Santuario di Ossuccio

The restoration by Martino Mascherpa

The restoration of the exvotos of the Sanctuary has been carried out between 2012 and 2014. It has involved 36 paintings and was made possible by a private donation. The restorer, Martino Mascherpa, as he cleaned and consolidated the artefacts, noted: " the vast quantity and relevance of the artistic patrimony in the Sanctuary has certainly made maintenance a difficult task to perform throughout the centuries, so much so that these spontaneous works of art, some of them of good artistic value, had been given only minor attention.
All the paintings are oil on canvas, except one. In some of the paintings restored, the layers of soot, glue, and overlaying paint had dimmed and blurred the pictorial film to the point of making it almost impossible to read. Cohesiveness and adherence of pictorial layers also posed problems such as flaking, loss of colour and preparation, and gaps sometimes of considerable extent". (From the "conclusive technical report").

This website hosts some of the restored exvotos in the gallery.
The restorer, Martino Mascherpa, retells the sequence of restoration techniques implemented on the ex-votos.

The painting before restoration

Wood's Light examination
First of all, the paintings have been examined under Wood's lamp, to detect the presence and consistence of overlaying paint and pictorial interventions.

Grazing light exam
They have then been examined under grazing light to determine the state of cohesiveness of the pictorial layers and detect deformations of the underlying support.

Elastic traction
If the grazing light exam reveals a rising of the pictorial layers, and the painting had not been through preceding interventions that stiffened the support, the correct general tension of the original canvas can be restored, favouring thus the levelling down of the flaked colours.

Cleaning blocks
Before cleaning, trials were made, in different parts of the painting, to isolate the most suitable solvent for the removal of the paints and integrations from preceding interventions.

Cleaning
For the paintings that did not present a precarious adherence of the pictorial layers, we opted for an immediate cleaning, carried out mainly with a carbopolbased solvent gel, sometimes with the addition of chetonic solvents, for the removal of superficial dirt and of the overlaying paint from preceding interventions.

Coating
All the paintings have been coated, for consolidation, with animal glue, in different concentrations according to the specific problem. Once the glue dried, the paintings were dismounted for the operations of consolidation and regeneration of the supporting canvas.

Lining removal
The paintings showing preceding linings were restored to their original backside, cleaned from glues while the canvas was cleaned from residues and soot.

Consolidation and vacuum flattening
Consolidation and vacuum flattening was applied to all the paintings, evenly distributing a controlled pressure on the surface.

Patches of canvas and nonwoven fabric
Where the original canvas was ripped or had been subject to later canvas inserts, after the renewal of the damaged parts, a patch of nonwoven fabric was applied, as well as thin fabric origamilike, glued with thermoplastic adhesive. This gave the paintings a better base and continuity with the original support material

Perimetral stripes
In order to better hold the painting while mounting it on its new frame, perimetral stripes were glued with thermoplastic glues along the perimeter of the canvas, heating them and keeping them together through the vacuum pressure.

Plastering, pictorial reintegration and paintcoating
The plastering was made with chalk and glue best suited for the painting in question, trying to reproduce the shapes and reliefs of the pictorial surface surrounding the gaps. The pictorial reintegration was carried out with powder pigments mixed with retouching paint for a complete reversibility and optimal stability of the intervention. The final paintcoat was layered with dammar and antiuv gloss, with white spirit added.

The painting after restoration