Treasures Underfoot: Preserving Venice’s Church Floor Artifacts An Interdisciplinary Qualifying Project Report submitted to the faculty of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science Submitted By: Danielle Dechaine Meghan Hennessey Jeffrey Orszulak Kevin Rullmann Sponsoring Agencies: UNESCO La Soprintendenza all’Archeologia Submitted To: Project Advisors: Fabio Carrera John Zeugner [email protected] https://sites.google.com/site/ve12churches 0 Table of Contents Abstract...................................................................................................................................... 6 Executive Summary ................................................................................................................... 7 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................11 2 Background ............................................................................................................................13 2.1 Churches of Venice .............................................................................................................13 2.2 Venetian Church Floor Artifacts ...........................................................................................14 2.2.1 Church Floor Materials .................................................................................................15 2.2.2 Types of Artifacts ..........................................................................................................15 2.2.3 Catholic Burial Practices ...............................................................................................16 2.3 Venetian Church Hierarchy .................................................................................................16 2.3.1 Patriarch of Venice .......................................................................................................17 2.3.2 Departments of the Church ...........................................................................................17 2.3.3 Monastic Orders of Catholicism ....................................................................................18 2.4 Preservation of Venetian Church Floor Artifacts ..................................................................19 2.4.1 Venetian Process for Restoring Artifacts .......................................................................20 2.4.2 Venetian Public Art Application .....................................................................................21 2.5 Assessment of Church Floor Artifacts .................................................................................22 2.5.1 Fading and Wear ..........................................................................................................22 2.5.2 Text Readability ............................................................................................................23 2.5.3 Cracks ..........................................................................................................................24 2.5.4 Holes and Joint Gaps ...................................................................................................25 3 Methodology ..........................................................................................................................26 3.1 Organizing Existing Artifact Data .........................................................................................27 3.1.1 Gathering Existing Data ................................................................................................27 3.1.2 Preparing for Data Collection in Venice ........................................................................28 3.2 Updating Information on Venice Churches ..........................................................................29 3.2.1 Visiting Venetian Church ..............................................................................................29 3.3 Ranking Artifact Damage Assessments ..............................................................................30 3.3.1 Evaluating Artifact Condition .........................................................................................30 3.3.2 Evaluating the Equation ................................................................................................31 3.4 Integrating Church and Artifact Data onto Venipedia ...........................................................32 3.4.1 Updating Venipedia through the City Knowledge Console ............................................32 1 3.4.2 Creating Venipedia Pages ............................................................................................34 3.4.2.1 Church Floor Artifact Page .....................................................................................34 3.4.2.2 Churches Template ................................................................................................34 3.4.2.3 Individual Church Template ....................................................................................35 3.4.2.4 Artifact Template ....................................................................................................36 4 Results ...................................................................................................................................38 4.1 Unified Church and Church Floor Artifact Databases ..........................................................38 4.2 Church and Church Floor Artifact Venipedia Pages ............................................................40 5 Analysis .................................................................................................................................43 5.1 Damage Assessment Analysis ............................................................................................43 5.1.1 Categories of Damage ..................................................................................................44 5.1.2 Artifact Scores v. Floor Height ......................................................................................46 5.1.3 Interpretation of Artifact Scores ....................................................................................47 6 Recommendations and Conclusions ......................................................................................50 6.1 Artifact Images ....................................................................................................................50 6.2 Artifact Condition Survey .....................................................................................................50 6.3 Venetian Public Art Application ...........................................................................................51 Bibliography ..............................................................................................................................52 Appendix A: Field Form .............................................................................................................54 Appendix B: Venipedia Church Floor Artifacts Definition Page ..................................................55 Appendix C: Venipedia Churches Page ....................................................................................57 Appendix D: Individual Church Template ..................................................................................59 Appendix E: Venipedia Artifact Template ..................................................................................61 Appendix F: Enlarged Graphics ................................................................................................63 Appendix G: Churches to Revisit ..............................................................................................66 Appendix H: List of Church Codes ............................................................................................67 2 Table of Figures Figure 1: Churches in Venice with Artifacts ................................................................................ 7 Figure 2: Number of Artifacts per Church ................................................................................... 7 Figure 3: Santi Apostoli, Number of High Damage Artifacts ....................................................... 8 Figure 4: Artifact Damage Condition Assessment ...................................................................... 8 Figure 5: Santi Apostoli, Percentage of High Damage Artifacts .................................................. 9 Figure 6: Example Venipedia Page ............................................................................................ 9 Figure 7: Sample Floor Style .....................................................................................................15 Figure 8: Example of a Plaque ..................................................................................................16 Figure 9: Example of a Tomb ....................................................................................................16 Figure 10: Catholic Churches in Venice ....................................................................................16 Figure 11: Artifact Nomenclature Code .....................................................................................22 Figure 12: Example of Text Readability .....................................................................................23 Figure 13: Example of Cracks ...................................................................................................24