Scanning and modeling of Florece's famous Palazzo Pitti (Pitti Palace) "quadratura" virtually unrolling illusionist frescoes on vaulted ceilings

That first experiment in 2005 (two-thousand and five) consisted of surveying and reconstructing the rooms of the summer quarters: we were therefore able to try out data acquisition and restoration techniques which we later developed in the 2007(two-thousand and seven) survey of the rooms in the apartments of Cosimo III De’ Medici and Vittoria Colonna. Quadratura, the technique used to fresco the rooms is a painting method used on walls which aims to give the illusion of a larger space using architectural perspectives. The difficulties encountered in surveying frescoed areas decorated with quadratura and anamorphosis, as well as being painted on curved and vaulted surfaces may be easily imagined in the following examples: as may be clearly seen in the two pictures, looking at the same portion of fresco from two different viewpoints give two quite different images, the result of illusory architecture typical of quadratura, and making it impossible to use photography alone to survey the painting. When, as in the case of the apartments of Vittoria della Rovere we find ourselves faced by a vault which has a significantly varied morphology, it needs to be divided into sufficiently homogenous parts , to then perform the process described above on each , proceeding as if they were three separate vaults.