Revelations: Looking for an Angel

In September 2022, a small-scale exhibition presented the conservation and stabilisation processes applied to this painting, which is of great importance to the Slovenian milieu. The poetic title of the current Revelations refers to the process of colour reconstruction of the unpreserved part of the painted angel.

Long ago, an amateur local carried out an intervention on the painting’s angel to the right, especially in the area of the head, both hands and the upper parts of the body. Given the size of the damage, the putty was applied excessively and the subsequent overpaint was completely inappropriate.

The damage effected the central and crucial part of the picture, so we decided to remove the added putty and paint and reconstruct the motif in a more appropriate way. Our work was guided by the extant fragments of the original paint layer. Comparative photographs of referential drawings and paintings by Fontebasso were also of help, as were consultations with experts in the fields of art history and the natural sciences.