Cappella dei Magi
Arte & Culto
Florence, Italy
Cappella dei Magi
Precious heart of 15th-century Florence
The Chapel of the Magi is a well-kept secret on the piano nobile of the Medici-Riccardi Palace in Florence. With no windows or overlooks, the Chapel is like a pearl inside a shell, still containing all the devotion, art and pride of a dynasty that has marked Italian culture from the 15th century to the present day. A sacred place where the boundaries of this extremely intimate architecture are drawn by the austerity of the 15th-century choir, the carved and gold-painted ceiling and the floor with its arabesque geometries. The real jewel in these 40 square metres, however, remain the frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli, a pupil of Beato Angelico. He depicts in an extraordinary way, on the three walls of the Chapel, the cavalcade of the Magi in a parallelism with the procession of Pope Pius II Piccolomini arriving in Florence in April 1458. The altarpiece, positioned in the scarsella, houses a copy of the original Adoration of the Child by Filippo Lippi accompanied by Angels in adoration facing the altar on the walls of the apse.
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.zipBefore the discovery of the Americas
The working objective, in collaboration with the University of Florence, was to design a lighting system that could give new light to the Chapel of the Magi, an Italian artistic heritage of the Early Renaissance. For this small masterpiece of international relevance, Linea Light Group provided its expertise during the preliminary verification phase to associate the different colour readings, the possible presence of distortions and metamerisms as well as optical alterations with a punctual lighting, in order to best disengage the museum functions in its management.
The desire to improve the vision, enjoyment and accessibility of the Chapel of the Magi has extended Linea Light Group's field of action to chemistry, as well as biology and archaeometry in favour of an all-round project for the correct lighting and conservation of the space and paintings.
The extraordinary expressive peculiarities of Benozzo's palette and the need for a new legibility of the frescoed surfaces led to the necessary choice of a customised product for the museum. For perfect colour vision, constant colorimetric control and continuous colour stability, the choice fell on the Optus LED projector. In a customised version, it lives in quadruplicity as a multi projector, in seven different boxes, positioned throughout the floor plan. The system also allows the diodes to be switched on and off via Bluetooth communication directly with all Optus on the perimeter, to emphasise and describe every detail of this priceless and precious treasure chest. This product thus also becomes an educational tool at the service of museum guides thanks to its dimmability, allowing a substantial improvement in the usability of the works.
The products used
Optus_EX
Optus_EX
Adjustable version
Adjustable Focus, Flood, Medium Flood, Medium Wide Flood, +2
2700 K - 3000 K - 4000 K - 5000 K, +1