News & Stories

Earlier this month, Jacopo Tintoretto’s painting depicting Saint Jerome’s Vision of the Virgin Mary (above) was transported from the Reading Room of the Ateneo Veneto to a restoration lab where conservators from the Mauve firm are now removing darkened varnish and correcting small areas of clumsy repainting from a previous restoration attempt.

Meanwhile, at the church of San Rocco (below), conservator Maristella Volpin and her team are hard-at-work on the Capture of Saint Roch at the Battle of Montpelier, removing the substantial layer of dirt and grime from the surface of the canvas and treating isolated areas of water damage. Over the next few months Tintoretto’s paintings of Saint Roch Blessing the Animals and Saint Roch in the Desert from the presbytery of the church will undergo similar treatment.

Save Venice’s ambitious Tintoretto 500 Campaign to restore 18 paintings by the artist on the occasion of his 500th birthday in 2018 is progressing with unexpected and extraordinary results. Conservation treatments are revealing brilliant colors and vibrant details from beneath darkened layers of varnish, bringing new life to these impressive works of art. Thanks to state-of-the-art scientific analysis and a renewed scholarly focus, new discoveries about Tintoretto and his paintings are being made every day.

Tintoretto’s revived masterpieces and the newly acquired insights made through conservation will be featured prominently in the upcoming exhibitions, publications, and conferences that kick-off in September 2018 and continue through the spring and summer of 2019.