Case Study

Brief description of the interventions

The project to study and restore the painting, promoted by the Pinacoteca di Varallo, has made it possible to resolve the problems of degradation and return to the public a work that has long been kept in storage due to conservation problems.

The multidisciplinary working group, made up of restorers, experts in diagnostics applied to the cultural and historical heritage of art, with the high supervision of the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Biella, Novara, Vercelli and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, worked in close synergy, sharing from the outset the opportunity to launch a virtuous process of knowledge of the painting, thanks to which it was possible to accurately reconstruct the technical procedures and characterize the pictorial materials put in place for its realization.

The exhaustive diagnostic campaign, made possible thanks to the equipment present in the JRC laboratories and the collaboration with the Department of Chemistry of the University of Turin, made it possible to acquire unpublished data on creative processes and to clarify the dynamics of the degradation processes found.

Particular attention has been paid to the attempt to improve the reading of the figurative text, which is heavily compromised by the significant loss of colour and the presence of unsightly gore due to water percolations, which have damaged the work in the past.

Considering the nature of the painting and its inherent fragility, it was decided to create a new frame on which an elastic tensioning system was prepared.

The results of the comprehensive study and conservation project were presented in the exhibition ‘A restoration for Aurelio Luini in Varallo’, organised at Palazzo dei Musei – Pinacoteca di Varallo and Museo Calderini, and recounted in a video.