Guardian of Graves Saves Burial Ground

The singing man dressed in a colorful parka who is often on his knees scrubbing graves in Cambridge’s Old Burying Ground often elicits confusion in Quad students walking to and from class. But Dario Fiorentini’s enthusiastic abandon is due to his passion for his work as a conservator.

“This job becomes like a second skin,” he says. “It’s inside you.”

The city hired Fiorentini, a Roman-born conservator, to restore the sixteen table tombs—gravestones that either lie horizontally on the ground or are supported by four legs—in Cambridge’s oldest cemetery. He brings an artistic sensibility and creative spirit to his work, which can sometimes be laborious or mechanical.

Fiorentini has a deep respect for history and artifact, a quality he considers important for his work. Indeed, the somber Old Burying Ground, lodged in the bustling city—between two historic churches and an upscale pizzeria—is saturated with narratives of Cambridge’s past.

A PLOT OF HISTORY

The Old Burying Ground has been used as a graveyard in Cambridge since at least 1635, just four years after the city’s founding, and one year before the founding of Harvard College. Revolutionary War veterans are buried there, including two black soldiers, as well as the early presidents of the College. These early presidents include Harvard’s first president Henry Dunster, as well as Charles Chauncy, Benjamin Wadsworth, class of 1690, Edward Holyoke, class of 1705, Joseph Willard, class of 1765, and Samuel Webber, class of 1784, according to Samuel A. Eliot’s “A History of Cambridge, Massachussetts 1630-1913.”

Even though the land has long been home to such illustrious corpses, Eliot suggests that “it seems not to have been very carefully guarded.” He points to evidence that it was used as a sheep pasture until 1702.

Grazing sheep have been replaced with ambling tourists, strolling in between the graves and searching for a flavor of Cambridge’s history. Yet, Fiorentini complains that the sacred ground is ill-treated by some of the graveyard’s current visitors. He notes that when he comes to work, he sometimes finds Smirnoff liquor bottles or cans of Bud Light littering the cemetery, or even uprooted gravestones on occasion.

“They use this as a playground,” he says. “They have to pick up their trash.” “They drink,” he adds with a compassionate and understanding tone. “But they have a very bad habit.”

Unlike in years past, the front gate to the cemetery is now chained and locked to discourage such misuse of the space; but the chain has been broken many times.

“This is not acceptable” Fiorentini says, shaking his head sadly. “This place needs to be taken care of more often.”

“TREATING” THE GRAVES

Fiorentini’s care and concern for his work is apparent in his meticulous, almost clinical “treatment” of the graves.

“You have to respect the place where you work,” he says. “Every time you do some work you need to know the stone, what it needs. You try to do a treatment so that you will save the piece for the next generation, to preserve it.”

Fiorentini has developed a complex restoration process. Before he start cleaning a piece of a gravestone, he injects it with resin to stabilize it. Then after a few days he cleans the piece “section by section, without removing anything.” Next he begins to repair and fill any damage with the appropriate kind of mortar. After that comes the final measure, which Fiorentini calls “consolidation.” He describes this ultimate step as the one that looks towards the future.

“You think: How are we going to preserve the piece? This is consolidation,” he says. “Consolidation is that you impregnate the stone with a chemical compound that will penetrate deeply into the stone, which causes a catalystic reaction.”

After the compound is applied, Fiorentini washes the piece with a low pressure power washer, waits 15 to 30 minutes and repeats the process about three times. Then he tests the grave to make sure that the stone can “breathe,” which means that it will be able to release the pollutants that may seep into it due to acid rain and smog.

If it passes the test, he stops. If not, he continues to “consolidate” the piece until the desired affect is achieved.

“You stop when the stone tells you to stop,” he says.

Fiorentini describes consolidation as an essential step in restoration.

“With the consolidation, there is less need for further maintenance and so upkeep will cost less money,” Fiorentini explains.

Despite the regimented process, Fiorentini is careful to emphasize that restoration for each piece is different.

“You have to find the right recipe,” he says. “It’s like a doctor, like a physician, if he’s a good doctor he won’t do the same thing for every patient.”

Indeed, Fiorentini describes himself as having a very personal relationship with his work.

“I don’t mean to say that I am crazy, but when you touch something you and it are bonded,” he says. “When I work it’s like the piece becomes part of myself. It becomes like a friend.”

ART AND CONSERVATION

Tall, skinny, and bespectacled Fiorentini emphasizes that while his approach to restoration is methodical, he also draws on his background as an artist to take into account “the aesthetic value” of the piece.

“I always approach my work in the artistic way,” Fiorentini says. “I always keep my own vision. The object is not just an artifact. It has a value; it has a shape.”

Fiorentini is a classically trained artist, a painter, and comes from an artistic family. His father was also an artist and his brother, Paolo Fiorentino, is an accomplished Italian painter.

Fiorentini took a slightly different path, however, when he started interning at a conservation laboratory for archaeology research in Rome, working on the Palatine Hill in 1983. From then on he worked on many conservation and restoration projects around Rome.

He did not come to America until 1991, when he crossed the ocean for love. He met his wife in Rome when she was on vacation there in the late 1980s. After having spent a year in Rome, she then had to return to her work in Massachussetts. Ultimately, Fiorentini decided to move to America so that he could live with her in the States. They now have two children: Alexander, who is 14, and Arianna, who is 10.

Fiorentini believes in truly expressing himself in both his life and his work.

“When I work I sing,” he says. “Maybe it’s strange, maybe it’s Italian.”

He later adds, “The singing is like a release. Your soul releases and you don’t have to worry about anything else. When I sing I’m fully here. Its the best experience for work.”

—Staff writer Sofia E. Groopman can be reached at segroopm@fas.harvard.edu.