MARCO GRASSI
Third-generation Florentine art conservator on the BEAUTY of early Sienese paintings, humanitarian service, and how he is still learning after a near sixty-year career in restoration.
I vividly remember my first visit to Marco Grassi’s conservation studio on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Entering directly from the street, the sunlit interior felt like another world: unframed canvases resting here and there, bottles and brushes, the walls lined with books, the air laden with the scent of drying oils. It was unmistakably an artist’s studio, but one devoted not to his own creations but to the work of artists who lived long ago: a space consecrated to burnishing beauty. But it was Grassi’s extraordinary propensity for gifted narration over our lunch at an Italian neighborhood café that made me feel like I was encountering a long-lost relative of Giorgio Vasari. Generously sharing intimate accounts of his experience with European paintings, scholars, and collectors reaching back nearly sixty years, Grassi has viewed in close proximity hundreds of works of art from many private collections, including a thirty-year stint for the Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza at his famed seventeenth-century Villa Fortunia on Lake Lugano. What might a Florentine conservator, born from two generations of art dealers, and having worked on the most exquisite collection to be purchased by Spain in the modern era, have to say about beauty? Well, not surprisingly, a lot.
How did you first become aware of beauty?
I was fortunate because my grandfather and my father were both art dealers in Florence. They both lived and worked with paintings and sculptures and so I was affected, even unconsciously, by the fact that objectively beautiful and interesting things surrounded me. I heard all their conversations about these things; even if I might not have entirely comprehended it all at that time, it somehow got through. Then, of course, Florence itself is very easy on the eyes; just walking around, you’re surrounded by things that are quite remarkable and distinguished aesthetically.
GRASSI RAN A PRIVATE CONSERVATION STUDIO IN FLORENCE FOR MANY DECADES, WHERE HE WITNESSED THE HISTORIC FLOOD OF 1966, AN EVENT THAT TRANSFORMED CONSERVATION PRACTICES IN ITALY. PHOTO BY NICOLE BLACKWOOD.
What are the terms or forms of beauty that most speak to you?
Because of my training and background with an art-involved family, I became acquainted at a very young age with early Italian paintings. In particular, paintings made in Tuscany between 1250 and 1380, or what is generally called the primitive period, but which is not primitive at all. These were works my father loved, and my grandfather also dealt with, so I think I naturally developed an aesthetic love for them too.
DETAIL OF DUCCIO’S MAESTA ALTARPIECE, DUOMO DI SIENA, 1308-1311, GOLD AND TEMPERA. PHOTO: WIKIPEDIA.
Early Italian paintings, especially in Florence and Siena, reached a pinnacle of density through the use of remarkable, high-quality materials, including precious and rare materials like gold and lapis lazuli. But in addition to their material perfection, these artists like Giotto and Duccio, were also expressing a religious, spiritual sentiment – they were connecting with the gods in a direct way. The famous Duccio Maestà in Siena is probably the greatest object painted in medieval times. In the Latin inscription – ‘MATER S(AN)C(T)A DEI SIS CAUSA SENIS REQUIEI SIS DUCIO VITA TE QUIA PINXIT ITA’ – the painter speaks directly to the Madonna above saying ‘this is how I painted you’. This direct connection between art, devotion, and beauty had significance in early Italian paintings, but this relationship has been diluted little by little over time as other considerations appear in its place: in Renaissance art it was the expression of intellectual humanism, in the Neoclassical period it was archeology, while later in the Romantic period art had more to do with poetics, and so on up until today, where I’m not sure what is really going on.
ALTHOUGH FLORENTINE BY BIRTH, SIENA IS GRASSI’S GREAT LOVE. PHOTO BY NICOLE BLACKWOOD.
What is the most beautiful object you’ve ever seen?
This is an easy one. The most beautiful object for me was a large painted crucifixion that was once the pinnacle of an altarpiece made by a Sienese follower of Duccio called Ugolino of Siena (active between 1317-1327). Until the nineteenth-century, the altarpiece was on the high altar of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence – which is, of course, where Massacio’s frescos are located made over a hundred years later. Ugolino’s fragment hits all the right buttons for me. The painting is, in my view, my ultimate ideal of what great paintings can achieve in terms of spiritual content, facture, virtuosity, in essence the complete command of art and technique – there are no mistakes.
UGOLINO OF SIENA, THE CRUCIFIXION WITH THE VIRGIN, SAINT JOHN AND ANGELS. CREDIT: MUSEO THYSSEN-BOREMISZA, MADRID.
But it is also from Siena, which is a very special place for me. Siena has all the qualities that Florence doesn’t have. Florence is a hard-bitten place; it’s a city of merchants and realists. Siena is different. For about a century and a half, Siena was not only rich because of the Chigi family, but it was semi-independent, and therefore developed a very particular style. Siena is poetry. Siena is Petrarch. And this painting, like the poetry of Petrarch, is musical - it’s lyrical, it’s heavenly, it’s beautiful.
VILLA FAVORITA (c. 1660) ON LAKE LUGANO WAS WHERE GRASSI SPENT THIRTY YEARS CONSERVING THE FAMED COLLECTION OF BARON THYSSEN NOW HOUSED AT THE TYSSEN-BORNEMISZIA MUSEUM IN MADRID. PHOTO: WIKIPEDIA.
What is the most beautiful object you live with day to day?
I am not a collector, but I have a few ‘souvenirs’ – things I was able to buy at certain moments when I could afford them. Several years ago, I had a beautiful annunciation diptych by Paolo Veneziano, a very fine crucifixion by a follower of Duccio called the Master of Monte Oliveto, and a quite beautiful small work by Alessandro Allori, who was a Florentine mannerist. They all kept me company for a long time, but I had to sell them with some regret when my income was reduced. They found new homes and their sale helped keep me in the lifestyle to which I was accustomed. These pictures were like buying shares, which I had never bought in my life. But when people buy shares, at a certain point in their life – like when they want to retire, for example – they have to sell them. Lucky for me, I never lost any money, so I have no regrets.
There are beautiful objects or experiences, but also beautiful actions. What is the most beautiful act or actions you have seen?
I’m a religious man – a Roman Catholic – but on a scale of one-to-ten, I would rank down around a low four or five. I do have a sense of morality and belong to a religious lay order called the Order of Malta, which does a lot of humanitarian work in the world. For a number of years, I participated in those efforts with my wife Cristina, who is also a member; but now my health doesn’t easily permit my involvement. However, back then, we would go to a hospice in New York and participate in some of their activities: taking patients to mass, entertaining them, even feeding them occasionally. We were participating in a very small way, in a task that I think is very noble, which is to help the less fortunate. In that respect, some of our colleagues were exceptional. The sacrifices they made were far more significant than what we ever did, so I would say these were moments where we were exposed to great human benevolence.
IN THE CHRISTO GRANDE PAPERING THE LAST SUPPER BY GIORGIO VASARI, IN FLORENCE AFTER THE FLOOD OF 1966. PHOTO COURTESY OF MARCO GRASSI.
Does beauty make you a better person and how?
The Greeks, Aristotle in particular, said it all through the concept of virtue – not just virtue in the way we intend it, but virtue in the perfection of things.
How do you cultivate a sense of the beauty in your everyday life?
What I value most about my work is that each object is different. Each one poses different problems. Each one stimulates you in different ways. And the nice thing about my profession is that in conservation there is a kind of aesthetic democracy - kind of like a hospital. Everything gets the same basic treatment. Grandma’s portrait, for example, needs to be looked after just like a great painting. This keeps me aware of the particular. The other aspect is that because of that diversity, each thing poses new problems and so I’m always learning.
GRASSI IN HIS NYC STUDIO. PHOTO COURTESY OF MARCO GRASSI.