Bronzino's Immaculate Conception restored: here are the unpublished details that have emerged

The “Immaculate Conception” altarpiece by Bronzino (Florence, 1503 - 1572), painted between 1570 and 1572, has returned to its place in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary Queen of Peace in Florence following restoration work carried out with the diagnostic support of ENEA and CNR from which some previously unpublished details of the work by one of the most celebrated painters of Italian Mannerism have emerged.

ENEA, specifically, carried out diagnostics on the pigments, both those related to the original pictorial matter and those present in the repainting that was layered on the painting in past interventions. These analyses thus allowed the restorers to learn about the techniques of Bronzino, who, compared to his early works, used a much reduced range of pigments and entirely common raw materials in this panel, such as azurite instead of the much more precious lapis lazuli blue. Moreover, much of the sky and holy faces had been completely repainted over the centuries to mask the deteriorated state of the originals, with a result far removed from sixteenth-century painting.
Claudio Seccaroni, a researcher at ENEA’s Technologies for Sustainable Innovation Laboratory, explained, "For this restoration, too, our laboratory has deployed XRF(X Ray Fluorescence Analysis), a non-destructive investigation technique that allows a semi-quantitative evaluation of the chemical elements present on a pictorial surface."

Bronzino's Immaculate Conception restored: here are the unpublished details that have emerged

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