The monumental Crucifixion by Renaissance master Jacopo Tintoretto has returned to its former splendor after two years of restoration. The meticulous intervention rediscovered the brilliance of the colors and the rich contrasts of light and dark, and now that the scaffolding has been removed, the masterpiece is again in full public view.
A non-invasive diagnostic campaign was conducted using UV LED fluorescence and Infrared reflectography (IR) to assess the painting’s condition and study Jacopo Tintoretto’s technique. These results guided the conservators in their work to address several issues, beginning with non-original surface residues that distorted the colors and depth of the painting. The cleaning phase removed thick, yellowed varnish, glue residues, and compacted dust, as well as altered retouchings from previous treatments. During the pictorial integration phase, small losses were filled with Bologna gesso and rabbit-skin glue, then reintegrated with conservation colors, glazes, and varnishes. A protective spray varnish was applied as a final conservation step. Each phase of conservation, which lasted from March 2023 to March 2025, was meticulously documented with high-resolution photography and video.
The massive canvas, more than 16 feet high and 40 feet wide, was commissioned by the Scuola Grande di San Rocco confraternity Venice in 1565, the year that Tintoretto became a member. It was the focal point of the Sala dell’Albergo, the hall where the organization’s governing officials met, covering the entire wall above the large counter where the Scuola’s governors sat.
Tintoretto’s vision for this monumental approach to the theme was incredibly complex and dynamic, centering the crucified Christ in the middle of an dense, vivid and varied crowd captured in active movement. A halo of light emanates from the crucifix, representing the salvation this act promises humanity.
The conservation not only restored Tintoretto’s original color and contrasts, but it also restored his reputation, slandered by Giorgio Vasari.
Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel, Art Historian and Member of the Chancellery of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco: “Over the course of these two years, I have had the privilege of following the work almost daily, sharing the challenges, choices, and difficulties faced by the restorers in restoring full legibility to a work that represents one of the masterpieces, if not the absolute pinnacle, of Jacopo Tintoretto. The restoration not only allowed the painting to regain a proper balance of chromatic values and great perspectival depth, but it also revealed new, essential elements for understanding the master’s working method. The discovery of a complex system of grids, drawn in charcoal and extending across the entire surface of the painting to transfer figures from the preparatory sketches to the canvas, today disproves the claim by Giorgio Vasari, who stated that Tintoretto ‘worked haphazardly and without drawing [disegno], as if he was trying to prove that art was just a jest.’”
As if it’s even remotely possible to paint a canvas of this size and intricacy without a plan. Tintoretto had preparatory drawings for individual figures and laid outlines of them on the canvas itself.
This video shows beautiful details of the restoration and the Crucifixion.
A rare 16th century mural has been rediscovered overlooking the Rialto Bridge on Venice’s Grand Canal. It is one of very few pictorial decorations on the exterior of a building surviving in Venice today, but the city was once replete with such vivid, colorful paintings, long-since destroyed by the humid climate, wear and tear and changing fashion.
Millions of tourists have passed by the non-descript exterior wall over a tobacconist shop in the centuries since the painting was plastered over without a hint of what was lurking underneath the layers.
The mural was found by chance during renovation works of a palazzo on the Riva del Ferro street a few steps from the Rialto Bridge right across from the vaporetto (Venice’s public water bus) stop. Contractors were employed for a simple maintenance intervention on the plaster façade of the building when they uncovered the multi-colored pigments of the mural. It was painted “a secco,” meaning on dry plaster, and depicts three allegorical figures, two female, one male, whose attributes and meaning have yet to be deciphered. The work is by an unknown artist, but was executed with refinement, skill, and a palette of brilliant colors.
The mural did not survive the centuries unscathed. It was in critical condition, pitted and darkened by the salty, wet environment of the Grand Canal. Expert restorers, architects and culture ministry officials worked together to clean and stabilize the painting, reviving the legibility of the composition.
As of last week, the scaffolding has been removed and the mural is once again visible from the Riva del Ferro. Restorers hope it might become even more accessible by removing cables and signage that are currently interfering with the view.
A landscape of a castle on a lake painted by Flemish Old Master Abel Grimmer (ca. 1570-1618/19) has been rediscovered in a private collection by auctioneers Woolley and Wallis. Landscape with Peasants Near a Lakeside Castle, an oil on canvas painting, has been in the present owners’ family since 1935 when it was purchased from a Brussels gallery, but they did not know who made it. They only found out that it was a rare genuine work by Abel Grimmer when they sent photos of the painting to the auction house for appraisal.
Initially working from a photograph image, paintings specialist Victor Fauvelle explained;
“Genuine works by Abel Grimmer are rare and often turn out to be copies. On first look at the photos, the composition seemed to be very typical of Abel Grimmer, but we were not hopeful that it was genuine, as works by him are very rare. In order to research it further we went to The National Art Library in the V&A in London to go through the catalogue raisonné of Abel Grimmer and his father, Jacob Grimmer (1526-1590) (who was also an artist), which was published in 1991.”
To delight of the department, the picture in question was described in detail in the catalogue raisonné and fitted the description perfectly. When the clients brought the picture in, Victor could tell immediately that it was a period work from the paint surface, which had the ‘unmistakable luminescence’ of this great period of Flemish late Renaissance painting.
Abel Grimmer was the son of landscape artist Jacob Grimmer. Art historian Giorgio Vasari considered Jacob one of the greatest landscape painters of his time. Jacob was also known for making inexpensive copies of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and his son was also strongly influenced by Bruegel. Brueghel’s The Harvesters, a series of six panels depicting people working the fields in different seasons, inspired the naturalism of the landscape and realistic poses of the people in Abel Grimmer’s landscapes.
Abel’s landscapes often depicted peasants engaged in work or leisure activities in the Flemish countryside, and the newly-rediscovered work is a fine example of his style.
Abel Grimmer was an important figure in the development of Flemish landscape painting. His atmospheric work cleverly combined detailed natural elements, often in rural settings, with an emphasis on seasonal changes, which was truly innovative for his time. A keen comprehension of light and colour gives the painting a sense of realism and depth. Abel Grimmer’s fresh approach to landscape compositions marked a transition from the Medieval, more symbolic depictions of nature, to a more observational and naturalistic approach.
The work goes under the hammer at Woolley and Wallis’ Old Masters, British & European Paintings sale on March 5th with a pre-sale estimate of £15,000-£20,000 ($19,000-$25,000).
The Santini Codex, a 15th century illustrated manuscript of machines, has been acquired by the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche and has returned to its first home, the Ducal Palace in Urbino. It is the only manuscript from the collection first amassed by the great Renaissance humanist and military leader Federico III da Montefeltro (1422-1482) to escape the looting of the library by Pope Alexander VII in 1657, the codex was welcomed back last week by the librarians of the Ducal Palace.
The manuscript has 136 pages of drawings and diagrams of military and civilian machines:
23 siege and defense machines, including battering rams, catapults, movable bridges, amphibian vehicles
11 transport and work carts
9 vessels and systems for crossing waterways, including ships and moveable bridges
7 tools and utensils, including pliers and drills
4 trusses, brackets, wooden grafts
2 detection systems for tunnel excavations
1 alarm clock
The pages are made of high-quality, thick parchment with marked color differences between the flesh side and the hair side of the page. It is the only machine codex of the period that still retains its original leather binding. The quality of the craftsmanship, parchment and binding are so high that it’s likely the book was a custom creation commissioned for the ducal library, or a very expensive gift.
Its author and date have long been subject of scholarly debate. It was certainly made by someone in the circle of machine engineer Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501) in the late 1400s or early 1500s. Thirty of the designs are copied from Martini’s Opusculum de architectura (ca. 1475), a watershed of Renaissance engineering that the author dedicated to his patron, Duke Federico da Montefeltro.
The Santini Codex entered the collection of the dukes of Urbino after 1498 and last appears listed on the inventory of the Montefeltro and Della Rovere dukes in 1632. However, in that 1632 inventory, the word “manca” (“missing”) is written next to the Santini Codex entry, which suggests the list was copied from an earlier iteration and that in 1632, the librarian checking the inventory had been unable to find the volume. How it disappeared and where it went is unknown, but it didn’t go far. The Codex was passed down by in the noble families of Pesaro and Urbino for generations until in 2024, the owners, scions of the De Pretis family of Urbino, decided to sell it.
It went under the hammer in Milan on February 27, 2024, with a hefty presale estimate of €380,000 – 450,000 ($398,000-472,000). The Ministry of Culture funded the museum’s winning bid.
The Antegnati organ in the Duomo Vecchio of Brescia is one of the greatest surviving instruments from the Italian Renaissance for both the quantity and the quality of the original materials preserved. Built in 1536 by Gian Giacomo Antegnati, the organ still retains 1,300 original tin pipes, the oldest and largest group of Antegnati pipes in existence today, and much of its original wooden case, carved by sculpture Battista Piantavigna in 1537.
Also known as the Rotonda, the Duomo Vecchio (Old Cathedral) is a rarity in its own right: a Romanesque circular church from the 11th century that is one of the only ones of its kind to survive in Italy. It also bears the distinction of standing right next to what in most circumstances would have been its replacement, the Duomo Nuovo. They are officially co-cathedrals, the old known as the Winter Co-Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and the new as the Summer Co-Cathedral.
The Duomo Vecchio was the sole Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta when the organ was built. (Construction of the Duomo Nuovo began over the demolished San Pietro de Dom in 1604.) The organs made by the Antegnati family were famed for their exceptional quality, and 50 years after the cathedral organ was complete, Constanzo Antegnati boasted that “the organ that is now played in our Domo is considered one of the best and most famous that can be heard today in all of Italy.”
Girolamo da Romano, known as Romanino, was engaged to paint the organ doors in 1539. He painted both the interior left and right doors, visible when the doors were open and the organ was being played, and the exterior doors forming a single double-wide composition when they were closed. The interior left door features the Birth of the Virgin Mary, while the Visit to Elizabeth is on the interior right door. The big scene on the closed double doors is the Marriage of the Virgin.
Romanino integrated the Marriage scene, and therefore the monumental façade of the organ itself, into the architecture of the church, extending the visual motif to frescoes on the walls flanking the organ. In a 17th century catalogue of the churches of Brescia, Bernardino Faino describes Romanino’s painting of the doors and flanking walls:
The doors of this [organ] are painted in oil both inside and outside by the hand of Girolamo Romanino also from Brescia, soft and full coloring that imitates Titian. Painted on the inside are the Visitation of a Woman and the Nativity. On the outside the Marriage of the said Blessed Virgin is represented, with a quantity of figures, and on the façade where the organ is mounted many figures made by the aforementioned in fresco that accompany the said story.
The “many figures” on the frescoes to the left and right are musicians. They flank the depiction of the Marriage of the Virgin painted on the exterior of the double doors of the organ so you see the scene only when they’re closed. (When they’re open they obviously obscure the walls on either side.) The musicians match the wedding scene, a sort of live band for the central festivities, and Romanino matched the revolving columns on the sides of the organ that opened and closed the doors with painted columns in remarkably lifelike realism and perspective. The musicians play percussion and wind instruments only, including a Renaissance cornetto. There are no string instruments, almost certainly a deliberate omission to connect the painted musicians to the sounds produced by the organ. Scholars hypothesize that the two bystanders on the left wall represent Gian Giacomo Antegnati and Giovanni Piantavigna, makers of the organ and case, and the bystander on the right wall is a self-portrait of Romanino, tying the art of the organ, both the painting on it and the music from it, to its creators.
This marvelously unified vision was split up and hidden over the centuries as the organ underwent numerous modifications and restorations. The original organ doors were moved to the Duomo Nuovo when it was finally completed 200 years ago, framed and mounted on a chapel wall as a triptych. The frescoes were whitewashed into oblivion. The organ was enlarged in 1826 by organ-makers the Serassi Brothers of Bergamo. They were contractually obligated to preserve all of the sound materials, most importantly the Antegnati tubing.
Less than two centuries after that restoration, the precious pipes were in parlous condition, attacked by “tin cancer,” a type of corrosion frequently seen in historic organs in northern Italy. In 2014, the parish, city and non-profit organizations began to raise and allocate funds for an emergency intervention to address the corrosion before it ate away at the pipes. Conservators found many other issues that needed addressing including gaps and dents at the base of the pipes and rotted leather gaskets and bellows.
The damage required that the organ be dismantled and restored by specialists off-site. In 2017, the comprehensive restoration began. The Piantavigna case, which remained in the cathedral, was restored in situ. It was during work on the case that restorers removed the whitewash on the walls to the side of the organ and revealed the long-lost Romanino frescoes last mentioned by Faino. Twelve figures emerged from the white-out: eight musicians and four bystanders.
The original organ doors were reclaimed from the Duomo Nuovo and returned to their proper placement on the revolving columns. The columns were repaired and a new remote-controlled system installed to open and close them. Another historic gem was found inside one of the columns: a note folded 32 times that had been hidden by the craftsman who made the column. It reads: “Mi Pasì da Pasira si fat questi coloni de l’orgen del dom / El dì 12 de aprilil mili 538,” meaning “I, Pasino da Passirano, made these columns of the organ of the Duomo/The day 12 of April 1538.”
The organ has been completely restored by the Fratelli Mascioni company and reassembled. The large bellows have been placed in the specially prepared room behind it. The windchests (boxes that receive the air introduced by the bellows to transmit it to the pipes) of the double basses (the pipes of the lowest registers) with the long wooden pipes have been positioned inside the ancient case, freeing the view of the rediscovered frescoes by Romanino. The master windchest and the auxiliary ones have been connected to the keyboard and pedal board. Most of the pipes, after the meticulous restoration, have been placed in their original positions.
The bellows were opened and cleaned and re-cased after removing the old exhausted skins. The wind pipes were restored by repairing the cracks, replacing the gaskets and restoring the original paint. The mechanics were restored and integrated where missing. The keyboard was rebuilt according to the original measurements and shapes, the natural note keys were covered in ebony and those of the altered notes in walnut, with ivory plating kindly donated by a private individual.
The pedalboard was rebuilt according to the “lectern” type, with measurements taken from the Serassi organ in the church of S. Oliveto. The restoration of the pipes required a great deal of effort to remove the “tin cancer” that had attacked a good part of the “Antegnati” pipes.
On November 19th, 2023, the restored Antegnati organ played again after six years of silence. You can hear its restored sound in this Italian news story:
