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Screen capture from an animation showing the construction of a church at Eremitani.
Screen capture from an animation showing the construction of a church at Eremitani.

Eremitani

20132015

The Church of the Eremitani in Padua was almost entirely destroyed in the Second World War. Prior to this terrible event, the church was an important center for the spiritual life of Padua, and contained many important works of art, including a chapel decorated with monumental frescoes by Mantegna. Although the building is reconstructed, the restorers themselves made a series of strategic decisions about what and how to repair the monument. Only isolated fragments of Mantegna ‘s majestic cycle survive, applied to large-scale photographic images of the frescoes prior to their demolition.

This project consists of a complete laser scan and a reconstruction of the church in relation to successive phases of modifications and additions since the early fourteenth century. The project engages with the long history of the Eremitani church as the aggregate of human interventions that added, removed, changed and reconceptualized different parts of the monument over time.