Santa Marta al Collegio Romano

From October 2017 the church of Santa Marta al Collegio Romano, entrusted to the Central Institute for Restoration, will host Restauro Aperto. The title of the project is intended to arouse the curiosity of the public who are offered the chance to witness the work of restorers as they work on precious works of our heritage.For this first phase, we chose to tackle the complex and fascinating subject of wall paintings by proposing three examples very different in terms of provenance, technique and condition: an in situ fresco, fragments of frescoes and painted stuccoes, and a detached fresco.On the back wall of the choir, it is possible to follow the work of the restorers on the late 16th-century wall paintings belonging to the original decorative apparatus.The intervention of the restorers focuses in particular on the treatment of the gaps, in order to allow for better legibility of the work in relation to its conservation history and to reduce the visual disturbance caused by the interruption of the original pictorial layering.From the complex of the so-called Villa of the Painted Stucco Baths at Tor Vergata (1st century A.D.) come the approximately 7,000 fragments of frescoes and stuccoes that, after cleaning and consolidation operations, will be reassembled by searching for the connections between the parts and the recognition of the various decorative ensembles. The final objective is to reassemble the major cores of the pictorial decoration on artificial panels as well as to define the general decorative scheme of the room.From the church of Santa Maria della Rosa in Tuscania (VT) come some fragments of a 13th century fresco depicting Christ Enthroned, which came to the ICR after the 1971 earthquake and are still unpublished. Two of these brought to Santa Marta to be studied and restored replaced the fragment of a wall painting with Christ rescuing Peter from the waters dating back to the second quarter of the 8th century AD from San Saba, which had in turn taken the place of Domenichino's Narcissus, a fresco from Palazzo Farnese, seat of the French Embassy in Italy.With the reopening in 2017, The Preaching of the Baptist by Francesco Cozza (1606-1682), the only one of the three surviving canvases of the original apparatus belonging to the State, has returned to the Church of Santa Marta.
Found on the antiquarian market, it was purchased in 1966 to be relocated to the Church of Santa Marta al Collegio Romano, which was under restoration at the time, and then transferred to the deposits of Gallerie Nazionali - Palazzo Barberini, which have preserved it until now. The canvas, which had been adapted to a rectangular shape with corner additions, was reduced to its original oval shape. It is an important work in the catalogue of the painter of Calabrian origin and Roman adoption who painted it in 1675.

Finally, a video illustrates the activity of the SAF summer workshops.