Giorgio Vasari's "Last Supper," was damaged by the 1966 flooding in Florence. It took a lot of years to put it back together all with the help of glue made from sturgeons.

The Getty Foundation in Los Angeles funded the work. It was so complex it took nearly half a century to restore it. The reason? They had to put it on hold until the techniques had been developed. It was not merely just gluing the whole thing back together. They had to consider thermal expansion, humidity, barometric pressure and more. It was like the art was alive.

Whole new types of materials also need to be developed to pursue the task of object restoration. In the specific case of Vasari's "Last Supper,"

The individual panels of Vasari's "Last Supper," had been separated after their flood damage. They also shrank differentially by as much as 3 centimeters, warping the overall painting and making it impossible to fit back together.

To the trick. they had to use some low tech means by pushing tiny slivers of wood into the gaps between the panels, recoating the surface and surgically stablize it using a series of specially crafted crossbars.

There's a lot more to this story. Check it out over at the Guardian.

[Guardian Image via Getty]