Oil on board 235×194, Pisa Cathedral, Side aisle, fourth span, Altar of SS. Andrea, Bartolomeo, Stefano and Michelangelo, or delle Grazie Altar
The panel, depicting the Madonna enthroned with Child and Saints Francesco, Girolamo and Bartolomeo, is attributed to two artists who worked in Pisa in the 1500s, Andrea del Sarto and Giovanni Sogliani.
The question relating to the conception and execution of the work is summarised by Vasari according to whom, since Sogliani “had acquired a lot of favor among the Pisans, after the death of Andrea del Sarto, he was given a panel for the Company of S. Francesco that the said Andrea left sketched “; already preserved “in the said Compagnia in piazza di S. Francesco”, after the suppression of the church in 1785, it was transported, by the will of the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, to the Cathedral.
The presence of dust particles, holes, crackling and detachment of the pictorial film altered our reading of the painting before the restoration.
In 2017, an emergency intervention was carried out to limit and contain the degradation in progress.
Later the work was transferred to the workshops, proceeding with more detailed investigations of the state of conservation of the painting and all its elements. Excess surface deposits have been removed with the aid of soft brushes and vacuum cleaners, avoiding the possible loss of color. Natural or synthetic organic products were used applied by infiltration or by pressure impregnation, with local or generalised hot or cold treatments, always keeping in mind the chemical and physical characteristics of the materials to be treated and the environmental context. To complete the restoration, the phase of pictorial reintegration carried out with watercolor colors and finishes with varnish colors, with consequent localized painting on the retouched parts.
Now the painted board has returned to its maximum splendour.