How the frescoed vaults of the ground floor apartments of Palazzo Pitti in Florence were 'unrolled' in their their full size

The survey of the quadratura of the rooms in the ground floor apartments of Palazzo Pitti in Florence was conducted in two stages: the first in 2005, the second in 2007. In both cases acquisition techniques using laser scanner instruments and the relative reconstruction methods were tried out. The morphometric data was elaborated in steps – in the first phase the projected reconstruction of the vaults in life size was tackled. Full-scale projections of the vaults and walls were extracted onto which the photographic images were subsequently calibrated and pieced together in a mosaic to obtain an orthophoto map, this last ,imported in CAD, then being rendered in graphic format. The next step involved “unrolling” the vaults in their full size, making a 3D model of each which the graphic reconstructions previously obtained were then projected onto before making the final 3D model, that is to say, of the vault. The virtual stencil paper thus obtained can be used to develop themed maps of the fresco, in the first place an extremely high resolution orthophoto of the frescoed surfaces.