A fading Banksy mural has been lifted from the façade of a 17th-century palazzo in Venice in what has been described as an “innovative” rescue operation to restore and preserve the work.
Migrant Child, which shows a child holding a flare in her hand and wearing a life vest, was sprayed onto a wall of the Palazzo San Pantalon, a lavish three-story residence on a canal in Venice’s sleepy Santa Croce district, in 2019. Positioned just above the canal’s waterline, it is one of only two artworks in Italy officially attributed to Banksy.
While the mural—seen as a reference to the global refugee crisis—has become a popular tourist attraction, six years of neglect and exposure to the elements have caused it to fade, with about a third of the work having deteriorated.
On Wednesday night, restorers working from a barge and behind a tarpaulin cut out the section of wall bearing the mural in an operation funded by the banking group Banca Ifis, the palazzo’s owner. After cleaning and stabilising the surface, they used angle grinders and hand tools to detach the slab, which was placed in a crate and taken away by boat. According to a statement from Banca Ifis, this was the first time the technique had been used in Italy.
The work will now undergo analysis and restoration under the supervision of Federico Borgogni, who also oversaw the 2021 removal of Banksy’s Aachoo! from a Bristol house. Damaged sections will be cut away and the wall fragment mounted on a honeycomb support, allowing missing areas to be filled with stucco and blended with colour to reintegrate the image.
A spokesperson for Banca Ifis said that the lower part of the work, which had badly deteriorated due to contact with the water, would not be restored. “It is so ruined that it would be a question of completely recreating that part, which is not our intention,” the spokesperson said.
The bank plans to show the restored work as part of free cultural events organised by Ifis Art, its cultural arm. Asked whether it would return to the palazzo or be displayed elsewhere, a spokesperson said: “We won’t be putting it in a closed museum. We need to evaluate a series of aspects with the restorer.”
Italy’s ministry of culture announced in 2023 that Migrant Child would be restored by Banca Ifis, sparking debate over whether the piece should be preserved or allowed to decay in situ. The bank purchased Palazzo San Pantalon the following year and has since commissioned Zaha Hadid Architects to work on the building's restoration.
Banca Ifis has said it intends to transform the palazzo into a contemporary art exhibition space “in synergy with the Venice Biennale”.