Brescia, visitor stumbles and damages Moretto work that was bought by Canova

Accident at the Santa Giulia Museum in Brescia where a visitor to the exhibition on the Renaissance in Brescia (Il Rinascimento a Brescia. Moretto, Romanino, Savoldo. 1512-1552) tripped, damaging a painting by Alessandro Bonvicino known as il Moretto, the Stendardo dei Disciplini, a work that was moreover recently restored and returned to public view precisely for the exhibition. A fluke: the lady lost her balance and as she fell, she placed her hand on the lower portion of the canvas, causing a conspicuous laceration that will have to be fixed. The lady, reassured Stefano Karadjov, director of the Brescia Musei Foundation, was not hurt (“These are things that can happen, especially because these days the exhibition is very busy,” the director said), but the same cannot be said for the work, which, moreover, is painted on both sides, which makes restoration more difficult. It is, however, Karadjov noted, recoverable damage.

In fact, museum staff has already intervened to secure the work. A restorer from the team that participated in the restoration was immediately called to assess the damage: the cut was clean and, according to Brescia Musei, has no fraying and therefore no loss of pictorial surface. The restoration will cost a few thousand euros, and the costs will be covered by insurance.

At the moment, the work is covered, pending the restoration that will start immediately after the exhibition closes (Feb. 16 is the last day of visitation). A restoration workshop will then be set up on Feb. 17 within the same museum. “We can say,” Karadjov concluded, “that after a few hours of apprehension everything was resolved for the best, with the machinery for finding the solution being quickly activated.” Incidentally, on the last weekend of the exhibition, given the high number of visitors expected, closing time will be postponed to 10 p.m.

Moretto’s Stendardo dei Disciplini , also known as the Stendardo della Madonna della Misericordia, is kept at the Tempio Canoviano in Possagno and belongs to the last period of the early phase of Alessandro Bonvicino’s career (in fact, it can be dated to 1520-1522). It was painted for an unspecified religious confraternity (the name by which it is known is due to the presence of the two members, or rather two disciplines, painted on one of the two sides), probably that of the Madonna del Carmelo, which had its headquarters in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Brescia. It is now in the Tempio Canoviano in Possagno because it was Antonio Canova himself who bought the painting on the Roman market in 1820 (the work in all likelihood arrived in Rome in 1664 in the retinue of then Bishop Pietro Ottoboni, who would later become pope under the name of Alexander VIII). After Canova’s death, it was his half-brother Giovanni Battista Sartori who determined that the work be destined for the Temple.

The painting presents on one side Our Lady of Mercy together with the two disciples, dressed in the white hooded habit typical of the confraternities, while on the other side are the prophets Enoch and Elijah depicted at the side of a tree, both while holding a book according to the typical iconography of the prophets. The restoration of the painting was being presented last October. “The work,” art historian Roberta D’Adda and restorer Luisa Marchetti explained at the time, “is very fragile: it is a single canvas divided into two flaps and painted on the two sides, and it was very ruined, probably precisely because of its use.” Prior to the restoration, the painting was covered with repainting, varnish and glue, which made it necessary to work on it at the same time for its conservation and aesthetic purposes. And now the work will have to go back under the knife and thus stay some more time in Brescia before returning to Possagno.

Brescia, visitor stumbles and damages Moretto work that was bought by Canova

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