It is difficult enough as it is to create an artwork worthy in the eyes of others of restoration that one hates to criticize such restoration. Still . . . I wrote earlier on this blog that The Florentine newspaper reported that in early March, someone broke off a finger in Pio Pedi’s beloved composition of four figures in marble.
This happened one night in Florence, Italy’s, Loggia dei Lanzi, next to where the mime, gReY, performs. [I wrote about gReY yesterday.] The finger belonged to the slain brother in the marble carving titled “The Abduction of Polyxena” and I was anxious to see the damage done.
Make no mistake about it: the real criminal is the one who had no respect for this artwork. Even if one could justify this vandalism as an accident, an honorable person would have retrieved the stone finger from the ground and turned it in to some Italian authority or Loggia volunteer guard.
Still, my main point with these images is to show all artists, and anyone who works with detail, that one must STAND BACK from the work to see what is really happening. Up close, I do not doubt that the person(s) reattaching this marble finger thought that there was a good match in the alignment. (See the first image)
However, when one stands about two meters away, as I did, and looks at the entire hand, it is clear that the finger should have been reattached in a way that was more consistent with the shape and direction of the bones in the human hand. The index finger looks distinctively bent backwards in an unnatural way (even for a newly dead guy). One of the beauties of sculpture is that we have many more views to consider. It is also what makes creating sculpture so challenging.
I am sure that when I was visiting Florence, Italy, in 2004, I must have photographed this sculpture from a similar vantage point. Alas, those images are on my computer in Texas and cannot serve me now. Sigh . . .
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