The laboratory was started in 2016 to respond to the need to carry out the numerous cultural projects that in Turin and Piedmont required scientific and technical support for the treatment of paper and photographic materials. In 2017, thanks to ministerial accreditation, the University of Turin was able to activate, together with the JRC, a further specialisation course for the degree course in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, PFP 5 (Library and archival material, paper and parchment articles, photographic, cinematographic and digital material).
The workshop is mainly dedicated to the production of contemporary art and to collaboration with museums and foundations dedicated to the graphic, photographic and cinematographic arts of national and international importance.
However, there were also opportunities to work on ancient artefacts, such as Gaudenzio Ferrari’s cartoons kept in the Pinacoteca dell’Accademia Albertina in Turin and Vincenzo Coronelli’s globes belonging to the Intesa Sanpaolo Collections.
The setting up of the laboratory was made possible thanks to the support of Fondazione Cecilia Gilardi Onlus, Intesa Sanpaolo and Material ConneXion Italia.
Director of Laboratories
Michela Cardinali
Deputy Director of Laboratories
Roberta Genta
Responsible for the design and coordination of construction sites
Daniela Russo
Responsible
Paola Buscaglia
Coordinator
Amber of Aleus
Restorers
Magdalene Trabace (disambiguation)
Art historian
Luca Avataneo
CASE HISTORIES
Papier Peint "To China"
Second half of the 18th century
Turin, Intesa Sanpaolo Collections. Headquarters of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation
The work in question is a portion of a larger papier peint in painted paper and measures 3.56 x 2.65 m
These types of wallpapers of Chinese manufacture were made in the East and marketed both in the Italian peninsula and in Europe during the second half of the eighteenth century.
Produced using serial processing techniques, consolidated over time and commonly practiced, the Chinese artisans used models, molds and woodcut methods to create the ink background design, with the addition of pictorial drafts, in the final phase, to insert details that customized the same series.
The design unfolds over several perspective planes in such a way as to give the illusion of depth.
CASE HISTORIES
Vincenzo Maria Coronelli
Core of five cartons, 1514-1540 ca.
Turin, Pinacoteca dell’Accademia Albertina
The five cartoons to be exhibited in the exhibition ‘Il Rinascimento di Gaudenzio Ferrari’ (Novara, Varallo, Vercelli, March – September 2018) were studied and secured before the major event. The conservative survey provided for a general control of the works for the definition of ordinary maintenance operations: particular attention was paid to verifying and adapting the display frames present. On this occasion, graphic mappings of the individual works and multispectral analyses were carried out in order to deepen the technique of execution and the state of conservation of the surfaces.
CASE HISTORIES
Gaudenzio Ferrari
Globes, 1699
Turin, Intesa Sanpaolo Collections
The laboratory had the opportunity to study and restore two extraordinary globes, now part of the Intesa Sanpaolo Collections, created by Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, a Venetian cartographer and encyclopaedist who was appreciated throughout Europe in the 1600s for the production of this type of artefact.
The diagnostic campaign provided for the realization of the TAC to visualize the internal composition of the artifacts, with unpublished data on their realization. Given the polymateriality of the globes, the Laboratory has worked in close synergy with the Wooden Artifacts sector. The most complex part of the intervention concerned the printed paper shells that had been altered by previous restorations and the natural degradation of the materials over time.
CASE HISTORIES
Lucio Fontana, Giulio Paolini, Alberto Burri, Alighiero Boetti and others
Works of contemporary art on paper
The laboratory had the opportunity to study and restore two extraordinary globes, now part of the Intesa Sanpaolo Collections, created by Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, a Venetian cartographer and encyclopaedist who was appreciated throughout Europe in the 1600s for the production of this type of artefact.
Since its opening in 2017, the Laboratory has had the opportunity to work on works by great contemporary artists of the 20th century, from Fontana to Burri, from Schifano to Merz, from the Intesa Sanpaolo Collections.
The selection of the works to be subjected to intervention was carried out on the basis of the conservative priorities defined following a survey of the state of conservation conducted by the restorers of the Laboratory in the bank's warehouses. The great variety of authors, techniques and subjects is one of the most interesting elements of this intervention.