Maria Teresa Casali Ceva, President of the Inner Wheel Club of Pavia, has informed us that her Club has decided to allocate funds for the restoration of two wooden panels of the 15th century coffered ceiling of the former San Matteo Hospital, which now houses the Museum of Archaeology. Ten panels, which were detached from the ceiling in the past for study purposes, were deposited at the Museum of Archaeology by art historian Luisa Giordano. Subsequently, another benefactor Maria Gabriella Ranieri sponsored the restoration of two more panels. With this worthy gesture, she wished to commemorate the centenary of the birth of her mother, the painter Bice Volpi.

Each panel is decorated with a bust of an angel painted in tempera so as to create an extraordinary heavenly vision with more than 2,000 different portraits.

The “Adopt an angel” campaign, devised by the Museum, has thus taken its very first steps, also thanks to the interest of Professor Renata Crotti of the Pavia University Graduates’ Association.

It will only be able to continue for all the panels still in situ after a major intervention on the roofs of the central building, which the University’s technical department will carry out over the next few years. An initial restoration of the wooden ceiling, which involved only the southern arm of the cross vault of the old hospital, was carried out in 2001 by the University of Pavia with the support of the Cariplo Foundation.

The photo shows the team that will undertake the preventive diagnostic research and then the restoration work on the first four panels: From the left: restorer Mario Colella of the Piccolo Chiostro Study and Conservation Centre in Pavia, Maurizio Licchelli, lecturer in the Department of Chemistry and President of CISRiC (Interdepartmental Centre for Studies and Research on the Conservation of Cultural Heritage) at the University of Pavia, Museum curator Anna Letizia Magrassi Matricardi with one of the tablets to be restored, and mycologist Elena Savino, lecturer in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Pavia, with a collaborator.

Many thanks to the first sponsors!