The Pinecone “returns” to the Niche of the Belvedere
Courtyard of the Pinecone, Vatican Museums
Following the completion of its restoration, and freed from the scaffolding that caged it for more than ten months, thanks to the lockdown, the colossal pinecone located in the exedra of the Niche of the Belvedere of the Vatican Museums once again offers itself to the admiring gaze of visitors who enter the large courtyard to which it lends its name, the Courtyard of the Pinecone.
The complex conservation intervention did not involve just the bronze work realised between the first and second centuries A.D. by Publius Cincius Salvius to decorate an important public monument in ancient Rome (perhaps in the Campus Martius), but also the monumental marble capital (unearthed in the excavations at the Baths of Alexander Severus) which constitutes a base worthy of such a work.
The restoration of the Pina di San Pietro, as it is referred to by Dante in the 31st Canto of his Inferno, was carried out by the Vatican Museums Metals and Ceramics Restoration Laboratory and the Stone Materials Restoration Laboratory under the scientific direction of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. The intervention, made possible by the generous support of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, forms part of the more extensive and complex restoration project initiated in 2015 regarding the consolidation, as well as the painting with neutral colours, of all the internal surfaces of the Courtyard of the Pinecone.