25mc19-TA-2014_Turin, Galleria Sabauda, F. Di Cristofano (Franciabigio), Annunciation, inv. 200

Facilitated description: 

 

The Annunciation is a painting on a wooden table. 
The painting depicts Mary kneeling on her right as she receives the news that she will become the mother of Jesus. On the left the angel Gabriel gives Mary the news and on the top is represented God between clouds and angels. 
The painter Francesco di Cristofano, known as Franciabigio, painted the painting in 1517-1518. 
The painting is kept at the Galleria Sabauda in Turin. 
In the past two famous restorers Pinin Brambilla Barcilon and Antonio Rava restored the painting. 
The La Venaria Reale Conservation and Restoration Centre restored the painting in 2014. 
Scientists at the Venaria Center did scientific analysis to study how the painting was made. 
The restorers cleaned the painting of dust. 
They glued the parts of color that were peeling off. 
They eliminated a grouting (plaster and glue to cover the lack of color) because it was not well preserved. 
They painted the colorless parts with watercolors making small dashes to make the painted parts recognize during the restoration.
The restorers left the burns visible in the center. 
Eventually they painted the painting to protect it from the sun's rays and dust. 

 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention:

 

The panel was the subject of conservation and restoration work on the occasion of the setting up of the Galleria Sabauda 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. Among the most recent restorations of the work are documented that of Pinin Brambilla Barcilon (1979) and Antonio Rava (1993).

Restoration

The intervention began with a general reorganization of the surface through localized re-adhesions and cleaning from consistent deposits. The grouting of the lower portion has therefore been removed, as it is no longer structurally solid. This operation involved a reflection on the correct methodology of pictorial integration through the virtual re-proposal of a chromatic abstraction and a chromatic selection integration. In accordance with the direction of the works, this second option was chosen, made with a horizontal hatching to reconstruct the color and shape using watercolor colors. The gaps in the center of the painting, due to candle burning, were left exposed. The old pictorial integrations, where chromatically altered, have been veiled and retuned with paint colors. With regard to the decorative apparatus, a general safety clearance was carried out, making local consolidations in correspondence with the adhesion defects, and the integration of the gaps of the right external margin with plastering intoned with watercolors. Finally, we proceeded with the drafting of a new protective.