The Vatican A “rediscovered” work by Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) that has just restored will expose since Thursday. Until recently I was in a chapel of Pompeii sanctuarynear Naples, and was attributed to an unknown author. It is a … magnificent ‘Transfer from Christ to the sepulcher’which had suffered several low quality restorations that hid the strength of the original drawing. It was discovered thanks to the tenacity of a university professor who had followed his trail for years.
The Neapolitan professor Stefano de Mieriof the Suor Orsola Benincasa University, it tells the newspaper ‘AvyARE’ that had been following its trace for years, as it is mentioned in a 1524 letter of the humanist Pietro Summonte to Marcantonio Michiel. In July 2020, De Mieri saw a picture in A photo on the web that collects the artistic heritage of the Italian churches, which gathered the characteristics of that work. The original painting was very deteriorated, but there were details on the face of The Magdalena and the landscape of heavenly Jerusalem that indicated that it was not a copy.
View the importance of discovery, The Archbishop of Pompeya, Tommaso Caputorequested the help of the Vatican museums to confirm that it was the original Mantagna work and restore it. As soon as you see it, experts from the Pope’s museums were impacted. “When in March 2022 we went to see it, immediately and thanks to a portable lamp of ultraviolet rays, but also scrutinizing with our eyes under the layers of so many repínts, we realized that it would be an excellent material,” he says Barbara JattaDirector of the Vatican Museums.
Three years later, Jatta has officially announced that this ‘transfer from Christ to the sepulcher’ is an original work by Andrea Mantegna, made between 1495 and 1500. The canvas is linen and measures 86 by 103 centimeters. It has been restored And, before returning to Pompeya, it will spend a time exposed in the Vatican museums.
As I used to do, Mantegna cuts the faces of the characters, which remember other models that appear in their works. The restoration has shown that «the composition seems to be based on a rigorous geometric construction of proportions related to the fraction of 5/3, close to the ‘Divine proportion’. The correspondences are such that a design scheme based on deliberate mathematical calculations seems plausible, ”explains the Restorers team in a note.
It is the Third lost work of Andrea Mantegna that is recovered in a short time, since it adds to ‘the resurrection of Christ’, which was in the deposits of the carrara accident of Bérgamo, and the ‘Virgin with the child, Saint John and six saints’ from the run of Venice. Maybe it won’t be the last.
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