Mathematics enters the picture

Abstract

Can one of the most important Italian Renaissance frescoes reduced to hundreds of thousands of fragments by a bombing during the Second World War be re-composed after more than 60 years from its damage? Can we reconstruct the missing parts and can we say something about their original color? In this short paper we want to exemplify, hopefully effectively by taking advantage of the seduction of art, how mathematics today can be applied to real-life problems which were considered unsolvable only few years ago. © Springer-Verlag Italia, Milano 2009.