A High-Maintenance Relationship for 637 Years,
but Milan’s Duomo Is Still Adored
The care for Milan’s cathedral has been nonstop since
1386, but despite the constant need for refurbishment, the beloved landmark’s
hold on the city is unbreakable.
By
Elisabetta Povoledo
Feb. 19,
2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/world/europe/milan-italy-duomo-cathedral.html
MILAN —
Even in a city with La Scala, the glorious opera house, Milan’s cathedral
unquestionably reigns as the most beloved landmark in Italy’s fashion and
financial capital.
But the
Duomo, as it’s known, has also been an extraordinarily high maintenance icon
for six centuries, demanding constant care essentially since construction began
in 1386.
The
cathedral, along with the 3,400 or so statues and carvings adorning its
countless nooks and crannies, and its buttresses and pinnacles and spires, is
crafted from rare pink-hued marble mined from a single quarry on the slopes of
the Alps, some 60 miles to the north.
The stone’s
unique physical and chemical characteristics make it particularly beautiful.
But the stunning coloration also comes with a flaw: The marble is particularly
fragile.
“The marble
can shatter suddenly,” said Francesco Canali, the site manager for the
Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, the association that has been responsible for the
restoration and preservation of the monument since 1387. Veins in the marble
contain traces of ferrous materials, and when they, or the iron pins placed
through the centuries to link the stones together, oxidize, they expand and
shatter the marble into “little pieces or even chunks,” Mr. Canali explained.
“Interaction
with the environment has left profound consequences,” said Mr. Canali, an
engineer by training.
The
record-breaking heat waves of recent summers mean that the differences in
temperature between the parts of the cathedral most exposed to the sun and
those in shadow to the north can put additional stress on the monument.
Pollutants
like nitric oxide and sulfur dioxide build up black crusts on the marble, “like
tartar that preludes cavities in teeth,” Mr. Canali said.
The cost of
all this cleaning and upkeep has always been steep, and now the cathedral,
which is “owned by the Milanese,” as its archpriest, the Rev. Gianantonio
Borgonovo, likes to say, has been looking to boost aid from the private sector
to cover some of the nonstop expense.
This has
led to an “Adopt a Statue” program, which allows companies to finance the
restoration of one of the Duomo’s thousands of statues and, in exchange, take
it home to show it off for three years.
That’s how
a striking marble statue of King David holding a harp wound up on proud display
in a corporate atrium.
Until the
1960s, the marble statue of the biblical king, carved by an unknown sculptor in
the first half of the 16th century, had adorned the Gothic-style Duomo in the
center of the city. But after the statue languished in a restoration workshop
for decades, part of its repair was paid for by a Milan-based adhesives and
chemical products company.
“We thought
that a Milanese company just had to have a little piece of the Duomo, so it
seemed like a wonderful and symbolic project,” said Veronica Squinzi, the chief
executive of the company, Mapei.
Officially,
the cathedral was finished in 1965, 579 years after it was started, explaining
the Italian saying for something that is never ending: “è come la fabbrica del
Duomo,” or “like the construction of the cathedral.”
But the
continuing need for marble for repair work has been good news for the quarry in
Candoglia, a hamlet of 200 people, which has managed to stay operational thanks
to its sole customer.
“There’s
always plenty of work,” said Marco Scolari, who oversees the Candoglia quarry
and its marble restoration laboratories, of which there are two, one in
Candoglia, the other in Milan.
The
laboratory of the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, the institution
responsible for the conservation, restoration and development of the Milan
Cathedral.Credit...Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times
Experts at
the Veneranda Fabbrica closely monitor the Duomo’s structural well-being, with
the entire monument wired with sensors that provide constant digital
measurements of varying kinds, “like a constantly working electrocardiogram,”
Mr. Canali said.
Twice a
year, too, the cathedral’s statuary and decorative elements are given a
physical checkup by specialized workers who swing from cranes, inspecting them
for fractures and fissures.
When
repairs are necessary, the marble is now pre-worked by machines, but
specialized training is still necessary for the stone workers called on to
replicate the handiwork of long-dead sculptors. “The human hand is essential,”
Mr. Scolari said.
Fabio
Belloni, a stone carver at the Milan laboratory, said he had once worked on a
single block on the facade of the Duomo for 18 months.
“You have
to know the material, where to put your hands; there can be no margin for
error,” Mr. Belloni said. “You need patience,” he added, and one wrong move
“could betray months of work.”
A large
part of the decorative stonework on the Duomo dates to the past two centuries,
a flurry of activity that followed the completion of the facade — which
Napoleon Bonaparte insisted be done by 1805, so he would have an appropriate
setting for his crowning as king of Italy.
The
Milanese of the time didn’t embrace that facade, but it didn’t stop them from
loving their cathedral. The work of the Veneranda Fabbrica was subsidized for
years by the donations and legacies of wealthy Milanese, but also by locals of
more modest means who would drop valuables in boxes on the construction site
that would then be auctioned off.
As recently
as a century ago, there was a cafe at the top of the Duomo where Milanese would
meet to socialize and gossip. On the ground, the cathedral’s construction
workers discovered that the saffron they used to color stained glass yellow had
a savory side purpose when added to the vats of risotto cooked up for lunch,
now known as risotto alla Milanese.
“The Duomo
has always been the house of the Milanese,” said Fulvio Pravadelli, general
director of the Veneranda Fabbrica.
If saints
and martyrs have dominated for centuries as favored subjects, carvers over the
years have sneaked in more contemporary figures, including the boxer Primo Carnera,
a world heavyweight champion in the 1930s, and even a small head of Abraham
Lincoln.
Over time,
hundreds of statues and decorative motifs have been replaced, the originals
ending up in an ersatz cemetery on the city’s outskirts.
For the
stone carvers in Milan and Candoglia, even the smallest decoration — which can
take months to replicate — is worth the effort.
“The beauty
of our work is to bring forth from a piece of marble something that wasn’t
there,” said Paolo Sabbadini, a stone carver at the Candoglia laboratory, who
said that when a piece he was replicating was especially worn, he would add a
personal touch to the decoration, even though he knew that at hundreds of feet
off the ground, it was unlikely to be noticed, “even with a zoom lens.”
“But in
theory, we’re not working for ourselves,” Mr. Sabbadini said. “It has to be
done well even if you can’t see it, otherwise we’d have no reason for being
here.”
Elisabetta
Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome and has been writing about Italy for more
than three decades. @EPovoledo • Facebook
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