The restoration of paintings made on wooden support by some of the most important protagonists of Piedmontese and Lombard painting between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Defendente Ferrari, Gandolfino da Roreto, Pascale Oddone, Gerolamo Giovenone, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Bernardino Lanino, Bernardino de Conti, Marco d’Oggiono, Albertino Piazza, Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Ambrogio della Torre), is a field of study and research that the laboratory has been promoting for years with an interdisciplinary and multi-analytical approach, thanks to the collaboration with the University of Turin (Master’s Degree Course in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage), private bodies and collectors and with regional and national museum and research institutions.
The technical-scientific protocol adopted has made it possible to clarify relevant peculiarities of the modus operandi of these artists, investigated with an interdisciplinary historical-artistic, scientific and technical approach, according to a methodology that unites all the sectors of the Center.
The laboratory also aims to explore issues relating to specific forms of degradation found in pigments such as azurite and ultramarine blue in order to broaden the research strands, as well as paying particular attention to restoration materials.
Director of Laboratories
Michela Cardinali
Deputy Director of Laboratories
Roberta Genta
Head of Area
Paola Buscaglia
Coordinator
Bernadette Ventura
Restorers
Gianna Ferraris of Celle
Art historian
Paola Manchinu
CASE STUDY
Master of the Pala Tana (Gomar from Antwerp?) and Piedmontese workshop
Child, a holy bishop and a holy knight; Predella with Christ and the Apostles
Fondazione Torino Musei, Palazzo Madama – Civic Museum of Ancient Art of Turin
Early 16th century
The restoration of the triptych attributed to the so-called ‘Maestro della Pala Tana’, owned by the Fondazione Torino Musei-Palazzo Madama, is an ambitious project pursued with the aim of recovering a work with complex conservation and attributive events highlighted also on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to The European Renaissance by Antoine De Lonhy curated by Simone Baiocco and Vittorio Natale (Turin, Palazzo Madama-Museo Civico d’Arte Antica; Susa, Museo Diocesano, 7 October 2021-9 January 2022). In 2020, Palazzo Madama launched a series of investigations with the Centre to assess the state of conservation of the panels, which had been subject to repeated and heavy repaintings in the past.
[In the photograph: detail of the work]
CASE STUDY
Gaudenzio Ferrari
God the Father surrounded by four angels
Approximately 1540-1545
Saronno, Prepositural Church of Saints Peter and Paul
The restoration of the painting by Gaudenzio Ferrari depicting God the Father surrounded by four angels, attested for the first time in the prepositurale of the SS. Pietro e Paolo di Saronno, in which it is still located, in 1896, has made it possible to draw attention to a work by the great master of the Piedmontese Renaissance that has hitherto been little known because of the inaccessibility of its location, at the apex of the counter-façade of the church.
The study and restoration project has made it possible to retrace the complex conservation events that have affected the work, radically altering its original appearance with the transport from the support on table to that on canvas, the result of the drastic intervention carried out by the painter-restorer Mauro Pellicioli in 1931-1932.
[In the photograph: detail of the work]
CASE STUDY
Bernardino Lanino
The Last Supper
Approximately 1550-1551
Milan, Basilica of the Holy Apostles and Nazaro Major
In 2018, in anticipation of the exhibition “The Renaissance by Gaudenzio Ferraricurated by Giovanni Agosti and Jacopo Stoppa (Novara, Vercelli and Varallo Sesia, 24 March-1 July 2018), theThe Last Supper painted by Bernardino Lanino in about 1550-1551 for the Basilica of the Holy Apostles and Nazaro Maggiore in Milan was the subject of an extraordinary maintenance intervention by the Center.
This conservative activity involved removing coherent deposits from the surfaces, securing the pictorial and preparatory layers in the areas subject to lifting and/or detachment and chromatic balancing of previous aesthetic interventions, which were altered and tacked.
CASE STUDY
Defendant Ferrari
Madonna Enthroned with Child between Two Holy Martyrs of Carmagnola
Approximately 1509
Fondazione Torino Musei – Palazzo Madama-Museo Civico d’Arte Antica
The painting by Defendente Ferrari already in the Collegiate Church of Saints Peter and Paul of Carmagnola in 1954 was withdrawn by order of the then Superintendent of the Galleries, Noemi Gabrielli, to remove it from the danger of alienation. Entering the collections of the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica di Torino in 1966, it was exhibited until 1988 in the Sala Acaia, in an evocative dialogue and comparison with the museum’s rich collection of works of this prolific protagonist of Renaissance painting in the ancient Savoy duchy. Since then the Madonna and Child Carmagnola remained hidden in the deposits of the museum.
CASE STUDY
Defendant Ferrari, Gerolamo Giovenone
Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine
Approximately 1508
Cavour (To), Church of San Lorenzo Martire
Since 2014, thanks to the collaboration with the Diocese of Turin and the support of the Compagnia di San Paolo, the Centre has promoted a project for the analysis, restoration and conservation of paintings on wood (polyptychs, altarpieces and painted doors on the front and back) that adorn the altars and the presbytery of the parish church of Santi Giovanni Battista e Pietro in Avigliana, one of the most important nucleus of works of the Piedmontese Renaissance preserved outside a museum.
CCR and accessibility
