OPIFICIO DELLE PIETRE DURE

The Opificio delle Pietre Dure of Florence provides vital consultancy work on the execution of the preliminary diagnostic and investigative procedures, and the finalisation of the plan for restoration of the mural paintings by Leonardo da Vinci in the Sala delle Asse.

The Opificio delle Pietre Dure was established as a national institution in 1975, when it combined two organisations that had long been active in the production and conservation of art in Florence: the long-established and renowned Opificio, founded in 1588 as a court manufactory and then turned into a restoration centre at the end of nineteenth century, and the Laboratorio di Restauro, which was created as part of the Soprintendenza in 1932, and later transferred to the new offices in Fortezza da Basso following the floods in Florence in 1966, where it has since greatly grown.

At present, Opificio is one of the main institutions in the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. It operates in three main fields: conservation, through 11 specialist offices and their approximately 60 restorers; research, both theoretical and applied to specific restoration cases, organised around the scientific laboratory; education, through the Scuola di Alta Formazione and several internship programmes run in cooperation with similar institutions in Italy and abroad.
www.opificiodellepietredure.it