The Curators’ Quaderno - The Search for Violante
The Search for Violante in Florence. Issue 5 of The Curators’ Quaderno follows the restoration of three devotional paintings attributed to eighteenth-century painter Violante Siries, at Certosa di Firenze, a vast monastery in Tuscany. Violante’s Reading Madonna, a rare, highly damaged altarpiece is a mysterious commission for a Grand Tour female artist, even of her calibre. Conservators and scholars embark on a multi-faceted search for these paintings’ attributions. They scour the archives and safeguard the paintings’ future in a restoration laboratory in the Santa Croce district, to determine whether these attributions match the painter’s hand. The Curators’ Quaderno is a collection of notebook-style publications, conceived by Calliope Arts, in collaboration with The Florentine and Restoration Conversations, to raise awareness of women’s contributions to the fields of art, science and culture.
The Search for Violante in Florence. Issue 5 of The Curators’ Quaderno follows the restoration of three devotional paintings attributed to eighteenth-century painter Violante Siries, at Certosa di Firenze, a vast monastery in Tuscany. Violante’s Reading Madonna, a rare, highly damaged altarpiece is a mysterious commission for a Grand Tour female artist, even of her calibre. Conservators and scholars embark on a multi-faceted search for these paintings’ attributions. They scour the archives and safeguard the paintings’ future in a restoration laboratory in the Santa Croce district, to determine whether these attributions match the painter’s hand.
The Curators’ Quaderno is a collection of notebook-style publications, conceived by Calliope Arts, in collaboration with The Florentine and Restoration Conversations, to raise awareness of women’s contributions to the fields of art, science and culture.
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“At the start of our project, the paintings were covered
by a thick layer of dirt and candle-smoke deposits. The
wooden frames of all three paintings had been nailed
directly to the front of their canvases. The Reading
Madonna had over 30 nail holes of varying sizes in the
paint layer. The corners of the canvas were badly frayed
and the paint was actively flaking, and the same is true
in many other areas of the painting. We found four larger
tears in the canvas, three of which had been patched
from the reverse. The patches were made of fine pink
cloth formerly used in book repair, carefully applied
with vegetable glue. These may have been the work
of the monastery, which once specialised in book and
manuscript conservation. Paint losses were evident
around the tears, concealed from the front by fills and
clumsy repainting.
The most severe paint loss was the Madonna’s hands,
most likely damaged when a large bronze crucifix fell off
the chapel altar and into the painting. The damage and
the subsequent repaint – which was itself flaking away –
are visible in the only extant photo we found, which dates
before 1994.
After diagnostic photography and paint analysis of micro
samples, the cleaning of the thick layers of dirt and
smoke deposits was carried out using a mild anionic
surfactant. The layers of yellowed natural resin varnish
dating from the previous restoration were removed with
diluted solvent solutions, monitoring the process under
magnification and in UV light. The repaints and fills were
removed with solvent gels and the use of small scalpels.
During this process, we discovered original paint
underneath the repaints, which aided in reconstructing
the Madonna’s hands.”
12
Elizabeth Wicks
Conservator
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