| Whenever you touch
a monument, you become at least partially responsible for its well being.
Usually, some one else has the full, formal responsibility - in the case
of San Lorenzo in Lucina the various Soprintendenze - but if you begin
to study a monument you have a moral duty to make at least a contribution
to its well being. You can't just take the information you wanted and walk
away. You have had something from the monument, and the monument should
have something from you.
For this reason, the small conservation
work which we have carried out in san Lorenzo in Lucina cannot be separated
from our research. In 2000, some of the marbles and inscriptions in the
portico of San Lorenzo in Lucina were cleaned
and consolidated under the guidance of Agneta Freccero (University of Göteborg).
Those who are responsible for funding excavations and other reseach should
be ready to fund also this kind of work. In our case, most of the work
has been carried out as a kind of both research and teaching. In this
way the work became an advantage both for the monument and for our scholars
and students.
Just like our research, our conservation
work has tried to have the biggest possible respect for the integrity of
the monument. For this reason, in some cases our work may not be very
visible, as in the case of the marbles in the portico. Usually you expect
marble to turn white after cleaning and conservation. But, as Agneta Freccero
will explain in her report, that means removing part of the stone, its
skin, which just as the skin of an old person cannot become that of a child
if you don't want to use violence. Our aim was to do only what the stone
needed, and to prepare the ground for conservation and research in the
future.
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