A recent and particularly thorough restoration has brought back to life the splendour of Santa Giustina’s altarpiece by Romanino, which with Giotto’s crucifix represents one of the most famous and important masterpieces in the Pinacotheca of the Civic Museums of Padua. The restoration project was immediately favoured by its supporters: the Savings Bank Foundation of Padua and Rovigo, the non-profit Association “Amici dei Musei e Monumenti” (“Museum and Monument Friends”) of Padua and Province, the “Young People’s sector” of the “Amici dei Musei e dei Monumenti” of Padua and Province, The Consortium Industrial Area and Fluviatile Port of Padua and the Preservation and Restoration Centre “La Venaria Reale” of Venaria Reale (Turin).
The rather large work, 7 metres high and three and a half metres wide, is supported by a frame and a wooden structure of 12 boards placed on an underframe where six vertical and five horizontal joists intersect and interlock, preventing until now the pictorial surface from bending and bulging.
The Altarpiece, portraying the “Madonna with the Baby and Saints Benedict, Giustina, Prosdocimo, Scolastica; tondi with Pietà, saints Luke, Mattia, Massimo, Giuliano from Padua and three innocent martyr saints” was commissioned to Romanino (Girolamo da Romano, Brescia, 1485/86 -1562) by the Benedictine community of Santa Giustina. The Iconography satisfied the requests and taste of the powerful clients, concentrating carefully on the history of the order and of the basilica. Also for this reason, the altarpiece received the deserved importance, with its placement on the main altar of the basilica (now Coro Vecchio) on 8th July 1514, exactly 494 years ago. After the suppression of the monastery, due to the Napoleonic decrees in 1810, the work kept its location until 1866, date when the paleographer and historian from Padua Andrea Gloria, organizer of the Civic Museum of his city, suggested moving it to the Civic Pinacotheca.
The Altarpiece, as Franca Pellegrini claims, curator of the Museum of Medieval and Modern Art and director of the restoration project, “represents one of the chronological cornerstones in Romanino’s catalogue”. Indeed, this work allows to shed more light on the artist’s early career, when the synthesis of elements absorbed by the Lombard and the Venetian culture seemed indissoluble.
Especially in his tondi, but not only, the Venetian cadence is marked by vibrant and bright colours, responsive to Tiziano’s chromatic lesson. Furthermore, the intense realistic charge that enriches the canvas betrays a certain fondness and knowledge of Northern art, in particular Dürer. The architectonic space, skillfully organized, is in harmony with the complex frame, attributed to the sculptor from Brescia Stefano Lamberti, which extends and terminates on the outside a shape that begins on the canvas. The work presented some arching and raising of the pictorial surface, due to usual ageing as well as to the normal activity of dilation and reduction of the wood fibre and to interventions of restoration carried out in the past. On the other hand, the diagnosis for the wooden structure was more positive, as it revealed a robust and reliable “skeleton” for the painting, a supporting structure which has prevented it from being compromised.
The intervention of restoration has been perfect and carried out with non-invasive diagnostic analyses such infrared rays, fluorescence, radiographies, endoscopic and chemical-physical tests, which allowed to work on different sections and gather important information on the artist’s work. The radiographic and endoscopic studies, carried out by the RCL company of Carlo Lugnani Doria, as the chemical and physical tests taken care of by the CNR – Institute for Inorganic Chemistry and Surfaces of Padua, have brought to light elements, for a long time veiled, on the technique applied to this work: the brushstroke, the types of pigments used, reconsiderations while the work was being done and the different hands that worked on the canvas after Romanino’ s death. The image, cleaned up from the subsequent overlaying of colour on top of the original version, has been brought back to its authentic splendour.
The intervention was extended also to the frame, from which all the dust has been removed, making the altarpiece stand out in its rediscovered radiance, and the imprimatura has also been fortified.
The result is an absolutely flawless restoration with regard to the means used and also for the forces that have collaborated to support this project. We can only hope that this operation will be taken as example and applied more in future.

translated by Giorgina Arcuri