Collaborations and partnerships: Studio ERMES by Iriana Suprina Petrovic – Matteo Rossi Doria of the CBC – Emmebi Diagnostica ArtisticaThe Family Tree of the Pignatelli Aragona family is a painting of considerable size (300×160 cm) from the mid-19th century, kept at the Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes Museum, better known as Villa Pignatelli.

The restoration, strongly supported by Prince Marzio Pignatelli and Friends of Naples, aims to recover the work and return it to the city, relocating it to the ticket office at the entrance to the museum.

The painting created by Giuseppe Del Rosso, signed and dated in the lower left area, is of appreciable workmanship.

The composition develops vertically, in the central foreground the tree stands out with its lateral branches that fill and balance the compositional scheme. The wide background of the blue sky gives brightness to the work. In the lower register a landscape with figures is depicted. The characters represented underline the prestige and importance of the Pignatelli family. In the middle area on the left, the cartouche of the Spinazzola branch stands out with the figure of Pope Innocent.

The good pictorial quality is visible in the attention to detail, such as in the details of the coat of arms and in the creation of the characters.

The execution technique of the painting is an egg tempera executed on canvas, as resulting from the stratigraphic investigations.

The visual perception of the work was completely distorted by a substantial layer of dirt made up of inconsistent deposits, dust, oxidized paints and glues, which altered the original color and material consistency, giving an opaque and arid appearance to the entire surface.

Studio ERMES by Iriana Suprina Petrovic – who took care of the restoration – found the work in a very advanced state of deterioration, therefore the intervention was particularly demanding, some conservative restoration operations such as relining were carried out in collaboration with Matteo Rossi Doria of the CBC. The restoration intervention was assisted by the support of diagnostic investigations, carried out by the Emmebi Diagnostica Artistica company of Rome, which made it possible to acquire interesting information on the executive technique and the constituent materials of the work.