01-SL-2008_Turin, Museum of Oriental Art, Tamon-Ten, inv. Js/13

Facilitated description: 

 

The Tamon-Ten is a Japanese sculpture of painted wood from about 1600.
The sculpture represents the guardian of the North.
The Tamon-Ten is the head of the Celestial Kings who guard the four cardinal points (north, south, east, west).
The Tamon-Ten is dressed like a warrior and sitting on a rock.
Today it is kept at the Museum of Oriental Art in Turin.
The La Venaria Reale Conservation and Restoration Centre restored the sculpture in 2008.
The restorers themselves use a brush to remove xylophagous insects (insects that feed on wood and damage the work).
After the restorers consolidated (made more stable) the parts of color that were detaching.
The restorers cleaned the sculpture (cleaned the surface of the artwork from the dirt deposited over time).
The finger of the left hand of the Tamon-Ten had a gap (missing part).  
The restorers have integrated (reconstructed the missing part) the finger of the left hand with wood and putty (white layer of plaster and glue).
Then they colored the reconstructed part of the finger with watercolors to make it similar to the other fingers.
In the end they made the pictorial integrations (reconstructed with color the gaps and scratches of the surface).

 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention:

 

The wooden sculpture Tamon-Ten, guardian of the North, represents the head of the four Celestial Kings who guard the cardinal points. The statue was purchased by the Compagnia di San Paolo on the American market. The restoration, funded by the Fondazione per l'Arte della Compagnia di San Paolo, was aimed at the exhibition of the work at the Museum of Oriental Art (MAO) in Turin, opened to the public in 2008. The work is in permanent storage at the MAO.

 

Restoration

The operation started with a disinfestation using a permethrin brush. Subsequently, the uplifts of the preparatory layers and the pictorial film were consolidated with glue. A general dusting was then carried out, followed by a superficial cleaning of the polychromy with fat emulsion. Fat emulsion with cococollagen and a chelating solution were used in the parts with strong blackening, while on the two metal braces, where fatty patinas and copper corrosion products were present, a cleaning was carried out using a solution of trisodium EDTA at 10 °C.%. The first phalanx of the finger of the left hand was then reconstructed with Hinoki cypress wood, then plastered and chromatically tuned with veils.
Finally, an intervention of pictorial integration with watercolor veils was carried out on the entire surface.

 

Bibliography

- M.C. Canepa, V. Parlato, T. Radelet, B. Rinetti, Technique of execution, state of conservation, restoration work, in "Restoring the East. Japanese wooden sculptures for the MAO in Turin", edited by P. Brambilla Barcilon, E. Mello, Nardini, Florence, 2008, pp. 48-57; 
- E. Mello, M. Ravera, Analysis of the structure and results of the TAC, in "Restoring the East. Japanese wooden sculptures for the MAO in Turin", edited by P. Brambilla Barcilon, E. Mello, Nardini, Florence, 2008, pp. 58-61;
- M. Nervo, T. Poli, Scientific analysis, in "Restoring the East. Japanese wooden sculptures for the MAO in Turin", edited by P. Brambilla Barcilon, E. Mello, Firenze, Nardini, 2008, pp. 62-65.