Given the historical and artistic importance of Ta’ Pinu’s Assumption of the Virgin Mary, better known as Our Lady of Ta’ Pinu, its status as a highly devotional icon and its compromised state of preservation, the Gozo diocese and the administration of Ta’ Pinu Sanctuary jointly commissioned a holistic conservation and restoration project entrusted to the Maltese company Atelier del Restauro Ltd, led by the authors and Simon Dimech. Sandro Debono also worked on the project as an external art historian, providing the required interdisciplinary input.

The painting had been constantly monitored since 2017 but only removed from its place in November 2018. Throughout its history, the painting had undergone several extensive restoration interventions on both its supporting and paint layers, and some of these were also identified. A major intervention, including a treatment to the lining, had been carried out by restorer Carmelo Bonello in preparation for the painting’s coronation ceremony in 1935.

The interdisciplinary conservation and restoration project started last February and was concluded last month. The painting’s state of conservation was of concern. Colours had detached from the canvas support in several areas, particularly in the longitudinal section of the canvas but also in other areas of the paint layer.

In Bonello’s 1935 restoration intervention on the painting it had been relined using ‘colla pasta’, and the original frame had been replaced. The intervention was exceptionally in line with contemporary practices and was found to be ‘reversible’ even with regard to the pictorial integration.

At least two other undocumented interventions had followed Bonello’s, but these were the more complex to handle. The latest varnish layer applied to the painting was found to be heavily oxidised with time. Moreover, the gold crown, stars and jewellery had put pressure on the canvas, causing significant imprints and detachments of the paint layer.

The original palette was found to be completely distorted due to successive layers of varnish that had altered the painting’s tonalities to a dark yellow/brown. This made the painting look very dif­ferent from the original trapped underneath. The painting’s pers­pective could not be clearly appreciated and it was looking some­what flat. Seeing the painting under UV light helped the restorers to locate overpaintings carried out in previous restorations.

Visible and raking light highlighted the morphology of the paint layers, as well as detachments and tears, especially those found on the left part of the painting over the angels. Infrared in false colours helped to distinguish pigments with different materials, indistinguishable during a visual examination of the artwork in normal light. Infrared reflectography allowed the conservators to see an outline made by the artist during the preparation, before the pictorial layers, such as Pinu Gauci’s second portrait.

Bright colours were discovered underneath the layers of varnish removed, revealing pictorial details impossible to see before

X-ray technology similar to the one used in the medical field, highlighted underlying pictorial layers, such as the mandorla-shaped blast of rays surrounding the Virgin.

The thick varnishes were not easy to remove as these also included several overpaintings. The lack of documentation made the necessary interventions time-consuming. Cleaning the painting proved to be a meticulous and demanding work. The thick varnish layers had to be removed using a solvent-based gel applied for a set amount of time in order to safeguard the original colours and the painting’s historic patina.

The cleaning intervention was extremely delicate but results were surprising. In fact, bright and well-preserved colours were discovered underneath the layers of varnish removed, revealing pictorial details that were impossible to see before. The cleaning operation revealed once again the richness of the artist’s palette, highlighted details as the reds, greens, yellows and violet lake colours of the angels’ drapery.

Furthermore, the magnificent blue painted mantle of the Virgin Mary was uncovered along shades of grey and blue that frame the painting through the cloud formations. Other parts that had been completely hidden include details such as the decorative tips of the crown of the Virgin and the halo of stars framing her face.

Once cleaned, the paint layer was protected with Japanese paper and the team moved on to remove the old canvas lining and mechanically remove the colla pasta adhesive.

After completely cleaning the back, the team moved on to consolidate the preparatory and paint layer. This intervention was carried out thanks to modern technology and scientific equipment. A consolidant was applied by brush on the back of the canvas which was then reactivated on a low-pressure table.

Canvas lacerations were mended with inlays, and tear repairs, especially where damage was caused due to the gold stars, crown, necklace and ring, were also taken care of.

Once the structural interventions were completed, the team moved on to carry out the relining intervention. This delicate step also made use of the latest technology and equipment, including the latest generation of materials, in order to carry out a lasting, albeit reversible intervention.

The team used a low-pressure table which ensured an optimal re-lining intervention.

The aesthetic reintegration of the painting was the last phase of the project. All lacunae were infilled and levelled to the pictorial surface and were retouched using conservation standard varnish colours of a reversible and unalterable nature.

Finally, two layers of a stable, non-yellowing synthetic resin- coating in solution were applied to protect the surface.

The conservators involved worked with a great sense of responsibility due to the highly devotional status of this artwork that continues to be the focus of prayer for thousands of people.

The results are there for all to see and enjoy at Ta’ Pinu Sanctuary. The pro­ject has preserved this painting for present and future generations as part of Malta’s history and religious identity.

A book related to this project will be published in due course.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Gozo diocese, Bishop Mario Grech and the rector of Ta’ Pinu Sanctuary, Rev. Gerard Buhagiar, for entrusting them with this project. Atelier del Restauro Ltd collaborated with Heritage Malta’s diagnostic scientific laboratories to scientifically study the painting’s materials.

Valentina Lupo and Maria Grazia Zenzani are conservators and restorers of paintings and polychrome sculptures, and directors of Atelier del Restauro Ltd.

Research reveals new discoveries regarding the revered, 400-year-old altarpiece

Sandro Debono

The painting of Our Lady of Ta’ Pinu might not be a masterpiece to the discerning eye of art historians and connoisseurs. But the painting is, without doubt, the work of a provincial master and its art- historical significance is certainly relative.

However, its historical, cultural and devotional significance elevates it to the status of a national icon. Most of all, this is due to what happened on June 22, 1883, when the Virgin spoke to Karmni Grima, asking her to recite three Hail Marys. The Virgin’s divine instructions and a young peasant girl transformed a provincial painting into a national icon at the centre of a national cult.

It is always an art historian and conservator’s desired ambition to have a name and a date to a painting that is the subject of a restoration project and, by consequence, also study and research. The painting of Our Lady of Ta’ Pinu would be the perfect painting when seen through this lens.

An inscription at the lower left of the painting includes the name of the painter, Amadeo Perugino, the date 1619, and a reference to Pinu Gauci as the person who commissioned the painting. In spite of all this, we know very little about the painter, save for a reference to his marriage, dated 1615, then referred to with his full name – Bartolomeo Amadeo Perugino.

The date is more telling in this respect. Perugino would have completed his painting for Gauci roughly 10 years after Caravaggio’s brief stay on the island between June 1507 and October 1508. Comino tower would have been built the year before, in 1618.

The painting is the work of a provincial master still committed to using scale and size to underpin relevance and significance. The disproportionate size of the apostles lined up at the lower end in comparison to the Virgin Mary standing tall at the centre of the painting harks back to a late medieval iconographic invention.

The chosen iconography was much more mainstream in the early-renaissance, and comparisons may be made with Florentine and Umbrian masters, such as the better known Pietro Viannucci, whose Assumption of the Virgin painted for the Sistine Chapel in 1481 was subsequently removed to make way for Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Last Judgement.

Thanks to this restoration and conservation project, the interdisciplinary team made two important discoveries. The first concerns the presumed portrait of Gauci inserted right above the inscription at the lower right corner.

X-ray technology revealed a second portrait underneath the one in view that is much more focused on the face and, by consequence, proportionately bigger. It may be that the differing scale and size of this portrait and the row of apostles standing alongside would have made the painting look disjointed. This is because the layered reading of the painting would have had to distinguish between the divine space of the Virgin, the human space of the saintly apostles and Gauci’s temporal space as donor and devotee. The distinction between the divine Virgin and the apostles is evident in both size and representation.

The hand that repainted Gauci’s portrait might have also painted the four angels, two on each side, holding the Virgin Mary. X-ray technology once again revealed traces of a large mandorla, or almond-shaped halo with projecting rays along the perimeter. The original painting would have possibly given much prominence to the Mannerist-style tall Virgin, devoid of its supporting angels.

It is as yet unknown when these additional interventions were carried out.

What we do know for certain is that the painting as it is and looks today was the one that conceived the cult of the Virgin of Ta’ Pinu in June 1883.

Sandro Debono is a lecturer, author and art historian specialised in museum studies.