina Masella (Greta Garbo) and that of artists like Palaez, Lazzari, Sodenvilla and Broglio.

The cleaning phase. Conservator R. Lari works to remove the yellowing varnish falsifying the work’s original black and white. Post restoration, Maselli Garbo was exhibited at Florence’s Twentieth-century Museum to commemorate the 1966 flood.

Amalia Ciardi Dupre’s small-scale Maternity in concrete is one of many versions of the same theme. The 2014 project, at Florence’s Twentieth-century Museum, included cleaning and removal of identification tags glued to its base.

Nelli was a follower of bonfire-of-the-vanities friar Savonarola, who supported the production of art by religious women ‘as a way to avoid sloth’. Conservator R. Lari estimates the up to eight women may have worked on The Last Supper.

Conservator R. Lari, with stucco work. The Last Supper defies social convention since Nelli authored 13 life-size male figures, confronting a theme usually reserved for male artists at the height of their career.

Conservator R. Lari with Last Supper. The tablecloth square shows the before-and-after difference, post cleaning once yellowed varnish and over-painting had been removed to reveal the original painterly layer.

Saint Thomas raises his finger in protest. Nelli’s Christ announces his betrayal as she emulates Leonardo Da Vinci’s idea of portraying the Apostles with dynamic emotion, a then-new concept for Last Supper paintings in Florence.

“One will never get closer to an artist than in the restoration studio,” says conservator Rossella Lari. “We restored Nelli’s masterwork and rediscovered her story and personality. She had powerful brushstrokes and loaded her brushes with paint.”

Nelli’s 21-foot canvas one of the largest works by an early woman artist in the world—and one of the most challenging compositionally. Rossella Lari on the scaffolding working with the faces of Jesus Christ and Saint John.

Evidence conclusively suggests that Nelli’s Last Supper is a ‘choral piece’, created in true ‘workshop style’, as different painterly hands and varying levels of expertise are evident across the canvas. R. Lari tackles the canvas.

Conservator R. Lari working on Nelli’s Judas. A phase of stuccoing process, when the painting’s surface is reconstructed under raking light to make sure it matches surrounding areas.

Pre-restoration. Upon arrival at R. Lari’s atelier in 2015, Nelli’s Last Supper is examined to confirm that no trauma has occurred during transport from its home in the Santa Maria Novella Complex. It would stay in the studio for 4 years.

Phase one of Nelli’s crowdfunding campaign called ‘TheFirstLast’, was launched in March 2017. The city’s First Citizen, Mayor Dario Nardella, made the project’s first gift in Palazzo Vecchio, followed by donors from 19 countries.

Florence Mayor Dario Nardella was TheFirstLast’s first donor followed by supporters from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, United Kingdom, USA and United Arab Emirates.

Florence Mayor pledges the first donation in support of Nelli’s Last Supper restoration. His dedication in the Donors Book reads: ‘March 8, 2017, Thank you and good luck to the friends of AWA! Dario Nardella.’

AWA’s pendant is designed and handmade by Nerdi Orafi, a goldsmith workshop near the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. It represents a tiny painter’s palette with a curved paintbrush, a tribute to historic women artists who ‘bent the rules’.

Paintbrush and palette pendant designed as a ‘perk’ for donors participating in TheFirstLast crowdfunding for Nelli’s Last Supper. Created in the Nerdi workshop, specialized in Florentine goldsmithery.

In March 2018, following a world-wide event called ‘AWA around the world’, 17-year-old Jasmine Salvato, a student at De La Salle Catholic College in Australia, produced a portrait honoring artist P. Nelli and AWA founder J. Fortune.

Recognizing The Last Supper as a devotional masterwork. Mass prior unveiling. Built in the mid-1300s, the mosaic-filled Spanish Chapel was enlivened during Nelli’s era when Duchess Elenora de Toledo chose it as her spiritual home.

For major patrons of Nelli’s Last Supper, mass in the Spanish Chapel provided a glittering spiritual prelude, leading up to the more ‘worldly’ inaugural celebration at the Santa Maria Novella on October 16, 2019.

The Last Supper unveiling had both cultural and spiritual meaning, just as Nelli’s painting did. Some 500 hundred years later, modern-day patrons attend mass at the Spanish Chapel prior seeing it displayed at Santa Maria Novella.

Phase two of the worldwide public appeal, ‘The Adopt an Apostle Program’, matched 12 donor couples with their respective ‘Saint’. Adopters on inauguration night (October 16, 2019) at the Santa Maria Novella complex, with a copy of ‘their’ painting.

October 16, 2019. AWA supporters ‘unroll’ an unforgettable souvenir marking the end of the 4-year-long conservation project. The replica of Nelli’s Last Supper was given to Santa Maria Novella’s Dominicans who will dearly miss the original.

The catalog, Visible: Plautilla Nelli and her Last Supper Restored, is a dual-language publication (English and Italian), published by The Florentine press. On inauguration night, withThe Florentine‘s G. Badiani and intern M. Stevens.

Ancient refectory, Santa Maria Novella Museum. Nelli’s newly restored Last Supper arrived ‘home sweet home’ on October 15, 2019 and was deftly hoisted up scaffolding built earlier that morning.

After four years in the conservation studio, the Last Supper by Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588) returns to the complex of Santa Maria Novella—for permanent public exhibition at the museum in the Old Refectory. Visible at last.

Simonella Condemi curated ‘Female Perspectives’, held at the Pitti Palace’s Gallery of Modern Art, in the Sala del Fiorino from March 7 to May 26, 2019. AWA underwrote the exhibition catalog in English, in partnership with the Uffizi Galleries.

‘Female Perspectives’ at the Pitti. In 2019, the Uffizi Galleries and AWA celebrated International Women’s Day (March 8) with an exhibition devoted to the professional commitment and talent of women from the late 19th and to the early 20th centuries.

‘Female Perspectives’ opening, Pitti’s Sala Bianca. ‘International female artists are well represented, because ex-pat women enjoyed a brand of freedom in Italy that was unknown in their home countries,’ says AWA director L. Falcone, at the podium.

Women’s Day exhibtion 2019. Curator Simonella Condemi welcomes guests to the Pitti’s Sala Bianca. ‘We are striving to pay tribute to women’s tireless endeavors, displaying their talent in art, photography, writing, teaching and politics.’

Cleaning Violante Ferroni’s Saint John of God Heals Plague Victims. Born in 1720, Ferroni was a student of Violante Siries and she worked in the workshop of G. Domenico Ferretti, who dominated the Florentine art scene for much of the 1700s.

Violante Ferroni was accepted as a member of the Accademia del Disegno in 1736. She exhibited at the Accademia di San Luca and the Uffizi Gallery. Conservator M. Vincenti cleans the large-scale Saint John of God Heals Plague Victims.

Conservator E. Wicks performs cleaning tests on Violante Ferroni’s first oval, commissioned in the mid 1700s when the Ancient Hospital of San Giovanni di Dio’s atrium was refurbished (it also doubled as a chapel for patients).

Conservator E. Wicks with Ferroni’s Saint John of God Heals Plague Victims. Part of a project known as ‘The Art of Healing’, this restoration spotlights an important Florentine ideal: art and beauty as a fundamental instrument of well-being.

Convervator M. Vincenti at work. Violante Ferroni’s Saint John of God Heals Plague Victims is an indoor, evening scene. The female figures visible at the oval’s edges reemerge from ‘the shadows’, during the restoration process.

Conservator E. Wicks with Violante Ferroni’s Saint John of God Heals Plague Victims. Ferroni (b.1720) painted large works featuring traditionally ‘masculine’ subjects: full-length figures and historic scenes with spiritual undertones.

Saint John of God Heals Plague Victims in the atelier post-cleaning. The colors have re-acquired their original hues. Conservators Wicks and Vincenti in their inch-by-inch quest to salvage Violante Ferroni’s eighteenth-century work.

Diagnostic analysis for the Duclos restoration was executed by the Institute for the Conservation and Valorization of Artistic Heritage of Italy’s National Research Council. Researcher S. Bracci works to uncover the pigments’ chemical composition.

Greta Garbo (1964) was donated to Florence by artist T. Maselli after Florence’s 1966 flood. Restored by R. Lari and exhibited in 2016 as part of the ‘Beyond Borders’ exhibition at Florence’s Twentieth-century Museum.

Conservator R. Lari with Greta Garbo by Pop Art exponent Titina Maselli. A striking rendition of an actress who took the Silver Screen by storm in the 1920s and 1930s, exhibited during ‘Beyond Borders’ at Florence’s Twentieth-century Museum.

Touch ups by conservator R. Lari. Artist T. Maselli is thought to have anticipated the Pop Art trend during her New York sojourn in the early 1960s. Her Greta Garbo is seen as proof of the artist’s cutting-edge qualities.

For Florence, the mother of all artists. After the Florence flood, Lithuanian sculptor A. Raphael Mafai donated her almost life-size bronze Maternity (1968) to the Civic Museums. Restored in 2014, now at Florence’s Twentieth-century Museum.

TItina Maselli’s Greta Garbo, under restoration. The artist’s modern themes separated her from exponents of the Roman School and Realism, but she did not fit in the ranks of geometric Abstractionists that abounded in early 20th-century Italy.

Copy of Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna del Sacco by eighteenth-century Florentine painter Irene Parenti Duclos, restored 2011. Above the door of the Accademia Gallery’s Salone dell’Ottocento, amidst ‘memories’ of Canova and Bartolini.

One of AWA’s protégés is Sicilian artist C. Accardi—Italy’s foremost female abstractionist in the twentieth century. She is known for her dramatic, colorful markings, pointedly devoid of symbolism. Conservator R. Lari with Red and Green, 1966.

Detail of the back of Nelli’s Crucifixion. Note how the top panels are not well finished. The sixteenth-century wood has been damaged by the widespread attack of xylophagous insects.

Detail of the back of Nelli’s Crucifixion, pre-restoration of the panel by R. Buddha. Note the imperfect refinishing of the boards and the three nails holding them together, along with the glue.

Irene Parent Duclos conference (2011). Hall of the Colossus, Accademia Gallery. A buffet was laid out near Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women. This plaster cast model prefigured the marble work in Piazza della Signoria’s Loggia del Lanzi.

Frame detail, Nelli’s Crucifixion, restored 2018. Fan-shaped decorative element placed at the bottom corner of the frame to hide panel breakage. The frame’s blue and gold would be stripped to uncover the black paint underneath.

Detail of the back of Nelli’s multi-panel Crucifixion with a nail holding two panels together. Note the blue frame and how the boards have been attacked by xylophagous insects, which bored holes and tunnels in the sixteenth-century wood.

Nelli’s panel is made up of several boards that have warped due to humidity. Detail of the back, including crossbar fitted with screws, which serves to support the back. Numerous holes made by xylophagous insects are visible.

Detail of the back of Nelli’s Crucifixion. Possibly the trademark of the woodworker who built the panel. The same mark was found on the artist’s Lamentation at the San Marco Museum.

The back of Nelli’s Crucifixion, during restoration. Her panel is made up of eight horizontal boards glued together. The lunette has two transversal beams added for support.

When De Fauveau moved to Florence in 1833, her friends included sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Caroline Bonaparte. She received many commissions, including this monument for poet Louise Favreau, restored 2012.

Restorers L. Pirelli and G. Tonini (2012) found that de Fauveau’s sculptural methods differed from those of her contemporaries, who copied Donatello. She used flat and toothed chisels to create linear movement.

This maintenance project removed dirt, dust and accretions on the surface and within the pores of the marble. Specialized treatments aimed to restore the sculpture’s chromatic balance, improving aesthetic appeal.

The monument’s home for the last fifty years has been the upper loggia of the Santa Croce’s first cloister. De Fauveau’s most recognized masterpiece is just one of the thousands of works of art damaged by 600,000 tons of debris after the 1966 flood.

AWA’s original documentary, made with Artmedia Studios in Florence, is entitled Félicie de Fauveau: A French Sculptress in Grand Tour Florence. It spotlights the artist’s life and the restoration of her most significant marble sculptures.

Conservator N. MacGregor during initial phases of pictorial restoration, using neutral-tone watercolors on Artemisia’s David and Bathsheba. The missing part of Bathsheba’s face and her eye were not reconstructed.

Conservator N. MacGregor removes old pictorial restorations. Unfortunately, a large part of Bathsheba’s face has been lost. Artemisia Gentileschi’s paining was restored as ‘A Christmas gift to the City of Florence’ in 2009.

Conservator Liz Wicks uses specially formulated solvent gels. Old repaints from previous restorations are also removed. Ferroni’s vibrant colors emerge and the painting’s details become visible once again.

Cleaning of the back of the frame and nail removal. The original frame hosts Edita Broglio’s Oranges, restored for exhibition at the newly opened Twentieth-century Museum in 2014.

Removal of staples used to fasten an ID card onto the back of the frame. Its ID tags were partially covered by rubberized paper used to secure Edita Broglio’s Oranges in its frame. Restored in 2014 for just-opened Twentieth-century Museum

The original frame for Edita Broglio’s Oranges had been attacked by xylophagous insects in the past (the bugs were no longer active). Note how their tunnels caused chunks of the frame to fall off.

The back of Amelia Peláez’s still-life was closed up using carton plume, to safeguard its handling and prevent dirt infiltration. Thanks to its 2016 restoration for the Twentieth-Century Museum, it can safely face thermo-hygrometric exchanges.

Wooden battens had been placed inside the frame to adjust its size to that of the Edita Broglio’s Oranges, restored for Florence’s Twentieth-century museum’s opening in 2014.

Conservator R. Lari closes the back of Amelia Peláez’s still-life. The identification tags on the back of the canvas stretcher were copied and placed on the frame. Ready for exhibition at ‘Beyond Borders’ at the Twentieth-century Museum in 2016.

The tags glued on the base were removed and placed in a transparent plastic bag underneath the sculpture. Felts were placed under the base to level it off, and create better support. Maintenance for Florence’s Twentieth-century Museum.

This poignant Maternity, under restoration, in 2014. It was presented to the public at the Twentieth-century Museum’s launch of When the World Answered, which featured artist Amalia Ciardi Duprè. Note its ID tags.

The intimacy between mother and son in Ciardi Dupre’s Maternity is strengthened by the figures’ nudity and unique positioning. Pre-restoration, the dust affects the sculptural surface, creating a gray patina.

Conservator Rossella Lari during restoration phase 1, which includes removal of dust from Amalia Ciardi Dupré’s Maternity Lying Down, for Florence’s Twentieth-century Museum in Piazza Santa Maria Novella.

The restoration of Amalia Ciardi Duprè’s Maternity Lying Down took place in a storage space belonging to the City of Florence in Piazza Santa Maria Novella. Note the work by artist Renato Ranaldi in the background.

Cleaning operations on Ciardi Duprè’s sculpture was carried out by removing dust with different types of brushes and then vacuuming it. ‘When it comes to making art, there’s no pretending,’ the artist once said. The same is true of restoration.

Conservator R. Lari contemplates Ciardi’s sculpture of great expressive intensity. The roughest areas are treated first, followed by its smoother parts where light has bigger impact. Restored, with 4 other sculptures for the Twentieth-Century Museum.

AWA in London at Grey’s Inn to celebrate the ‘saint’ gifted to Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin to celebrate her retirement. Before the party starts: L. Jmaeff, L. Falcone, B. McLachlin (the honoree), M. MacKinnon (co-adopter), J. Adams, A. Vogler.

London-based Canadians Margaret McKinnon and Wayne McArdle—adopters of two of Nelli’s Last Supper figures—developed the ‘Art Defense Fund’ for Judas, where ten donors were invited to ‘chip in’ to save the painting’s most unpopular figure.

‘After seeing a revival of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, I started to look at Judas as a more nuanced character,’ says the first female Chief Justice of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, who participated in the Art Defense Fund for Judas.

AWA Board member Margaret MacKinnon welcomes Birth of Venus author Sarah Dunant to Grey’s Inn and Chief Justice McLachlin’s retirement party, where the adoption of another Last Supper figure becomes official.

The Three Sisters. Post restoration. This painting was one of the 686 works of her own (on paper and canvas) that Chaplin gifted to Pitti’s Gallery of Modern Art, now part of the Uffizi Galleries. The bequest was registered in 1973.

Brushwork along the borders of the canvas corresponds to the original support, indicating that Elisabeth Chaplin mounted the painting on its current stretcher bars only after execution. The Three Sisters, Pitti’s Gallery of Modern Art.

The canvas edges has various spots of cracking paint because it was stretched too tightly. In this detailed shot, note the artist’s signature in red: E. Chaplin. The date, 1910, is also visible. Returned to Pitti’s Gallery of Modern Art in 2014.

Chaplin’s original frame was restored along with the Pitti’s The Three Sisters. R. Lari performed structural consolidation, replaced missing pieces and executed pictorial restoration, eliminating white scratches.

Secrets of the craft, during conservation. Evident slashes of paint can be seen along the border of Elisabeth Chaplin’s The Three Sisters. This is where the artist would wipe off her brush, to avoid too much paint on its tip.

In raking light. Excessive stretching of the canvas caused paint breakage. Chaplin was twenty years old when she painted The Three Sisters and was still perfecting her preparatory techniques.