21mc023-MT-2008_Turin, Galleria Sabauda, C. Van Loo, Portrait of Francesco Ladatte, inv. 103, cat. 361

Facilitated description: 

 

The portrait of Francesco Ladatte is a painting made by Charles André Van Loo in the early 1700s.
The painting represents the sculptor Francesco Ladatte sitting on an armchair while resting his right arm on the head of a statue. 
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 behind the painting and filled in the color deficiencies of the edges. 
Then they cleaned the frame. 
They glued the parts of wood that were coming off.
They filled the missing wooden parts with stucco (plaster and glue layer). 
They gilded the stucco with gold leaf. 
They filled the green color gaps with watercolors. 

 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention:

 

Restoration 

The restoration operations mainly involved the restoration of the frame, since the painting did not require particular interventions except for some small pictorial reintegrations along the edges and a cleaning of the back from dust deposits. On the frame, the surface deposits were removed and the raisings of paint and gilding film were fixed and prepared. Subsequently, the decoese areas were consolidated in correspondence with the gilding and green laying of the internal part of the solid stones. The gold was cleaned with a first pass of benzyl alcohol and then with acetone. The gaps were compensated with plaster and glue grouting and then gilded with gold leaf. The abrasions were veiled with gold in shell, while on the inner throats of the solid stones of green color were removed the repaintings with water and acetone. The pictorial reintegration was performed with pigments dissolved in water with protein binder and watercolors.

 

Bibliography

- S. Villano, Sheet 9.15 in De Van Dyck in Bellotto. Splendeurs à la cour de Savoie, C. E. Spantigati, P. Astrua, A. M. Bava, S. Damiano, Torino, Allemandi, 2009, pp. 216-271.