03-TA-2008_Turin, Galleria Sabauda, Portrait of Carlo Emanuele I

Facilitated description:

 

The portrait of Carlo Emanuele I is a painting on a wooden table.
The painting was made by the school of painter Anton Van Dyck.
The painting is kept at the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.
Scientists at the La Venaria Reale Conservation Center in 2008 did scientific analysis to study the painting.
Analyses showed that the painting was larger.
The analysis showed the image of a character, a coat of arms and a book hidden under the painting.
Perhaps there was also another character in the first project of the painting.

 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention:

 

Diagostic 

The portrait of Carlo Emanuele I, attributed to the school of Van Dyck, was subjected to a series of non-invasive analyses to try to clarify the conservative history of the work. The presence of two junction butterflies makes it possible to assert that the table, as it appears today, is a fragment of a larger work. 
Thanks to the radiopacity of certain pigments such as lead white and cinnabar, the radiography of the work has made it possible to highlight more precisely the presence of a character underlying the one visible today. Some significant details have emerged such as a sort of circular coat of arms at the top left and a book, which seems to be held by clasped hands. These hands, due to their position and size, would be attributed not to Carlo Emanuele I, but to another character.