73-CR-2022_Turin, Villa della Regina, Extraordinary and ordinary maintenance of wall paintings and decorated surfaces of architecture

Facilitated description: 

 

In 2022, the La Venaria Conservation and Restoration Centre carried out a maintenance site at Villa della Regina in Turin. 
Maintenance is the set of direct actions on works of art to stop the deterioration process and to reinforce the structure. 
The project was attended by restorers from different workshops (wood, textiles, wall paintings). 
The restorers studied the degrades (damages) of the works.
The restorers carried out the interventions every 2 months on Monday during the closing day of the museum.
They carried out cleaning (cleaning the works from the substances deposited over time). 
They made specific interventions for the most ruined works.
The Center's diagnosts (scientists) carried out Integrated Pest Management (verified the presence of insects and organisms harmful to works of art). 
To do this, they set traps to measure the presence of all types of insects and organisms.

 

 

 

 

Abstract of the intervention: 

 

Maintenance

In 2022, the "La Venaria Reale" Conservation and Restoration Centre was responsible for the scheduled maintenance of the mobile and fixed collections of the visit to Villa della Regina in Turin. The intervention involved the identification, monitoring and design of practical activities aimed at preventing the phenomena of degradation of the works on display. The intervention protocol provided for the drafting of room sheets, microclimatic monitoring and the Integrated Pest Management program. The activities began in July and were carried out every two months, on Monday, the day of closure to the public.
The project saw the involvement of restorers specialized in different sectors (wooden artefacts, fabrics, wall paintings) in order to operate in a specialized manner on different types of material. 
Before the intervention, the conservation problems of the Apartments of the King and Queen were identified (presence of deposits of various kinds, lifts, gaps and dimensional variations of the wooden works, anthropic damage).
The main operations of the maintenance activity have therefore focused on the removal of inconsistent deposits and on the implementation of interventions aimed at responding to specific ongoing and progressive conservation problems. 
The project also included an activity of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to monitor the presence of organisms that may be harmful (insects, pathogens, weeds, vertebrates). IPM monitoring included the installation of 14 traps for monthly detection.