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Kennedy, CRIA eventually included over 200 members or affiliates from across the United States, comprising members of the advisory committee, the national executive committee, administrative staff, special consultants, and dozens of area representatives from one coast to the other. Under the honorary presidency of Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of the late president John F. Within a week of the flood, CRIA was already functioning nationwide and had secured large pledges for the recovery efforts. In addition to artworks and monuments, the Committee promptly expanded its scope to include damaged books and manuscripts from libraries and archives. The group’s aim was to raise money to support the emergency rescue operations already underway as well as provide effective long-term assistance for the huge task of restoration ahead. Following the impulse given by Fred Licht and Bates Lowry, professors of art history at Brown University, and Licht’s wife Meg, also an art historian, a group of distinguished scholars, curators, and conservators quickly joined forces to create the Committee to Rescue Italian Art. Committee to Rescue Italian Art (CRIA)ĬRIA appeal by Edward Kennedy CRIA MISC 1.02bĪs soon as news of the disaster reached the United States, concerned scholars of Italian art and culture leapt into action to help save the precious artistic heritage of Florence and other cities, especially Venice, ravaged by floods. National and international committees to save the artworks sprang up spontaneously in many countries, and collections of funds and material goods began in many Italian cities.
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In the hours following the flood, when the full extent of the catastrophe began to emerge, a massive show of solidarity erupted across the world. Untold numbers of manuscripts in the nearby State Archives faced the same fate. The deposits of the National Library of Florence were completely inundated, and millions of volumes and rare early printed books risked being lost forever. The surge had a powerfully destructive force, as Ugo Procacci, Superintendent of the Fine Arts Commission, explained to the first group of American restorers to arrive ten days later:ĭamages were due not only to immersion in water, but to the fact that the flood hit the city with a speed of 50 miles an hour, shattering objects and transforming movable objects into missiles which were hurled against altarpieces, tearing and breaking them. Thousands of paintings and art objects housed in museums, churches, and private collections in the historic district had been destroyed.
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The church of Santa Croce was submerged under three meters of water and very many works of art, including Cimabue’s Crucifixion, had been irreparably damaged.
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Wherever the floodwaters had reached, there was now debris and mud. By then, the heart of the city, its historic district, and many suburban neighborhoods had remained under water for more than a full day.
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The explosion of heating oil tanks formed a slimy film on the current of water, smearing the walls of the city’s houses and monuments and lingering even as the river settled back within its banks. The flood, the most severe ever to strike Florence, swept away everything it found in its way. The fire brigades and army answered thousands of calls to save people besieged by the high waters. Thousands of Florentines were forced to abandon their homes and take refuge on the highest floors of apartment buildings or even on the roofs of houses. The historic center and the neighborhoods along the river were inundated in a very short time. In Florence, the Arno soon overwhelmed its banks, its levels peaking after dawn on November 4 and showing no sign of receding until the evening. Intense rainfall on the evening of November 3rd continued into the small hours the following day, and the river level rose by six meters in as many hours. The Uffizi, the Accademia, the national library and state archives, the Duomo and the Ponte Vecchio are among the countless artistic and cultural treasures concentrated within Florence’s historic center, and they all lay within the floodplain. The river was already swollen, and the surrounding area saturated, by heavy rains that autumn. The Arno flows through the very center of the city of Florence and in perilous proximity to many of its most significant monuments. During the night of November 4, 1966, the levels of the river Arno began to rise swiftly and with little warning.