Microbes remove stains from Medici murder victims in Michelangelo's marble - Market Research Telecast

Alessandro de ‘Medici had a short but eventful life: in 1530, at the age of just 19, he was appointed city lord of Florence – and only seven years later he was murdered by a distant cousin. But his traces can still be seen almost half a millennium after his death: spots and bumps on one tomb created by Michelangelo – with the allegorical figures “morning” and “evening”.

Urgent burial

Allessandro was apparently buried there in a hurry without his internal organs removed. Its body fluids and phosphates penetrated the marble over the centuries and made it unsightly. In order to clean the tomb, the restorers now as reported by the “New York Times”, Bacteria a.

After years of cleaning, most of the tombs and sculptures in the Medici Chapel in Florence shine in their original white. But some stains just wouldn’t go away. The resting place of Allessandro and his father was particularly unsightly Lorenzo di Piero de ‘Mediciwho were buried in the same coffin.

At a biology congress in 2016, the restorers learned how bacterial strains isolated from the wastewater of a mine in Sardinia had removed rust stains in the marble of a Roman gallery, among other things. Together with biologists, they set out to research more systematically the possibilities of microbes for cleaning works of art.

Safe for humans

First, they sifted through a collection of around 1,000 strains that are normally used in oil spills or to break down heavy metals. They then used eight of them on invisible marble samples behind the altar. All eight are harmless to humans, emphasized Monica Bietti, the former director of the chapel, opposite the “New York Times”.

Then the restorers took bacteria from the strain Pseudomonas stutzeriisolated from waste from a tannery near Naples, as well as one Rhodococcus-Stem from a diesel-contaminated soil in Caserta, and put them on the remains of glue and oil in the ears and hair of Michelangelo’s “Night” sculpture. Then her face was also given a beauty pack made from bacteria gel. The project was a success, so the researchers also used their bacteria elsewhere – for example to free a large marble relief in St. Peter’s Basilica from wax from the sacrificial candles.

In October 2020 they finally made themselves SH7-Bacteria from the soil of a mine in Sardinia, contaminated with heavy metals, unearthed the most stubborn case: the spotty resting place of Allessandro and his father Lorenzo. There, the bacteria ate up the remains of Allessandro – or at least the phosphates that had penetrated the marble. “The Medicis were more used to sitting at the top of the food chain in Florence,” commented the New York Times.

(grh)

Disclaimer: This article is generated from the feed and not edited by our team.

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2021-06-19 17:27:52Z
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