Villa Farnesina 1927–1944: “Restoration Exhibition” by Eng. Giovanni Massari (1940)

The restoration work carried out at the Villa Farnesina in the 1930s—presented at the 1940 Restoration Exhibition on the occasion of the Second Conference of Superintendents of Antiquities and Art (1939)—together with the founding of the Central Institute for Restoration (ISCR), marked a milestone in the history of conservation in Italy.

These interventions laid the groundwork for a unified theoretical framework capable of standardizing restoration methodologies for artworks and archaeological finds at a national level, definitively moving beyond the empirical approach that had prevailed until then.