For The Love Of Art Restoring Our National Treasures

Carolina Izzo (58) Is an Art Conservator in Auckland

- Fleur Mealing

I first became interested in art when I was in high school. There was an archaeologist, she was amazing, and I fell in love with preservation. It had an impact on me. I thought the process of looking after things was actually quite neat, but I didn’t want to do archaeology. I really wanted to look after decorative art and paintings, and mainly buildings.

I was born and bred in Rome, where there is an amazing conservation school, but at the time, it was only related to marble and fresco surfaces. I wanted to do paintings and furniture as well, so Florence seemed like the right place to go. The training took three years and then practising at the maestro lab for quite a while before becoming independent.

I had an unusual start to my career because in 1980, there was a big earthquake down in Irpinia, South Italy. It was huge and I ended up living four and a half years inside the monks’ cells at the Certosa di Padula monastery while I helped with the restoration. It was the biggest monastery in Italy and second biggest in Europe. It was also completely abandoned. Now it’s a UNESCO heritage site, so this was one of the things I was very proud of.