He graduated in Art History in 1970 with a dissertation on Michael Pacher. From 1974 to 1979 he was Acting Superintendent and Director of the Galleria Estense (reopened with a new arrangement in June 1975). From 1979 to 1988 he served at the Soprintendenza for Artistic and Historical Heritage in Florence, as Director of the Medici Chapels (until 1982), the Museo di San Marco (for which he oversaw a new arrangement with substantial expansions and new rooms, inaugurated in 1983), the Galleria dell’Accademia (new arrangement with substantial expansions and new rooms, inaugurated 1983–85) and the Restoration Office; during this period he directed the restoration of Michelangelo’s *Tondo Doni* and Fra Angelico’s frescoes in the Museo di San Marco. From 1988 to 2000 he was Superintendent of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence; he co-organised (together with the CNR Centre directed by Renzo Salimbeni) the Third International Congress on Laser in Conservation (Florence, 1999), and is one of the drafters and signatories of the European Pavia Document on the new professional figure of the conservator (November 1997) and of the ICOMOS Document on the Conservation of Mural Paintings finalised in Thessaloniki (2003). From March 2000 he became a first-tier professor of History and Techniques of Conservation at the University of Turin, Faculty of Educational Sciences (the first chair created in Italy for this discipline). From November 2002 he was professor of History and Techniques of Conservation at the University of Florence, Faculty of Arts (where he also taught courses in Institutions of Art History, Early Modern Art History, Museology and Museography). From March 2003 he was confirmed as full professor; he retired in January 2010. He is currently President of the Interministerial MiBACT–MIUR Commission for the Teaching of Conservation and Secretary General of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence. He is scientific guarantor of the conservation journal *Kermes* and sits on the steering committee of the IGIIC (Italian Group of the International Institute of Conservation) and of APLAR (Laser Applications in Conservation). He has been a member of the Conservation Commission of the Presidency of the Italian Republic, of the Scientific Council of the Department for the Conservation of Mural Paintings at the Courtauld Institute of the University of London, and has been a member (since 2004) of the Conservation Commission of the Louvre. He was President of Firenze Mostre SpA and of the Festival dei Popoli in Florence. He has curated art and conservation exhibitions and is the author of numerous scholarly studies (articles and books) on Giotto, Fra Angelico, Michael Pacher, Donatello, Michelangelo and other artists of the 14th to 17th centuries.
