Restoration of 1400s Wooden Tablets Unveiled at Palazzo Salò

Here they are again. The 200 wooden tablets (from the 1400s) have resurfaced after twenty years of silence and concealment. They were discovered in 1981 during restoration work on the Palazzo comunale of Salò. Buried and hidden beneath a thick layer of plaster, they were originally part of a coffered ceiling, arranged on the supporting beams. They were uncovered during the ceiling restoration of the registry office and the archive-storage. The set once formed, during the Magnifica Patria period, the ceremonial hall of the Venetian Provveditore. Variously altered over time, it underwent the most significant modifications after the 1901 earthquake. The Palazzo was designed by Sansovino. On the ground floor were the grain and merchandise stores. A historian, Gratarolo, recounts that the portico pillars were built in “terracotta tiles.” Then, fearing they might not support the building’s weight, they were replaced with “great blocks of stone, with almost marvelous craftsmanship.” Later, the exterior walls were painted by Brescia-born Tommaso Sandrini. In 1905, reconstruction took place. “We cleaned a tablet,” said Giuseppe Mongiello, then the Culture and Public Education assessor (now President of the Comunità del Garda), at the time of the discovery, “and found a woman’s head, similar in style and craftsmanship to that of the canonica of the Duomo, dating from the same period. The figures of armed men, knights, and animals are typical of the 1400s. The wood must be restored, and then the paint’s pigment stabilized. We will decide soon what to do. The Enaip school of Botticino could, for example, carry out the work.”

Remaining sealed for twenty years, 52 of the 200 tablets, covered with a thin layer of lime, will undergo restoration. The others, coated with a dense patina of oil, will not. The operation was presented the other evening during the Soroptimist’s regular meeting. The career women of the Brescia shore of Lake Garda, led by Afra Vezzoli Di Giovine (absent due to health reasons) and Vice President Alessandra Fabris Caruso, welcomed a delegation from Fribourg, Germany, in the council hall. After uncorking champagne and celebrating Maria Cristina Samaja’s 95th birthday, the initiative was explained. Present were the Mayor of Salò Giampiero Cipani, Assessor Barbara Botti, and Sergio Bassetti, President of Salò and Gardone Riviera hoteliers. Funded by Soroptimist, the restoration will be entrusted to Anna Massardi, under the supervision of the Soprintendenza per i beni artistici e storici di Brescia, Cremona e Mantova.

“The tablets,” explains Massardi, “measure up to 25 centimeters in height and between 27 and 37 centimeters in length. Since they are affected by woodworm, first we will need to disinfect, inject resins, then fill the cracks. The faces of the ladies and warriors, the coats of arms, peacocks, raptors, the San Marco lion, are temperas using egg or fig milk, treated in the 1400s with a binder; otherwise, the pigment would have vanished. To achieve watercolors, I will use powders diluted with gum arabic. In many cases, no faces are visible at all. To soften the layer, I will use Japanese paper patches.” An adopted Gardesana, Anna Massardi, a graduate of Enaip, has already carried out numerous interventions: from frescoes in the Pieve of Nuvolento to paintings in the chapel of Valverde in Villanuova, from the cemetery of San Felice to the Cossati altarpiece (Portese) and the sanctuary of Paitone, from the parish church of Soiano (altars, stuccoes, paintings) to San Rocco in Pavone Mella. In the council chamber of Verolanuova, Massardi brought to light a coffered ceiling from the 1500s. For the Comune di Salò, she restored “La Magnifica Patria”, a wall oil painting at the entrance staircase, the paintings by Anton Maria Mucchi, and the 1478 frescoes in the Sala dei Provveditori. On behalf of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Lombardy Region, she is currently cataloging the artworks of Oltrepò Pavese: castles, palaces, and churches.