Open restoration yard

Enel has long been an important contributor to the conservation and valorization of Italy’s cultural heritage through art lighting, restoration works, and targeted communication projects.

Enel is a sponsor of the three-year project dedicated to Lorenzo Lotto, and specifically of the restoration of one of the artist’s most significant works: the Polittico di San Domenico di Recanati (San Domenico Polyptych from Recanati), the monumental altarpiece that the artist completed with such great dedication and commitment that he was called to Rome by Pope Julius II to work on the Vatican rooms. Part of the polyptych will be restored “live” during the Scuderie del Quirinale exhibition. In fact, visitors will be able to observe the complex process that entails the cleaning, restoration and “rebirth” of the top panel of the polyptych which, after five hundred years, will finally be returned to its original splendor.

The restoration of the cimasa (top panel) of the San Domenico Polyptych will take place “live” in an on-site restoration yard set up within the exhibition halls, and will continue for its duration.

The restoration yard will open on March 5 and have the following hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10.00-13.00, 14.00-17.00

The cimasa of the San Domenico Polyptych
The cimasa (top panel) of the San Domenico Polyptych, which depicts the dead Christ held by an angel, Saint Joseph of Arimathea, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, was not conserved in the same way as the polyptych’s five other panels. During restoration by Alfio del Serra in 1968, the panel was thinned quite drastically and then applied to a 2 cm-thick multilayer panel. Del Serra writes that “two fissures caused by the constant shifting of the wood cracked the panel horizontally and caused paint to come loose”. A thorough cleaning of the top layer allowed for the removal of most of the “arbitrary repainting that concealed the original painting and changed the tones (for example the landscape on the left-hand side had been covered with black paint)”. This cleaning revealed the actual state of the painting which, along with the fissures, included open cracks, especially on Christ’s face and body, as well as numerous small areas where paint had come off, due to the natural shifting of the panel’s wood fibers and the thin quality of the paint.