25mc02-TA-2014_Turin, Galleria Sabauda, M. Van Musscher, Portrait of an elderly woman, inv. 36

Facilitated description:

 

The portrait of an elderly woman is a painting on a wooden table. 
The painting depicts an elderly woman sitting, dressed in black clothes. 
Michiel Van Musscher painted the painting in 1674. 
The painting is kept at the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.
The La Venaria Reale Conservation and Restoration Centre restored the painting in 2014 for the new set-up of the Gallery. 
The restorers cleaned behind the painting with brushes to remove dust. 
They put springs behind the painting and made small cuts in the wood to eliminate tension. 
They cleaned the painting without removing the paint. 
They put a substance to protect the painting from the sun's rays and dust. 
The restorers cleaned the frame, filled the wooden gaps with stucco (plaster and glue). 
In the end they put behind the painting a substance against insects that eat wood. 

 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention:

 

The painting was the subject of conservation and restoration work on the occasion of its installation at the new headquarters in the Manica Nuova of the Palazzo Reale in Turin (2014). The restoration was accompanied by a multispectral diagnostic campaign and photographic documentation to investigate some of the technical characteristics of the work.

Restoration

The intervention began with the removal of the constraint system and with the superficial cleaning of the verso with soft brushes. In order to prevent the tablet glued to the back from causing strong tensions to the support, parallel vertical cuts were made along the entire width. To reconnect the work to the frame and at the same time create a controlled pressure on the support, two conical springs were applied to one hundred of each strip. As far as polychromy is concerned, only inconsistent and consistent deposits have been removed from the surface, without intervening on the still transparent, compact and unaltered paint. The surface cleaning was carried out with mechanical removal by soft brushes followed by applications of aqueous solutions. The application of protective brush is followed. Finally, the dust deposits were removed with soft bristle brushes and micro aspirator from the frame. The preparation and gilding gaps were grouted and chromatically integrated with watercolor colors and a layer of permethrin was spread on the back to achieve biotic attacks.