55mc03-DM-2014_Milano, Pinacoteca di Brera, B. Luini, Death of the firstborn, inv. 5522

Facilitated description:

 

Death of the firstborn is a mural painting (painting made on a wall). 
The painting decorated Villa della Pelucca in Sesto San Giovanni. 
The painting was detached from Villa della Pelucca in 1821-1822 and was put on wooden board.  
Bernardino Luini painted the painting in 1514. 
The painting is kept at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.
Restorer Pinin Brambilla Barcilon restored the painting in the late 1900s.
The La Venaria Reale Conservation and Restoration Centre restored the painting in 2014.
Scientists at the Venaria Center did scientific analysis to study the substances present above the painting and the colors used by the artist.
The restorers placed the painting in the anoxic chamber (room without oxygen) to eliminate the insects that eat the wood. 
They inserted pieces of wood to close the slits of the board behind the painting. 
They replaced some wooden parts added during the restorations of the past. 
They mounted the painting on a new frame (wooden structure that stands behind the painting and serves to support the painting). 
They made the new frame with springs to make the structure more flexible. 
The restorers cleaned the front of the painting. 
They stopped the parts of color that were peeling off. 
They filled the colorless parts with putty (plaster and glue layer).
They painted the putty with watercolors.

 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention: 

 

Restoration 

The intervention on Death of the firstborn is part of the extraordinary maintenance of the works from Villa La Pelucca (Sesto San Giovanni), a series of wall paintings detached from Stefano Barezzi and became part of the collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera. This project has been carried out in compliance with the numerous restorations carried out on the paintings, including that of Pinin Brambilla Barcilon in the late 1990s.
The main objective was the stabilization of the wooden supports, in fact, the transport of the works on board has led to serious degradation of the pictorial film, caused by the sensitivity of the wooden support to thermo-hygrometric variations. In addition to these damages, attacks of xylophagous insects and defects due to the structural stability of the supports were detected due to the poor quality of the wood used.
The following interventions were carried out on behalf of the support: disinfestation in anoxic chamber, disassembly of the support, elimination of glue residues, compensation of slits with wedges of the same wooden species, replacement of the plywood part and of the old butterflies with wooden inserts, construction of a new frame with spring tie rods.
On the film we tried to restore a homogeneous reading, operating in compliance with previous interventions. Consolidations of the adhesion defects of the pictorial material were therefore carried out, a superficial cleaning (dry cleaning) with rubbers and the removal of residues with brushes and vacuum cleaner. In addition, the previous retouching and grouting have been maintained and the recent slits and flicker holes have been grouted and integrated with watercolor colors. Finally, the yellowing was attenuated with the use of colored pencils.

 

Bibliography

M. Cardinali, P. Luciani, A. Minì, Conservation interventions on complex wooden supports: some application cases faced during the restoration of the frescoes by Bernardino Luini torn from Villa La Pelucca and four panels with chinoiserie from the Quirinale Palace, in The State of the Art, XIV National Congress IGIIC (Accademia Di Belle Arti di L’Aquila, 20/22 October 2016), Nardini, 2016.