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Lucia Dori nel suo studio

Interview to Lucia Dori

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Lucia discovered restoration as a child, and was one of the first students of the courses held by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence.

Lucia Dori is one of the best known restorers in Florence. Her workshop, which she shares with her brother Andrea, deals with the conservation and restoration of paintings on canvas and wood, wooden sculptures, monumental frames and globes.

In recent years, Lucia has also embarked on a career as a teacher at the Brera Academy in Milan, where she is responsible for the course of “Restoration of artefacts painted on textile support 1“.

Lucia, how did you become a restorer? What was your training path?

My father, a great lover of art, took me to the “Firenze Restaura” exhibition in 1972.

In the spring of 1977, during a visit to my grandparents in Reggello, I told my cousin about my passion for restoration, which I knew very little about. He told me that he had a restorer friend: Gastone Tognaccini.

Gastone explained many things to me about the world of restoration and told me that exactly that year for the first time the Opificio della Pietre Dure would be launching  a competition to enter their Higher Education School. He offered to help me prepare for that, then I attended his workshop and that of the restorers Paola Bracco, Sergio Taiti, Ottavio Ciappi. As for my training on drawings, I was followed by Leonardo Passeri, I was his first ever student.

in November 1977 I passed the competition and immediately afterwards I started the Opificio restoration school, and I graduated after specialisation in 1981.

Now let’s talk about your work, with Art-Test there have been many opportunities for collaboration, which one do you want to remember?

Among the works in which I made use of Art–Test services, I like to remember the Annunciation by Alesso Baldovinetti, because it is a painting that really touched my heart. The investigations were very important because they revealed Baldovinetti’s very particular drawing methods who used direct engraving for everything, even for the most descriptive details such as the feathers of the angel’s wings or the particular red finish of the angel’s robe that overturns the succession of layers with the cinnabar put on top of the red lacquer.

Alesso Baldovinetti, Annunciazione, Uffizi
Alesso Baldovinetti, Annunciation, Uffizi

Precisely at that juncture, the synergy that must always exist between the restorer, the diagnostician and the art historian was fully manifested. When these professionals interact harmoniously with each other, collaborate, the result I must say is always excellent.

In general, what are the most common problems encountered during a restoration in which diagnostics are most useful? And what are the advantages for a restorer to combine a targeted diagnostic campaign with a restoration project?

During a restoration we can encounter multiple problems and diagnostics is very important when there are repaintings, extensive retouching, large gaps, plastering and when you are not sure to find original color under the visible pictorial layers. Diagnostics is very important for the knowledge of the work, the materials, the painter, his modus operandi.

For me, every painting under restoration should have the possibility of having a diagnostic campaign that investigates it, but unfortunately it is not always possible because often the funds for the restoration are not sufficient for the investigations. 

You have been working in this field for many years, what changes have you noticed, for example in terms of customers, prices and clients?

Several changes have taken place and are still ongoing. Especially since the Public Procurement Code came into force. Before, there was a relationship of trust with the client and the art historian was not obliged to ask for more cost estimates for a restoration project. With the new regulations this is no longer possible and certainly leads to a correct circularity of the work, or rather to assign the restorations to a greater number of operators. This circularity, however, unfortunately has led, in my opinion, also to restorations not being carried out “in a professional manner”. The mechanism of selection is no longer based on the quality of planning and intervention, but on purely economic terms where the lowest offer is preferred. In fact, since the restorer’s work is not standardized, i.e. not identical regardless of who carries it out, imposing this type of practice does not often correspond to the choice of the best restorer and the best restoration project, in terms of quality.

In recent years, the volume of work from private clients has decreased. Our work, however, is almost always based on public clients, so, as already explained, the distinction nowadays depends on the methods of choice indicated by the new regulations.

 
(Emanuela Massa)
(Emanuela Massa)
Michelangelo-Buonarroti-A-nude-young-man-after-Masaccio-and-two-figures-behind-pen-and-two-shades-of-brown-ink-33-x-20-cm-copyright-Christies-images-limited-680x1024

A new Michelangiolo?

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A drawing at auction in Paris in May 2022

Great news are shaking the world of art collecting: next May, in Paris, Christie’s will put on sale, during the auction “Maîtres anciens et du XIXe siècle”, a rare early drawing by Michelangelo, which could reach the incredible figure of 30 million euros. Previously, the drawing was attributed to an artist close to Buonarroti, but it is now considered one of the few original drawings still left in private hands, in total less than 10!

This unique and beautiful drawing depicts a naked man standing between two figures, and is supposedly one of the very first nudes, still existing, of the Florentine master. It is evidently taken from the scene of the “Baptism of the neophytes” frescoed by Masaccio on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. Like all of Michelangelo’s very few drawings, copying masterpieces of the past, it dates back to the beginning of his career.

Masaccio, The Baptism of the neophytes, Brancacci Chapel, Florence

 

 

The matter of Michelangelo’s drawings in general, but of his early ones in particular, is an ancient and long-debated one.

Vasari already tells that the artist himself, before dying in Rome in 1564, had burned “a large number of drawings, sketches and cartoons made by his own hand, so that no one would see the hard work he had endured and the ways of trying his ingenuity, in order not to appear if not perfect “.

It is therefore also for this artist’s desire for perfection that his graphic work was immediately rare and sought after, so much so that Leonardo Buonarroti, his nephew and heir, was only able to buy a group of drawings on the Roman market after his uncle’s death at a high price.

It is known that Michelangelo always refused to raise pupils. He only resorted to help when he could not do without it, as in the New Sacristy, in Florence, but he always relegated these aids to mere executors.

His refusal to accept a dimension of discipleship lies in his absolute reluctance to acknowledge that he himself had masters other than some great artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth century tradition, such as Giotto, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Jacopo della Quercia, on whose works he had hard practiced and that he had no difficulty in admitting how much they had counted for his training.

In fact, his few early drawings that he himself saved from destruction are precisely taken from the works of those masters, such as this drawing presented now by Christie’s.

The copies of Michelangelo’s ancient masters are very personal: look in particular at the chiaroscuro, obtained by means of a dense grid hatching, which follows the trend of the protrusions and recesses and which vitalizes the surfaces, exactly as he does on his marbles with a chisel and the gradine, where he leaves the marks of the instruments visible.

 

For Michelangelo it was only with the study of nature that beauty could be achieved, and the artist had to imitate nature; by choosing the best details, the artist is able to create a beauty superior to that created by nature itself, and that is why the artist in his mind conceives an ideal of beauty.

This ideal, however, is not human creation, but, according to the Neoplatonic thought, developed at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent that the young Michelangelo knew and made his own, it is a reflection of the same divine idea of ​​Beauty. And for Michelangelo the most beautiful thing in creation is the human body, precisely because it is a direct mirror of divine beauty.

 

 

The Christie’s work, coming from a French collection, is actually offered for sale for the second time, as the first was blocked by the French government, which had classified the design as a national treasure of France, thus blocking its export for about thirty months. “The French government has recently removed this designation – says Christie’s – by granting the expatriation license and allowing the design to be offered without any restrictions to collectors from all over the world”.

The drawing was sold in 1907 to the Hôtel Drouot auction house in Paris as a work of Michelangelo’s school. The first attribution to Michelangelo himself is very recent, and dates back to 2019, when Christie’s Old Masters specialist Furio Rinaldi, now curator of the Achenbach Foundation for graphic arts at the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco, analised the drawing and considered it to be from Buonarroti, an attribution later also supported by the art historian Paul Joannides, author of the complete catalog of drawings by Michelangelo and his school at the Ashmolean Museum and the Louvre.

In the auction catalog, no mention is made of a campaign of accurate scientific analysis and studies that provide interesting and compelling elements to corroborate this attribution. We are sure, however, that the current owner and the auction house have ascertained the authenticity of the design: who would spend 30 million without having done the necessary checks? Well, actually .. but that’s another story.

Filippo Melli
peace

Peace and war

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There are many works of art that portray battles, deaths, shootings, drawn swords … War in short. Instead, there are far fewer who choose Peace as a subject, perhaps because war has always been much more frequented by men than Peace. One of these was painted by Peter Paul Rubens, and its titale is Minerva protects Peace from Mars (Peace and War).
Of large dimensions, 208×298 cm, it was painted by the painter not in his home in Antwerp but in London, exactly between 1629 and 1630 and is in fact preserved in the National Gallery. And what was Rubens doing in London? Well, perhaps this is a slightly less known aspect of the great Flamish painter, very famous in his time and also in ours.
In fact, his undisputed ability, combined with tireless work (it is said that he worked every day from four in the morning until five in the afternoon!), Had made him an extraordinarily successful painter.

But what is less known is another characteristic of him, quite unique in the panorama of art of all times, and that is the combination of art and politics that Pieter Paul Rubens mastered in his life. He was in fact a very influential figure for his time thanks to the many diplomatic roles he assumed.
His passion for diplomacy dates back to his childhood, when at the age of 13 he entered the service of a countess of Antwerp as a page, a prestigious role for a boy of the time, which he soon abandoned to devote himself to his greatest passion, painting.
Although, during his youthful service with the Duke of Mantua, he had already completed diplomatic missions in Spain, Venice, Rome and Genoa for his lord. Later, however, he distanced himself from political life, dealing only with his art, at least until that traumatic event which was the death of his beloved wife Isabella Brandt, married in 1609, during a plague epidemic in 1625.

 

It was evidently a traumatic event for him, to the point that he decided to accept new diplomatic missions, most likely to distract himself from his deep mourning. He turned out to be a very skilled negotiator: a fascinating man, of who contemporaries (and even self-portraits) remember his lively and penetrating gaze, he managed without difficulty, thanks to the courteous education and prestige he enjoyed, to complete delicate negotiations.

It was therefore no coincidence that Philip IV of Spain had chosen him to negotiate peace with Charles I of England in 1629 on his behalf. The war between the two countries had been going on for 5 years now and both kings wanted to reach a deal. On the other hand, Charles I was a great connoisseur of art and a passionate collector, and as such he could not fail to know and appreciate the great Rubens. So the one of Philip IV was a very clever move.
The painter then painted a new artwork for the English sovereign, very relevant to his mission, since he chose as the subject the personification of Peace, depicted naked in the center of her while she is feeding Pluto, god of wealth, with her milk. Its prosperous and opulent forms best express the Flemish painter’s ideal of feminine beauty, but in this case also the unattainable pleasantness of peace.
And here comes the discovery made thanks to the radiographs made by the National Gallery in London, since the painting is kept in its rooms. Thanks to these analyzes, it was discovered that in fact the painting was initially quite smaller than today, and was limited to the central group with Peace with the attributes also of Ceres goddess of the Earth, the little Pluto she nursed, the group of children on the right with Hymen, god of marriage, and behind him an army Minerva who rejects Mars god of War accompanied by one of the Erinyes. This part of the painting actually has a much more refined and detailed ductus, while the other parts around it are faster and more summary.

It can be hypothesized that the English king had well understood the meaning of this painting, and therefore accepted the role of mediator of the painter and declared himself available to sign the peace with Spain (which actually happened eight months later), but probably Charles requested a more grandiose and impressive work than what Rubens had perhaps initially conceived. This would explain the enlargement of the size of the painting and the evident haste with which the external parts of the composition were completed, with the addition on the left of two women of difficult interpretation (perhaps two maenads or Prosperity and the Arts), the body of the satyr, of the whole lower band of the painting and also, in the upper right corner, of a harpy.

Rubens returned to Antwerp in March 1630, after being knighted by Charles, and in November a peace treaty was signed between England and Spain.
But there is another curiosity in this painting, and it concerns the group of children in the center on the right. In addition to being part of the allegory, these children have been identified, thanks to the preparatory drawings found in various museums in Europe, as the sons and daughters of Sir Balthasar Gerbier, an art dealer in the service of Charles I with whom Rubens was a guest on this diplomatic mission to London. George is the model of Hymen, the boy with the torch, while the girl he is crowning with a flower crown is his sister Elizabeth. The other girl who stares directly at us with large, hopeful, slightly anxious eyes is another sister, Susan.

So already 4 centuries ago it was more than clear to everyone that refusing war and embracing peace brings prosperity and abundance. And it is truly heartbreaking to see how even today there are some who prefer to ignore a simple truth like this.

Filippo Melli
cattura-cristo-odessa-cristo-giuda

The only “Taking of Odessa”

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A painting in the hell of the war unleashed by Russia, an artwork which could be by Caravaggio, and of which there are no more news

In Odessa, in the “Museum of Western and Eastern Art,” was, and we hope still is, one of the numerous versions of “The Taking of Christ”, the representation of the New Testament scene of betrayal and consequent arrest of Jesus.

The scene takes place in the darkest hour, in a literal and metaphorical sense. Christ is “patient and humble”, while events precipitate after Judas has betrayed him with a kiss. The soldiers capture Jesus, while John flees with his arms raised.
Behind, to illuminate the scene, a lantern rises, supported by a young man in which we recognizes the self-portrait of Caravaggio. It was thanks to a commission of the Roman noble Ciriaco Mattei in 1602 that Michelangiolo Merisi invented this extraordinary composition, which became very popular, and was reproduced and rethought by many artists in the following years. So much so that the original version was somehow lost.

The original composition by Caravaggio was in fact described in detail as early as the seventeenth century, but for a long time the painting had disappeared, it was thought it had been lost and only copies remained.

The situation changed in 1993, when the painting now in Ireland, in Dublin, was proposed as the original, its attribution changed from by Gerrit van Honthorst to by Caravaggio after the analysis carried out by a scholar restorer.

Today, more than 12 copies of this painting are known and Dublin’s primacy is much questioned. It is kept low for reasons of diplomacy, but almost everyone is inclined to go back to attributing the Irish “Taking” to the Dutch painter, who faithfully copied the Master.

Which could the original then be? One of the most interesting versions was in the Odessa Museum. And we hope it will always be there and will remain there, even if the terrifying images that reach us from Ukraine, and the continuous bombing of cultural institutions, make us fear the worst.

The painting did not have an easy life either in the past: as soon as it arrived from France from Odessa, thanks to a gift made to the Tsar and his subsequent donation to the Museum, the 1917 Revolution and the subsequent civil war broke out. Odessa was conquered and lost to the Red Army several times. During the Second World War, the city was heavily bombed and then occupied in 1941 by Romanian and Nazi troops.

The painting, probably because it was then considered a copy, was not on the list of works of art that the museum had decided to save. Nothing was known about the painting until it was unexpectedly returned by the Roman Catholic Church to the Soviet authorities in June 1945, a full fourteen months after the liberation of the city.
After a first restoration in 1951 there was a second one in 2008, the year in which the painting was the subject of a commissioned theft, perhaps because it was understood, during the restoration, that the work could be much more than a copy. The canvas was cut from the frame and removed rolled up, as is easy to guess from the marks left on the artwork. Its rescue dates back to 2010 which was followed by a long restoration operation to rejoin the canvas with what was left on the frame.
The analyses made on these occasions have made it possible to advanced some more concrete hypotheses of autography or at least of a execution very close to that of the original.

But it is not the only copy on which hypotheses of this type are made.
Also in Florence there is a version, on which Art-Test made the scientific investigations, currently preserved in the Palatine Gallery, and which presents some very interesting “pentimenti” in Xray-image compared to the visible composition, which would deserve more in-depth studies, free from partisan interests, and brave.


In the meantime, we hope that Caravaggio’s will remain the only “Taking of Odessa”.

(Anna Pelagotti)
(Anna Pelagotti)
Mykola_Pymonenko-Zhnyva.

Slava (Digital) Ukraini!

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We have repeated so many times that it is important to digitise our cultural heritage in order to study and to preserve it. Once digitised, you may think, it is saved forever. It has become as an immaterial asset, living its own immortal life “in the clouds”.

However, also digital models, digital reconstructions, digital data are in the end also physical, just a different physical. They are stored on tangible supports in physical locations.

And now with the Russia invading Ukraine, and bombarding civilians and cultural institutions, all the Ukraine digitised records are at serious risk.

“People forget that the internet is made up of physical things. There are physical servers that are located in the real world that need power, cooling, and maintenance” declared Quinn Dombrowski, now at Stanford University.

When she realised it, she decided to launch SUCHO i.e. Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online, together with Anna Kijas, head of the Lilly Music Library at Boston’s Tufts University, and Sebastian Majstorovic, an IT consultant for digital humanities at the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage.

They started calling for cultural heritage professionals from all over the world – librarians, archivists, researchers, programmers, to search and re-archive Ukrainian digital content.

They are using a combination of technologies to crawl and archive sites and content, and they also offer space to all Ukrainian scholars who need storage for their research material. And there are also trying to save pictures of all Ukraine monuments in the hope to be able to reconstruct their 3D model later, if necessary.

Their work, mostly remote, as local scholars are obviously facing other and bigger challanges, is made even more difficult by the fact that not all records are available, URL are not always updated, and there are security measures taken by cultural institutions during peace times. Not to mentioned that it is often hampered also by internet outages and electricity loss.

It is not an easy endeavour but the response from the cultural heritage scholarly community was immediate and enthusiastic.

Read Chiranthi: “I am a person who works closely with Cultural Heritage metadata domains. I am familiar with metadata standards, digital cultural heritage archives, LOD and controlled vocabularies, and so on.

As a Sri Lankan who has lived through an ongoing civil war, I have seen firsthand how badly conflict affects cultural heritage”.

And so him, like thousands more, have rolled up their sleeves and went for it. There is no good news during war, but the resilience of the cultural professionals gets close to it.

To get involved with SUCHO or learn more about the initiatives’s work, visit sucho.org.

(Anna Pelagotti)
(Anna Pelagotti)

 

biondino

Join us during a diagnostic campaign!

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an unknown man, upside down

The principle that Art–Test uses in proposing a diagnostic campaign on a work for which there is no historical-artistic reference other than family memories or vague information, it is to begin to investigate with a minimum set of analyses that establish a possible post quem term and therefore indicate the period starting from which the artwork was produced.

With this principle we approached the study of “Portrait of a young man“.

After careful observation to draw up a condition report, we were able to establish how the painting had already undergone restoration over the years, including an evident relining. However, the pictorial surface was clouded by a now oxidized paint which made it difficult to read the image. In addition, the presence of cracks on the entire surface and small detachments of the color in limited areas, as well as some areas where retouching was perceptible, declared that the restoration was certainly a thing of the distant past.

For here we proceeded with an inspection with special UV lamps and then with the acquisition of a UV photographic image, a reflectography at 1100nm and finally we subjected the painting to the study of some pictorial materials thanks to an XRF analysis. The first investigations gave us encouraging results, the painting is not a modern fake, and above all they gave us a glimpse of something under the visible surface!

We have thus proposed an in-depth diagnostic campaign. Immediately after the authorization of a “Gold” diagnostic campaign, we began with further investigations in order to better visualize the underlying layers. And here the Scanner infrared reflectography confirmed what we had already glimpsed, but in a less explicit way, with the reflectography performed with a CCD scientific camera using a 1100 nm filter.

Immediately after, we explored this aspect even more with an X-ray investigation.

And so we discovered that the “Portrait of a young man” is actually only “half” of this work. Below we have another portrait, a man, no longer very young, wearing a monocle. To be able to see it well you have to rotate the painting by 180°. The clothes of the two portraits take us to the 19th century. The UV RGB fluorescence showed us not only an inhomogeneity of the paint layer but also some superficial retouching on the face.

Who are those portraited and who is the painter?

Much remains to be discovered about this artwork and our research continues. In addition, the diagnostic campaign carried out so far will be used as a support for the restoration …. follow us in our lab, there could be other surprises!

(Emanuela Massa)
(Emanuela Massa)
foot

A kick to the distortions of war

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In the second post-war period, Nicolas Stael, born Russian in 1914 in St. Petersburg, the son of a tsarist general, was forced into exile by the Bolshevik Revolution. He will live first in Belgium and then in France, where he will be naturalized, thus becoming French.

He was the most promising artist of the second post-war period, seen as the European Pollock, his abstractionism was highly appreciated in the years preceding the Second World War

His training had taken place during trips to Europe and North Africa but his style changed for the emotions of one evening.

On March 26, 1952, in Paris, during nightime , a rare event for those times, a match of the soccer world cup was held: France-Sweden.

Sweden was represented by amateurs and France by its national champions. The amateurs won and Stael transformed the French defeat into inspiration for a series of paintings that wanted to express the dynamism of the sporting contest by translating it into a new style.

The Footballeurs are small paintings that saw his return to the figure at a time when critics pointed to him as Pollock’s antagonist for his abstraction.

The technique used is a spatula and the figures emerge from the overlapping of layers. If you look at the Footballeurs work published here, it can be seen that the overlapping application of the backgrounds was fast, with the underlying application still not very dry and it is for this reason that a specific type of craquelure can be seen in the dark areas.

A purely visual inspection of the work could, in broad terms, make us understand the succession of the various layers but a reflectography and an X-ray could reveal his modus operandi. Did he draw the composition before painting it? Did he change his mind during construction? What materials did he use? Unfortunately, there are no known scientific publications on this author that report diagnostic analyses used for the study of his works.

We look forward, as it was for Pollock, to a study of his works through radiography, reflectography but also analysis of the pigments used. We would like the “European Pollock” to be better known and valued.

Meanwhile, the French Minister of Culture, Roselune Bachelot, said that France will offer again political asylum to Russian artists who request it because they are against the current government regime.

(Emanuela Massa)
(Emanuela Massa)

 

IRAQ 2016 (2)

War Archaeologist

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In such a difficult moment, in which memory goes back to tragic images that are so close to what we have unfortunately already seen, we believe it is important to give voice to the professionals within our world who make a very important and positive contribution.

A romantic as well as erroneous view of the archaeologist sees him as a treasures hunter, travelling distant places. Surely this part of their work is the most fascinating and gives us unexpected finds, but today the archaeologists play also a social role, they are the guarantors of the memory of a community, their activity is also in support to the safeguarding of historical places. Part of their mission is also to train citizens, wherever they are, to ensure that they take care and protect their cultural heritage.

Giancarlo Garna is an archaeologist. Trained at the University of Padua, as a freelancer he has participated in multiple excavation campaigns in Italy and abroad. He is actively involved in relations between Archeology and Politics, in the fight against the looting and illegal trafficking of Cultural Heritage, especially in the Middle East. From 2014 to 2016 he collaborated with the Italian Cooperation in Iraq as part of the training of local experts and workers in the archaeological field.

Awarded the title of “Person of the year 2017” by the Archeomafie International Observatory, in 2018 he was awarded the “Prix Asolapo Italia 2018-2019 for peace”, including history, culture and peace.

Giancarlo Garna and Art-Test participate in the Biennial School of Higher Education in Judicial Archeology and Crimes against Cultural Heritage, organized by the Criminological Studies Center of Viterbo.

Why did you choose to be an archaeologist?

Since I was a child I have always had a passion for the study of history. Also at the age of ten I read a book on the discovery of the ancient Syrian site of Mari and I wondered if I would ever have the opportunity to see places like that. Over time I have become more and more interested in aspects of daily life and beliefs of the Ancients, especially of the people, often forgotten by the historical narrative itself; and thus the transition to archeology has become practically natural. And in 1999 I went to Mari, as an Archaeologist, a child’s dream come true, it doesn’t happen often.

What does it mean to be an archaeologist today?

Archeology has changed a lot, it is a discipline that has opened up to all other related sciences, from geology to archeometry, up to various types of analytical tests in the laboratory.

Being an archaeologist today means wanting to achieve ever more precise and comprehensive historical reconstructions, but with a multidisciplinary approach and with the aim of making them accessible to the public. And in doing this, a new social and active role must be assumed, becoming an engine of research on the territory. One must have the function of conservator and disseminator of memory, be able to increase awareness of one’s territory and its history, also forming a generation of people who work in this sense. Therefore, to work with an eye to the past, an eye to the present and a broad and articulated vision for the future.

During your career you have repeatedly participated in missions in areas where war has not only affected the human fabric but has also torn the heritage. How are archaeological missions important for the reconstruction of a territory and its culture?

Archaeological missions play a fundamental role, not only in the documentation and conservation of the remains, but also for the communities that inhabit that territory. The involvement of local communities and the training of their archaeologists become fundamental tools for the defense, protection and enhancement of the territory and its history. Especially in those areas and territories targeted by poverty, wars and the perverse mechanisms connected to it such as the destruction of monuments and sites and the illegal trade in antiquities and cultural heritage.

The Archaeological Missions contribute to creating awareness of the value, not only historical but of a wide range, of the culture of a territory. They also develop an attitude to defend it, they are able to make it clear that it is an added value, also as an engine of job and economic opportunities.

Our time, after two long years in which everything has been reprogrammed, now sees a war conflict that risks erasing or certainly compromising the culture of an entire nation. In an emergency, how can archaeological action missions help limit collateral damage? What can international communities and individuals do in situations?

During an ongoing conflict it becomes particularly difficult to operate directly in the field, but it is possible to try, within the limits of safety conditions, to continue to document and catalog the cultural heritage as much as possible, reporting and collaborating in the safety of the cultural heritage itself.

The international community must continue to stigmatize indiscriminate bombings, reporting them and trying to impose areas of respect not to be attacked and accused of crimes, not only of war, but against humanity, those who do not respect this prohibition.

How can new technologies, large-scale diagnostics and point-in-time areas be useful, both in the short and long term?

The new technologies are useful across the spectrum, as they open up new perspectives for research and interpretation of both current and past findings. They allow a deeper look at new and old discoveries, which leads to reviewing past beliefs and formulating increasingly precise hypotheses in the historical reconstruction phase. They are also extremely useful in the fight against the illegal trafficking of Cultural Assets and their falsification, determining not only the authenticity of the objects, but also discovering the false provenance certifications of stolen or plundered objects placed on the market.

(Emanuela Massa)
(Emanuela Massa)
WhatsApp Image 2022-02-17 at 23.42.00

New Rubens discovered in the museum deposits

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At the State Gallery in Stuttgart, investigations ended in surprising results

Several Rubens’ originals have been recently identified and revealed to the public in «Becoming Famous», the exhibition (just ended) that gathered more than 90 known and unknown artworks, related to the Master early career, up until 1620. 

As a matter of fact, in the last 2 years, the forced closure due to the COVID 19 pandemic outbreak, provided to the State Gallery the opportunity for an in-depth study of the collection, including the artworks in the deposits. And they provided startling results. They are all related to Rubens first years, when he desperately wanted to “become famous, hence the headline of the exhibition.

As we know, he succeeded: his works are hanging in all the great museums and are widely exhibited. His style is highly recognizable. Even during his lifetime people were queuing to pay the highest prices for his works. But how did he finally succeed in becoming such a celebrated painter?

He appears to have once said to a colleague:

“I am hardest working when you see me doing nothing”

Rubens was never just a painter. In addition to coming from a respected Antwerp family, benefitting from a humanistic education, he strived early on to build up a network with the intellectual and economic greats of his time.

Although incredibly gifted as a painter, he clearly knew that to succeed he had to master everything related to art production: from imagery to material, from technology to … marketing. This is so apparent e.g. in the  the painting “The Gallery of Cornelius van Geest”, by W. Vand Haecht II, where Rubens is portrayed next to Albert VII and his wife, Isabella Clara Eugenia, sovereign of the Habsburg Netherlands, while he is trying to gain their attention. Can you spot him? 

A detail of “The Gallery of Cornelius van Geest”, by W. Vand Haecht II

For his imagery and artistic references however, Rubens clearly laid the foundations for his success during his staying in Italy between 1600 and 1608, where he studied the local art. Many of his paintings of this period, and of later years, make direct reference to what he saw and copied there.

During his life, he and his workshop are said to have produced thousands of paintings, so no surprises that there are still discoveries to be made. In Stuttgart, the first findings concerned the identification of the sitters of the double portrait in the museum collection “Geronima Spinola and her granddaughter Maria Giovanna Serra”, from 1605.

Possibly more remarkably, eleven portraits of Roman emperors were identified as works by Rubens and his workshop, with the diagnostic investigations helping in distinguishing the hand of the master and those of the pupils.

 

The most striking finding has been, however, the “female head” once considered a copy and now attributed fully to the master himself. Thanks to diagnostic imaging and material analyses, it was clear how it was probably produced during the first years of the seventeen century and how originally it was painted in oil on paper, then stretched onto canvas and finally fixed on a wooden board. This extraordinary care to preserve it, points at a valued artwork by itself, however, clearly this is not enough for an attribution.

However, the technical findings found a clear matching with the results of the stylistic analyses carried out by Nico Van Hout,  now Head of Collection Research – Curator Seventeenth Century Paintings, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (KMSKA) in Antwerpen, Belgium.

We can only dream of the many more discoveries that are waiting to happen in many more collections. And without the need of a new pandemic!

(Anna Pelagotti)
(Anna Pelagotti)
20211120_174410

You should avoid making mistakes

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Stefano Garosi, one of the best known Florentine restorers tell us about his long experience in the field

Stefano, how did you become a restorer? What was your training path?

It was a tortuous journey, a bit like being on a roller coaster. I come from a dynasty of decorators and gilders: my great-grandfather was trained in the Grand Ducal workshops around the Pitti Palace. I was initiated to restoration at the age of 12, after having met Ennio Regola. I was fascinated by this activity that I encoutered in his studio. A spontaneous choice for me, I had a workshop training, also because restoration schools did not exist at the time. While working in the workshop I also attended the art institute, but my training as a restorer was a real old-fashioned apprenticeship.

Let’s talk now about your work. With Art-Test there have been many opportunities for collaboration, do you want to remember some of them?

We have been working together for a long time, many many years. For me it has always been pleasant the way in which we have been able to establish a real dialogue between diagnostics and restoration.

We have worked on many works by private owners, including a painting attributable to Andrea Del Sarto, perhaps one of the first done together, together with the one by Marco Pino, and many others. One of the most important pieces, publicly owned, was Vasari‘s “La Pazienza” or the Frans Floris, “Adam and Eve”, both from the Palatine Gallery. In the reflectography of this last work we discovered that the painter initially planned to include a cat, an idea which the artist later abandoned.

This last example perfectly explains the relationship that must exist between the diagnostician and the restorer: certain things the restorer alone can only guess, but he cannot see them. How would it be possible to see that there was a cat drawing underneath?

You can understand if there are repentances, you can distinguish the repaintings, but it is precisely in such cases that you need tools that a restorer does not have. This is where another professional figure comes into play: the diagnostician, and it is fundamental for a restorer to have this contribution.

In general, what are the most common problems encountered during a restoration in which diagnostics are most useful?

As in the case we were talking about before. Or as in the case of the painting that we are going to study together in the coming days, which is totally repainted. It is a Madonna attributed to Lorenzo di Credi. Observing carefully the painting, even with the microscope, what I see is that there is little, very little left of the original painting. It is probably an artwork that underwent an unfortunate cleaning and was completely repainted. It is a beautiful repainting, whoever did it was a good painter.

However, now you cannot venture into removing what we have now with the risk of finding nothing. There is a need for a thorough and precise investigation to understand what condition the underlying painting is in, and how much is left of it. If you can understand from the investigation that it is worthwhile to remove what you see now, it is good. But if the investigations confirm my doubts, it is better to leave everything as it is. The analyses can be considered as a preventive restoration, a way to avoid making mistakes, avoiding excesses.

You have been working in this field for many years, what changes have you noticed, for example in terms of customers, prices and clients?

In recent years, everything has changed. In over half a century, everything changes, in any sector, but above all in this.

The training of restorers has totally changed. In the workshop there was training right on the job, although very often the average restorer had a low field specific education, not to mention education in general. Then there were those exceptions, recognized as masters, who, in addition to having an excellent operational capacity, possessed a great specific and general culture: characters such as Leonetto Tintori, Alfio Del Serra, Paolo Gori, who worked in Florence in the period before the war or immediately after.

Then the market changed. The antiques market, here in Florence, is in agony; for economic and bureaucratic reasons, and also because there is little desire on the part of the operators, and the best operators go to work abroad. Most of my customers come from abroad.

The taste has also changed. There are no young collectors of ancient art, they prefer to collect the contemporary. I believe that it is easier for a young person to understand the contemporary than the ancient, obviously he is closer to the time in which he lives, he understands it better, it is natural to him and this is then reflected in the choice of works of art to buy.

(Chiara Martine Menchetti)
(Chiara Martine Menchetti)

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