Compatibilità, reversibilità, minimo intervento e autenticità: la difficile convivenza tra dati e valori nel restauro

Compatibility, reversibility, minimal intervention: in recent decades, opinion has converged on these terms, including at an international level, regarding the requirements that a culturally aware restoration project must comply with. The path that led to this point of sharing was long. In addition to the more exquisitely humanistic aspects that inform the reflection on restoration since its origins, a substantial factor has been the growing interdisciplinary contribution provided by the 'hard' sciences, especially chemistry and physics, which have allowed gain in-depth analysis of the knowledge of materials and on the verification of the effectiveness - including compatibility - of conservation interventions (such for example, for Italy the scientific studies on natural and artificial stone materials, in particular in the last decades of the twentieth century), connected to attention to the intervention 'limits' and 'ways'. Within the framework outlined, as has been said, there is growing international agreement regarding the criteria deriving from scientific data; however, on the contrary, one cannot fail to consider the existence of a diversity of nuances in the meaning and the purposes assumed by the restoration in different cultures. This aspect is due to the recognition of 'values' (instead of 'scientific 'data'), which finds in the term 'authenticity' the key to understanding the idea that underlies the reasons for the restoration, rather than to the reception and rational interpretation of scientific 'data' on which compatibility, reversibility and minimal intervention are based. Ultimately, this word, with highly variable meanings in the different cultures, is the element of most significant distinction for the various operational outcomes in restoration.