Il mega-museo degli affreschi staccati di Firenze: genesi e riflessi di un progetto mai realizzato

From the second half of the 1950s, following the numerous “exhibitions of restored works of art” set up at the Accademia Gallery, but in particolar after the four reviews dedicated exclusively to detached frescoes which will be held in the Forte di Belvedere (1957, 1958, 1959, 1966), the project to create a museum of frescoes in Florence became more concrete. The so-called “stagione degli stacchi”, a huge operation organized to remove and safeguard wall paintings in Italy, together with the “hunt” for sinopie, the preparatory drawings realized by masters under the painted plaster, had reached its peak, and the idea, put forward, among others, by Ugo Procacci and Mario Salmi, was also widely supported by public opinion. Initially the location assigned to host the museum, should have been the Carmine convent, then the rooms of the Uffizi Gallery and finally the architecture of Forte di Belvedere. It will be the flood of 1966 changing everything starting the definitive renunciation of an innovative museum project which, however, for various reasons will never be able to take off completely.