Restored the Neptune statue in Florence

[Mante]

The famous 16th century statue of Neptune, located in Piazza della Signoria in Florence, has been finally repaired after a year it was damaged.
Ms Cristina Acidini, the head of Florentine Opificio delle Pietre Dure workshop, explains why it took so long to repair the statue: “The hand of the statue had been shattered into more than 30 pieces. The painstaking work of reassembly has been completed only recently. Mounting the reassembled pieces only took a week. The hand was set onto the arm of the statue with a stainless-steel bit using four pins to keep it steady. Then it was reinforced using epoxy resin”.

The city council thanked the 23 private sponsors who could gather 11.000 euros enough to give Neptune his hand back. It was also added that the city will soon cast about 1.5 million euros to restore the whole fountain and its features among which it is possible to see a horse-drawn chariot.
The hand of the statue snapped off last year, August 2nd, under the weight of a drunken youth who climbed up the fountain with two other friends. The statue of Neptune, also known as the Biancone (the white giant) was sculpted by Bartolomeo Ammannati between 1565 and 1575 and has suffered damages by vandals several times in the past.