User:Ciara22

Madonna di Vallombrosa Raffaello´s second version of Madonna del Cardellino has been shown in public during Feb – June 2012 for the first time since beginning of 1800 – at the successful Da Vinci exhibition in the Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo Japan. The painting – (version of Madonna del Cardellino), was 1506 ordered and paid for by the two brothers Giovanni Battista and Domenico di Francesco del Milanese, as an altarpiece for the Monastery of Vallombrosa (outside Firenze) - has had a quiet life in a perfect dark climate in the Monastery until the Napoleon troops invaded Firenze 1808 and the painting, located to the private villa of the Father Abbot D. Felice Predellini – were bought by the French general LaForest. LaForest kept the painting in private and had it restored in Firenze 1835 by the famous restorer Giovanni Colzi de Cavalcante, who also made a copy on canvas, sold by LaForest 1865 to Dr. Verity - now in Bath, England. Technical results from leading laboratories has shown that the panel (by Agostino the Carpenter) is made out of poplar from the period – C14. Also the Arkeometric tests shows pigments from the very same period. Big differences - comparing the painting with the Uffizi version – are that the panel in the Vallombrosa painting is made out of two pieces of wood and the Uffizi version is made out of three. But the mostsensat ional differences are hidden under the surface:

./. On top of the white gesso grounding are applicated a pink layer - all over the panel! Something that has been found first during modern time in some other Raffaello paintings. (Ref. Sherman – "The Princeton Raphael Symposium”

./. At the X-Rays has been found thin compass lines. Probably to adjust the cartoon but also showing the basic construction of the “holy triangle”.

./. Using X-ray HD Scanner the underlying master drawings partly can be shown. There are no questions that the painting existed at Vallombrosa. It has been mentioned and described in a footnote in Vasari third edition and by Father Buccetti in his report from the museum of the convent, and consequently by the inventory from 1790. Also the recipes for the payments to Raffaello are to be found at the Arcivo di Stato in Firenze.