Restoration issues in Baroque architecture: Finishings and colours in the urban context and internal spatiality
by Donatella Fiorani

This contribution means to offer a synthesis of the issues linked to the study and restoration of the finishings characterizing the Baroque Rome. It recurs to the abundant bibliography as well as to a direct assessment of last years’ interventions.
Indeed, it illustrates the finishing techniques mostly used in plastering, which were often assigned the delicate task of intensifying and underlining the effects of an illusion and simulation of different materials and complex spaces.
Changes in tastes and sensitiveness have been modifying, between the 19th and 20th century, the surfaces of 17th-18th century buildings. Re-discovering the material reality of such manufacts, thanks to documentary studies and on-field findings, has oriented restoration towards a recovery of a light shade to the detriment of the ochrous and brown tones of the last two centuries.
The changes in colours are only the most visible aspect of deeper issues that shake restoration: like the choice of a theory and a technique of intervention (for a conservation, integration or replacement that, in some way, takes into account the criteria of sustainability, authenticity and minimum intervention), or the relation with the context and the link between external and internal spatiality.