“Sopra alcuni monumenti di belle arti restaurati”. La cultura del restauro a Lucca nell’Ottocento

Lucca can represent, also in the light of recent studies, a privileged observatory for understanding the dynamics and changes underway in the broad nineteenth-century debate on restoration in Tuscany. Considered marginal compared to the nearby Florence and Lucca, the small capital instead records the presence of figures of absolute importance and the succession of emblematic construction sites within the city walls: from the almost fifty-year-old intervention on the Church of San Michele in Foro, to the discussed works for the cathedral, up to the arrangements of the amphitheater by Notolini. The theoretical elaboration processes underway over the decades are reflected in the operational choices, amplifying key issues for restoration, such as those of completion, stylistic unity or the return to a presumed origin. All issues that take shape in the actions undertaken by the local protection institutions (with a precociousness in this sense compared to the panorama of the Italian states), as in the comparison between the often divergent opinions expressed by the protagonists involved in conservation operations.