21mc014-TA-2008_Turin, Galleria Sabauda, R. J. Van Vries, River landscape, inv. 62, cat. 436

Facilitated description: 

 

Riverscape is a painting representing a house among trees along a river. 
The painter Jansz Van Vries painted the painting during the 1600s.
The painting is kept at the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.
The restorers of the La Venaria Reale Conservation and Restoration Centre restored the painting in 2008.
The restorers cleaned the painting from dust with brushes and a small vacuum cleaner. 
They eliminated the yellowed paint and paintings from the old restoration.
They filled the holes caused by the insects that feed on wood with stucco (plaster and glue). 
They colored the putty.
They filled the color gaps with paint. 
Then they restored the frame. They glued the parts of wood that were coming off. 
They eliminated the wood-eating insects and covered the holes with putty (plaster and glue layer). 
In the end they made the gilding on the frame parts without gilding.

 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention:

 

Restoration 

The restoration of the board began with a dusting of the support with soft brush in order to remove inconsistent dust deposits. On the pictorial film, following the solubility tests, a cleaning was carried out to remove the altered paints and retouching. The flickering holes of the xylophagous insects were compensated with stucco (Bologna plaster and rabbit glue), then supplemented with watercolor colors.
The integration of the pictorial surface with paint colours, preceded by a painting, was carried out to veil the abrasions of the wooden support, to make the signs of the veins less evident in the light backgrounds and to chromatically match the previous oil touch-ups with the surrounding original colour. Finally, a final painting was applied.

 

Frame
The flakes raised were consolidated with injections of rabbit glue, while for the flicker holes, disinfestation was carried out with injections and application of permethrin by brush. During the cleaning, yellowed paints and purple touch-ups were removed. Subsequently, the grouting of the flickering holes was carried out, then retouched with watercolor colors, and of the gilding gaps, integrated with the gouache gilding technique.

 

Bibliography 

- S. Villano, Sheet 8.7 in De Van Dyck in Bellotto. Splendeurs à la cour de Savoie, C. E. Spantigati, P. Astrua, A. M. Bava, S. Damiano, Turin, Allemandi, 2009, p. 197.