A portrait of Titian at the first Culture G20 in Rome

Titian ’s famous Portrait of Pier Luigi Farnese in Armor will welcome delegations for the first meeting of the G20 Culture Ministers, scheduled to take place in Rome on Thursday, July 29, and Friday, July 30. The painting will be exhibited on July 30, 2021, at Palazzo Barberini, in the room designated for theCentral Institute for Restoration, an institution at which the work is now being held to complete a restoration financed thanks to Borsa Italiana’s “Revelations” project, initiated by the Capodimonte Museum and Real Bosco in 2018. The Titian Portrait belongs to the Farnese collection of the Capodimonte Museum and Real Bosco, which converged in Naples with the accession to the throne of Charles of Bourbon (1734) and the gift of the collection of his mother, Elisabetta Farnese.

The restoration was financed thanks to theart bonus: three companies from Campania (Tecno, Pasell and Graded), all included in Borsa Italiana’s Elite program for companies with high growth potential, participated in both the diagnostic survey campaign and the restoration.

The painting depicts the proud and haughty figure of Pier Luigi Farnese (1503-1547), favorite son of Pope Paul III, who, with authority and strength, is shown in his dazzling armor with a flag recalling the office of gonfalonier and general of the papal army, assigned to him by his father in 1545, along with that of duke of Parma and Piacenza. Titian, a portraitist for the Farnese family, captures the man in three-quarter profile, looking seemingly distractedly toward the nearby militiaman who whispers something to him as he listens to the duke. Titian captures the luminous effects of the light shimmering on the armor with inimitable skill.

Titian’s Pier Luigi Farnese was in a condition of legibility compromised by significant small gaps and widespread abrasions. The intervention, now underway at the Central Institute for Restoration, was preceded by anextensive diagnostic campaign, carried out by Emmebi Diagnostica Artistica/Arsmensurae and the Laboratoire d’Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale (LAMS) in Paris. Research with advanced methodologies that allowed the acquisition of new information on the painting’s execution technique useful for tackling the delicate restoration, which was associated at the ICR with extensive graphic documentation and a diagnostic imaging campaign in visible and ultraviolet light. The current restoration, planned with the Restoration Department of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, intervened on the pictorial surface, carrying out the removal of the varnishes of the previous restoration that are now oxidized, the consolidation of the cohesion defects of the pictorial film, and the thinning of the glues used for the lining of the support carried out in 1957 just at the Central Institute for Restoration.

“I am particularly proud that our Pier Luigi Farnese by Titian represents us at this first G20 of Culture,” said the director of the Capodimonte Museum and Real Bosco, Sylvain Bellenger. “A restoration initiated thanks to the virtuous patronage of Campania’s businesses that have seized the tax benefits legal to the art bonus and have thus contributed concretely to the protection and enhancement of our cultural heritage.”

Image: Tiziano Vecellio, Portrait of Pier Luigi Farnese in armor, detail (c. 1546; oil on canvas; Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte). Ph.Credit Luciano Romano

A portrait of Titian at the first Culture G20 in Rome

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