Upon learning about the flood, volunteers from across Italy and around the world arrived to help the city and rescue the rare books, artifacts, and art. The faithful group of volunteers we're called the "mud angels." These were young adults with no special training and were not organized, nor had they been recruited. They simply showed up. Young Europeans dropped what they were doing and boarded trains or drove south. Many had already been on the road, backpacking around Europe, and rearranged their plans to spend time to help in Tuscany. Study abroad students, specifically students from Florida State University, were a celebrated group of American volunteers who helped save many precious works of art and offered aid to the city.

Volunteers carry "Christ and the Wife of Zebedee" by Matteo Rosselli to safety past the replica David in the Piazza della Signoria, 1966 by David Lees

One older, wealthy, Florentine man in particular worked to saved many of the church fragments. At the time of the flood, he and his helpers took notice of the artifacts floating through the streets and began to gather and collect as many gilded antiquities as they could. He had a storehouse up the hill that they filled with all of the fragments. This magazzino remained completely closed for about thirty years. About 15 years ago, they allowed only a few select antique dealers and restorers in. Within a matter of five or six years, this man's collection had entirely depleted, and no one was able to purchase any more.

Years ago, Interi's founder and creative director, Jean O'Reilly Barlow, began to take interest and buy these fragments out of her own fascination from a collector and colleague. The collection of distressed, ecclesiastical relics have been preserved and transformed by Barlow using rare natural specimens from all around the world to create historic yet contemporary sculptural works. By incorporating the rare minerals, it looks as though the pieces evolved together over time.

Once works of art that adorned churches throughout Florence, these fragments had been significantly distressed from the mud and water. There is still the original paint and silt left on the pieces to uphold the integrity, craftmanship, and history of sculptural fragments. The collection is proof that there is more beauty to uncover - bringing forth a new era and context of "modern mud angels."