Educare lo sguardo alle lacune. Storie di resistenze tra ieri e oggi

This essay examines lacunae in painting restoration as a key site where restoration theory, visual culture, and aesthetic perception intersect. From Longhi to Brandi, the lacuna emerges not simply as a technical issue, but as an aesthetic problem central to a new understanding of restoration: no longer reconstruction, but critical acknowledgment of the artwork in its historically transmitted, materially discontinuous condition. The essay focuses on postwar exhibitions of restored works in Italy as part of a conscious Brandian project of visual education, aimed at making material loss visible and aesthetically acceptable. Yet lacunae remained a site of resistance, revealing the enduring difficulty of accepting the fragment as meaningful. In dialogue with recent cognitive neuroscience, the essay shows how such acceptance now survives largely among restorers, and reflects on restoration as a practice that shapes not only artworks, but also historically determined ways of seeing, continually reshaped by our visual culture.