RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

Humanistic research and new technologies - multimedia and diagnostic tools as scientific fundaments and technical resources for conservation, museology and art techniques

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di UDINE - STORIA E TUTELA DEI BENI CULTURALI - ()

Research Unit Leader

Giuseppina Perusini

Description

The research unit will assess documentable restoration interventions that were carried out between 1815 and 1918 on mobile works of art in Veneto and above all in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Research will be carried out in some State archives of this area (Venice, Trieste, Udine etc.) and particularly in the State Archive of Trieste, where not only the funds relating to the protection and conservation on the part of the Town council are kept, but also some of the documents of the Zentral-Kommission which from 1851 coordinated the preservation activities in the areas under Austrian domination. Studies will also be carried out in the various archives of towns and parishes as well as private archives (especially those of families whose members were in the preservation commissions) and church archives (archives of the archbishop). Finally, we hope to have access to the archive of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, which have so far remained closed.
For the period after 1890 particular attention will be focused on the archives of the Monuments and Fine Arts Office of Venice and Trieste which up till now has only been partially researched. All local documentation will be integrated with material from the Central State Archive in Rome (Fine Arts, Public Works and Church Division).
Naturally, any documentation from local libraries must be added to that kept in the archives: in the city library in Udine, for example, there are both manuscripts and printed documents of great interest, such as an unedited manual on restoration from the 19th century and other manuscripts on artistic techniques. Furthermore it is of fundamental importance to examine periodicals in order to reconstruct local artistic heritage. All the material gathered will be put on a database to allow the storing and cross-checking of information relating to the interventions and restorations, using software-program which is already available (Aristos). The first part of this research thus intends to clarify the training methods of the restorers, combining the study of the documents with a study of the restoration manuals and treatises on artistic techniques of the period. The various methods of restoration deducible from the documentation left by the Commissioni provinciali di Belle Arti (Provincial Fine Arts Commissions) will then be studied, and subsequently the Monument and Fine Arts Office. Finally, the problem of conservation of works of art during the First World War will also be examined.
The second part of the study involves not only the usual historical artistic research which will be carried out in various Italian and foreign archives and museums, but also a series of diagnostic investigations intended to establish the materials and painting techniques used in the paintings under examination. These investigations will help to verify possible technical differences between the paintings of German and Italian artists and the possible relationship these materials had with those used in restoration. These investigations will allow us, for example, to establish the use of new materials for the preparation, the possible presence of the underlying drawing and the types of pigments used to see if new colors were adopted (for example the yellow and green of chrome, the yellow of cadmium or Scheele’s green). Such investigations will also help to verify the state of conservation of the paintings, the deterioration of the materials of which they are made and the most effective methods of restoration.