RESTURO CONSERVATION CENTER La Venaria Realehome / restoration / Wooden furniture



The Laboratory specialises in the study and conservation of furniture, with a strong expertise in the restoration of cabinet-making in Piedmont. In recent years he has supported research on important eighteenth-century cabinetmakers such as Pietro Piffetti, Luigi Prinotto and Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, restoring their masterpieces for exhibitions and studies.

The Laboratory regularly collaborates with the Savoy Residences in preventive conservation projects. 

The Laboratory has developed the lines of study for the methods of cleaning of gilded wooden works, polychrome, and oriental lacquer artifacts.

A joinery and spaces for biocidal treatments of the works against biological attacks, are an integral part of the Laboratory.

Director of Laboratories
Michela Cardinali

Deputy Director of Laboratories
Roberta Genta

Responsible for the design and coordination of construction sites
Daniela Russo

Head of Area
Paola Buscaglia

Coordinator
Paolo Luciani

Restorers
Roberta Capezio, Francesca Coccolo, Loris Dutto, Andrea Minì, Michela Spagnolo, Valentina Tasso

Art historian
Luca Avataneo

CASE HISTORIES

Jean-Ernest-Auguste Getting

Napoleonic gala sedan, Paris, 1805/10 ca.

Nichelino (TO), Stupinigi Hunting Lodge

The restoration of Stupinigi’s carriage started from the intersection of historical data and material feedback on the work, involving a team of restorers of wooden furnishings, textiles and metal artefacts, diagnosticians and art historians.

The archival sources and the extensive bibliography on the carriage indicated a stratification of the coats of arms on the two doors, on the front and back of the work marked by the coachbuilder Getting, as has been noted at various points in the structure.
The Napoleonic imperial coat of arms, which at first analysis was repainted, denounced inhomogeneity and stratifications that suggested underlying layers.

CASE HISTORIES

Pietro Piffetti 

Folding desk with side scans, 1767

Turin, Chiablese Palace

Thanks to a refined judicial investigation carried out by the Nucleo Tutela dei Carabinieri del Piemonte (Piedmont Carabinieri Protection Unit), the great work carried out by Piffetti in the last years of his life has returned to its original location after being unlawfully removed from Italy over 50 years ago.

The Centre restored the two-body furniture with lateral scans immediately after its discovery and with a view to its public display in the exhibition ‘Il Piffetti ritrovato e altri capolavori’ of the Reggia di Venaria.

The restoration carried out was characterised by the selective removal of the last layer of extremely recent surface paint, leaving the oldest underlying state intact.

CASE HISTORIES

Pietro Piffetti 

Altarpiece, 1749

Turin, Church of San Filippo Neri

The monumental altarpiece, consisting of 5 parts, measures approximately 3 x 5 metres in total and is entirely made of mother-of-pearl inlay, engraved and polychrome ivory, gilded brass, turtle, lapis lazuli, jasper, tiger’s eye, rosewood and ebony.

The complex restoration aimed to recover the correct reading of the work through careful and measured cleaning with traditional and innovative methods and the repositioning and integration of the missing parts. There were almost 300 inlay tiles and mother-of-pearl gems that had fallen or were missing and the gilding of the brass fillets that trace the contours of the decorative motifs to give further preciousness and splendor was almost illegible. The restoration was promoted and supported in the context of Returns 2018 of Intesa Sanpaolo.

Since 2021, the frontal has been placed in the Sacristy of the Church of San Filippo Neri in Turin.

CASE HISTORIES

Luigi Prinotto, Giuseppe Marocco, Giacomo Filippo De Giovanni

Wooden inlaid choir, 1740

Private collection – exhibited for the first time at the Reggia di Venaria

The great novelty of the exhibitionGenius and mastery. Furniture and cabinetmakers at the Savoy court between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries“, which was held at the Reggia di Venaria in 2018 was the recovery of the signed and dated wooden choir that had left Piedmont and Italy after the Napoleonic suppressions. The work, which came from a Carthusian monastery in Piedmont, had arrived in Ireland and, after being purchased by a Roman antiquarian, had been dismantled and kept in crates in London. The 28-stall wooden choir, inlaid with ivory and briar figures, arrived in Venaria divided into 211 parts that were carefully studied and documented before the disinfestation, cleaning and consolidation phases and the complex reassembly.

Watch the time lapse on Youtube

CASE HISTORIES

Pietro Piffetti

Center desk, 1741

Venice, Civic Museums – Ca’ Rezzonico Museum of the Eighteenth Century in Venice

The desk is one of the few pieces of furniture signed and dated by the Piedmontese cabinetmaker Piffetti in 1741, during the artist’s full ascent to the Savoy court. The work arrived in Venice at the end of the 1920s by antiquarian means and is now kept in the Museo del Settecento Veneziano in Ca’ Rezzonico. An illustrious guest in Turin in various exhibitions, he has been on loan to the Reggia since 2018, where he is part of the exhibition itinerary of ‘Sfida al Barocco’ (2020).

The restoration of the work was carried out after a careful diagnostic phase, which followed the protocol that has been active for years at the Centre’s laboratories, which provided for integral tomography and a series of non-invasive analyses for the characterisation of precious materials including turtles and ivory.
The main conservation problem was denounced by the TAC, which led to the structural consolidations necessary to ensure the stability of the work with its sinuous and complex wooden architecture hidden under the precious coating of exotic woods, engraved ivory and turtle. Careful and calibrated cleaning has allowed a better reading of the finely engraved eburnee decorations in the burin.

Related

Science

The Scientific Laboratories carry out diagnostic and research activities applied to Cultural Heritage with advanced technological tools, including an innovative radio-tomographic machine for digital radiographs and CT scans of large objects.

Training

The School of Higher Education and Study (SAF) organizes and manages training and professional development courses and, thanks to the agreement with the University of Turin, participates in the organization of the Degree Course.

Documentation

The Center develops and conducts activities of documentation and enhancement of archival and bibliographic funds of particular importance for the conservation and restoration of cultural heritage.