The story
In May 1993 a Mafia car bomb exploded in Via dei Georgofili, behind the Uffizi in Florence. A few streets away, near the Ponte Vecchio, the blast also damaged the Diocesan Museum, set up in rooms beside the old church of Santo Stefano al Ponte and its former Augustinian convent, and the museum was afterwards closed to the public.
Its most important painting was hurt as well. The Madonna of San Giorgio alla Costa is a panel painted by the young Giotto around 1295 for a small church on the hillside south of the Arno, and it had already been cut down in the early 1700s to fit new church furnishings. After restoration, the marks left by the blast can still be seen on one angel's robe. The diocesan collection also holds a predella by Paolo Uccello with the Adoration of the Magi, from the country church of Quarate, and a Saint Julian by Masolino, Masaccio's older partner. In 2018 the Giotto went on loan to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the cathedral museum, where it was hung facing a reconstruction of Arnolfo di Cambio's medieval façade for the cathedral.
