Beyond the visible

The Project is funded by DSU, led by Professor Paola D’Alconzo and carried out in collaboration with the Pio Monte della Misericordia and the University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’. The project concerns forty paintings on canvas by Francesco De Mura (1696-1782) preserved in the Quadreria of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, as residual part of the considerable legacy that the painter left to the confraternity. This is a nucleus of works that finds no comparison in any other museum in the world and allows us to observe De Mura’s stylistic evolution from his beginnings to his maturity. The consistency of this collection, which the painter kept with him until his death, together with the variety of subjects and formats, offers the rare possibility of conducting careful research – never carried out until now – about the technical characteristics of these works, thanks to the most up-to-date diagnostic methods of multispectral imaging (macro and raking light photography, UV fluorescence, IR b/w, IR false color, Infrared Reflectography) and non-destructive analytical methodologies (XRF spectrophotometry), to draw a profile of the constituent materials and compositional processes adopted by the painter, thanks to a very large sampling: from small private devotional paintings, to larger format canvases, up to sketches/models related to large altarpieces or wall paintings (some of which are now lost).