The Restoration of Frescoes of the School of Raphael from the State Hermitage Collection

This video, made in preparation for the exhibition “After Raphael. 1520-2020”, recounts the story of the restoration of a unique series of frescoes from the Hermitage collection. Created in Rome by masters of the school of Raphael, those paintings initially adorned the walls of a small arch loggia located inside a Renaissance villa on the Palatine Hill and known as the Villa Stati-Mattei. The subjects of these pieces, with Venus and Cupid as the main characters, were derived from the “Metamorphoses” by Ovid as well as from works by other ancient writers.
The destiny of these paintings proved to be anything but happy. Over the course of their five hundred years’ life, they suffered both the removal from their historical location and the transfer from the original panel to a canvas support, and numerous interventions by restorers. In 1861, the frescoes, almost entirely covered with later layers of overpaint, entered the Imperial Hermitage collection. In the 20th century the Hermitage workers did their best to prevent the ruin of these rare monuments and to preserve them until their comprehensive research and restoration at a totally new level had become possible.

Since 2015 the restorers of the Laboratory for Scientific Restoration of Mural Painting of the State Hermitage have been performing a challenging task of uncovering 16th century original painting under numerous later layers of overpaint. This task has never been tackled before, since it was considered impossible.
For the first time visitors to the exhibition “Raphael’s Line”, arranged to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the death of the great master, have an opportunity to see the true original paintwork on the frescoes by the school of Raphael.
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