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RESTORATIONS - "Holy Bishop Saint" - Florentine School unknown painter

::Florentine School unknown painter
(XVI century)
Holy Bishop Saint
Basilica of San Miniato al Monte - Florence
Oil on canvas , 88 x 73cm


As we have a very few information about this and the following picture (both kept in the San Miniato al Monte Basilica), we decided to describe briefly the restorations works. Before the restoration, the painting was in pretty bad conditions: the canvas was strongly oxidized and fragile, furthermore it was very torn and had many holes (even though of small size). The poor cohesion between the pictorial layers was the main cause of many small colour falls. A large number of these falls had been filled with putty in a previous restoration and the whole picture had been revarnished. When starting the new restoration, firstly the colour was protected with a thin layer made of rabbit glue and Japanese paper, then (after removing the picture from stretcher), the colour was fixed with some rabbit glue. Holes were filled with pieces of old canvas and putty, then the picture was backed according to the "Florentine manner", that allows to attach with hot paste the old canvas to a new defribed canvas, previously treated with animal glue. This operations made the surface conditions improve, so the thin protective layer was removed and the picture was remounted on a new stretcher. Cleaning the pictorial layer made it possible for the restorers to remove the revarnishings of the previous restoration, finding out wide areas of original colours, which had been hidden until that moment. The current restoration has been completed filling the gaps with putty, preparing the tempera colours and the final varnishing.

This painting was restored thanks to the initiative of the ROMUALDO DEL BIANCO FOUNDATION and the co-operation with the project "BE PART OF HISTORY" by VIVA HOTELS in Florence. The Project was created in order to give a contribution to Florence Artistic Heritage with restoration of pieces of art of different Florentine Museums.