Work Begins on Flood-damaged Masterpiece

Giorgio Vasari's Last Supper is to be restored, 38 years after it was severely damaged by floods which killed 30 people in Florence.

Experts at the city's Opificio restoration institute will begin a preliminary inspection of the work tomorrow.

The restoration is expected to be unusually difficult, and Marco Ciatti, head of paintings at the Opificio, said it would take a long time.

"It's impossible to say how long the whole restoration process will take. It could be 10 years, it could even be 20," he said.

The painting, regarded as one the greatest Mannerist renderings of Christ's last meal with his apostles, was finished in 1546.

It was commissioned by Pope Paul III for the refectory of Santa Croce convent in Florence.

After floodwaters swept through Florence in 1966 Vasari's work was found in a mixture of mud, detritus and heating oil.

It was given emergency treatment at the time and split into five panels.

But ever since the 6 metre by 3 metre (20ft by 9ft) painting has lain in the storerooms of the Pitti Palace, covered in protective paper.

At the end of last year a reporter from the Italian magazine Panorama found it in a pitiful state in a room with broken windows which was also used to store workmen's tools.

The panels had shrunk as they dried, cracking the surface of the painting, which in some places had risen almost two inches above the panel.

The magazine said the protective paper had proved to be a disastrous mistake, because it had trapped the remains of the mud.

About 120 other works damaged by the flood are still stored in various places around the city, but unlike the Last Supper they have no immediate prospect of being restored.