An art historian and Fellow of the Accademia dei Lincei. He graduated with distinction in 1977 from the University of Florence and from 1980 served as coordinating director at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. Following four years at the Soprintendenza for Artistic and Historical Heritage in Siena, from 1984 he worked at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, where he was head of the Paintings on Canvas and Panel Conservation Department and the Textile Materials Conservation Department, as well as deputy head of the Mural Paintings Conservation Department and of the School of Advanced Training. From 2012 to 2022 he was Superintendent of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and Conservation Laboratories. He passed away on 20 April 2024 at the age of 68.
Over the course of his career he directed, among others, the restoration of works by artists of the calibre of Cimabue, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Rubens and Pollock. From 1998 he was a contract lecturer in Theory and History of Conservation and in History of Artistic Techniques at the universities of Siena (Arezzo campus), Florence, Bologna, the Università Cattolica in Milan and the Politecnico di Milano. He was the author of over three hundred publications and delivered lectures and conference presentations at specialist cultural institutions internationally, including the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the Courtauld Institute in London, the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles and the Musée du Louvre in Paris.