Conservation Portfolio Home
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Conserving a Giant: Resurrecting Pietro da Cortona's Triumph of David, Fall 2013
This is a proposed two-year treatment project for a 12' X 19' canvas owned by the Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University.
This project and treatment is supervised by Lead Conservator, Kristin deGhetaldi with collaboration from other University departments.
Dr. Anthony Lagalante heads the Chemistry Team performing scientific analysis on the painting: XRF, cross section sampling, staining, and characterization, FTIR on coating scraping
For more information on the on-going project visit the project blog: http://projects.library.villanova.edu/paintingrestoration
and the Public Outreach page for programming related to this project.
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Here I am working with Amanda Norbutus, Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemistry, and Kristen Watts, Masters Candidate in Chemistry to determine areas of the painting to analyze using XRF (X-Ray Flourescence spectroscopy) with a portable handheld unit. I am documenting the locations of all the test points so that the XRF data can be contextualized. See Kristen Watt's blog entry for more information.
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The conservation team is interested in assessing the level of cleaning that they have achieved by looking for zinc (an anachronistic pigment for this Baroque painting) that is a marker of one of the campaigns of overpainting. If zinc is not present the conservation team may decide to stop cleaning at this point even if there are halos of overpaint so as not to risk abrading or further deteriorating original material.
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Image of the top of the handheld unit. Readings were taken in cleaned areas and adjacent uncleaned areas.
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Example of cross section taken from King Saul's drapery
The cross sections have helped confirm the use of a double red ground. They also demonstrate at least three distinct campaigns of restoration (overpaint).
