Restoration of the polychrome wooden crucifix in the Church of San Giovanni in Torno

After two years of restoration, the 17th century polychrome wooden crucifix was returned to the community of Torno, a town on Lake Como.

The wooden crucifix, which is more than 3 metres long and weighs over 90 kg, was transported to the academy and was the subject of student Flavia Concari's thesis and material for study and experimentation for the pfp2 profile classes.

The restoration work involved several phases with the involvement of professionals, diagnostic machines, different restoration techniques and the constant work of the students. 

The first phase was the condition report that involved photographing the state of conservation of the work, followed by diagnostic analyses such as Spectrophotometry, Radiography, Optical Microscopy and Micro-FTIR spectrophotometry.

Immediately afterwards, the actual restoration work began, which lasted a good 2 years with more than 300 hours of work by the thesis student alone. 

All the phases of cleaning, securing, plastering and pictorial retouching were carried out respecting the original work as much as possible and without altering the characteristics of the artefact. 

Careful, meticulous and patient work that the students carried out with tremendous commitment.

The work was handed back to the community with an event in the presence of civil and religious authorities