RESTORATIONS - "St. Joseph's Dream"
- Florentine School unknown painter
::Florentine
School unknown painter
St. Joseph dream
(Anonymous of Florentine School - 17th century)
Oil on canvas, 88 x 73cm
San Miniato al Monte Basilica, Florence
As we have a very few information about
this and the following two pictures, 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 (most
of them previously patched up on the back),
there was poor cohesion between preliminary
layers and the canvas. As it was in so bad
conditions, the picture was protected with
a thin layer made of rabbit glue and Japanese
paper, before being removed from the stretcher.
In order to re-establish an adequate cohesion
between the paintings layers, after removing
the patches, the colour was fixed with some
rabbit glue: this operation made the surface
conditions improve. The next step was to
eliminate tears and holes: the former have
been welded, the latter have been filled
with pieces of old canvas and putty. Backing
was carried out 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.
The picture without the thin protective
layer was remounted on a new stretcher and
the pictorial layer was cleaned: this allowed
to remove all the dirt and the yellowed
paint which covered the image. The gaps
were filled with coloured putty and prepared
with tempera colours. After the first varnishing
(made with a brush with mastic resin) the
restoration was completed with tinted varnishes.
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.