Gertrud in the ICCROM Library
We, Dobrochna and Gertrud, worked in the library of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) in the Via di S. Michele (Trastevere) and the ‘fototeca’, archives and library of the Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte (INASA), housed in Palazzo Venezia in the centre of Rome (7th-27th April 2018). The aim of the work during these weeks was to collect unpublished photographs and material of Ugo Monneret de Villard’s work in Aswan (especially the Monastery of Anba Hadra) and in Nubia.
The courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia. Above the gate to the right is the Fototeca. The archive is housed in the tower.
Monneret de Villard’s extensive photo collection is preserved in the Fototeca of the INASA while his archive (notes, drafts of texts, plans, bibliographies) is preserved in the INASA-library (BIASA).
Photographs of Monneret de Villard in the INASA-Fototeca.
At the Fototeca, the curator, Dr Massimo Pomponi received us warmly and greatly facilitated our research.
Dobrochna in the archive of BIASA.
Notes and bibliographies of Monneret de Villard (BIASA-archive).
Dr Silvia Armando is a specialist in Monneret’s work in Islamic architecture and art and has done extensive research in the archive. She helped us with the not-so-clear inventory lists and we have to thank her for the biggest find: the collection of watercolours of the French archaeologist Jean Clédat. Clédat worked in 1903 in the Monastery of Anba Hadra. His photographs of that mission are preserved at the Louvre but his watercolours seemed to have disappeared. However, Monneret did publish a few in his publications but no-one knew where the originals were. I have looked for years – and finally we located them!
It is obvious that after publication, Monneret never returned the watercolours to their owner, the Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe in Cairo. The rolls of papers had received no separate inventory number in the archive and were therefore more or less hidden from sight. The watercolours now await restoration and publication.
At the end of the day.
Faras is never far away! St. Anna helps to admonish visitors (Convento dei Santi Quattro Coronati).