ABSTRACT
Guglielmo Botti was one of the restorers whose practical skills and critical orientation were best suited to the requirements of Cavalcaselle. Originally a painter of stained-glass windows, his first interventions took place in Pisa where, in 1856, he had been entrusted with an experimental intervention on the Ratto di Dina by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Camposanto: fixing (fissaggio)iv with “punic wax”, removal of the vulnerable areas of the intonaco, replacement (rifacimento) of the arriccio and reattachment to the wall. In the purist climate of a restoration directed by a painting academy in the mid-nineteenth century, not even the cuts made to allow the partial transfer of the bulges (spanci) were hidden by any retouching, and it was mentioned as a particular merit of the restoration that it was executed without the use of the paintbrush.20
