Conservation



Chrysanthemums in a Green Vase

Factum Foundation’s team have been finding ways to bring all the evidence from different recording systems together in a way that makes it easy to analyse. The work started some years ago when we scanned a small panel believed by Bastiaan Blok, its owner, to be by Van Gogh. New recordings of the panel suggest there are genuine reasons for experts to investigate the claim. Although Factum Foundation is not involved in making attributions, we do provide the data to help others make informed decisions.

More on this project

Facebook Twitter

Recreating the Colossus of Constantine

Factum Foundation has been working with the Musei Capitolini and Fondazione Prada on the ambitious recreation of the 13m-tall Colossus of Constantine for the exhibition 'Recycling Beauty' (until February 27, 2023). The scale of the project involved almost all of Factum's various areas of expertise over the course of nearly ten months.

More on this project

Facebook Twitter

The recreation of Giulio Romano’s designs as three-dimensional objects

Factum Foundation and Factum Arte worked with Fondazione Palazzo Te on recreating five designs by Giulio Romano as physical objects for the exhibition 'Giulio Romano. La forza delle cose'. Curated by Barbara Furlotti and Guido Rebecchini, the show focuses on the artist's talent and ingenuity in object design at the Gonzaga court. The intricate designs were rematerialised as elaborate 3D models by Irene Gaumé, Jordi Garcia and Manuel Franquelo at Factum Arte, before being 3D printed in sections and cast in a variety of materials depending on the size and complexity of the details. More info on the project

Facebook Twitter

ARCHiVe | Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Venice

In the spring of 2022 Factum Foundation began filming a documentary video about ARCHiVe to help define, clarify, and communicate what is happening inside the center: ongoing projects, experimental work, collaborations, spaces, methods, and key players. ARCHiVe, in partnership with the Cini Research Institutes and partners, is working to enhance and convert into digital form the rich documentary heritage of the Fondazione Cini itself and beyond, to study-involving other institutions and scholars-new methods for preserving and transmitting it thanks to digital technologies, and, finally, to propose training activities with professionalising value in the field of Digital Humanities.

Facebook Twitter

The Digitisation of Three Rooms at Palazzo Te

From January 17 until February 7, a team of digitisation specialists from Factum Foundation recorded in high resolution the Chamber of the Giants, the Chamber of Cupid and Psyche and the Hall of the Horses inside Palazzo Te. The project was part of a partnership with Palazzo Te for the 2022 event season ‘Mantova: L’arte di vivere’. The palace, built as a place of leisure for the Gonzaga family in the mid 16th century, was designed and frescoed by Giulio Romano.
The data, acquired using LiDAR, photogrammetry and composite photography, is currently being processed and will belong to Fondazione Palazzo Te and help with the documentation, preservation, study and dissemination of the rooms, also enabling future diverse and innovative exhibition projects.

Facebook Twitter

In Ictu Oculi - In The Blink of an Eye: a walk through the exhibition with Adam Lowe and Charlotte Skene Catling

As part of the seminar series jointly organised by the Zurbarán Centre of Durham University and the ARTES Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture Group in association with the Embassy of Spain and the Instituto Cervantes, Adam Lowe and Charlotte Skene Catling offered a tour of ‘In the Blink of an Eye, Transience and Eternity in the Spanish Golden Age’. As part of the Auckland Project, Jonathan Ruffer commissioned Factum Foundation and Skene Catling de la Peña to rethink the concept and role of a museum for the top floor of the Spanish Gallery, in Bishop Auckland.

Facebook Twitter

Recording Goya's Black Paintings at the Museo del Prado

In 2014, the Museo del Prado commissioned Factum Arte to carry out high-resolution 3D scanning and composite colour photography of Francisco Goya's Black Paintings, for documentation and research purposes. It was the first large-scale project of high-resolution 3D digitisation of the surface of paintings ever realised.
The methodology and outcomes of this project have set the benchmark of how surface relief should be considered as a primary source for understanding the complex historic trajectories of artworks and cultural objects within a museum collection.
Video © Alicia Guirao del Fresno for Factum Arte

Facebook Twitter

Cocktails with a Curator: Sangallo's "St. John Baptising"

Xavier F. Salomon, Chief Curator of The Frick Collection, introduces the recreation of the marble holy water font on which the bronze 'St. John Baptising' by Francesco da Sangallo was originally displayed. In the summer of 2020, the original font was recorded in high resolution by Pedro Miró using structured white light scanning. A team of craftsmen from Factum Arte then worked on recreating the marble stoop without the oxidisation and cracks that the original one presents after more than four hundred years of use.

More on the project

Facebook Twitter

Business Insider Today - Inside the Workshop Making World Class 'Fakes'

'Factum Arte in Madrid uses the latest 3D scanning and printing technology to create copies of some of the world's most famous masterpieces — saving them from the ravages of time and even helping to bring back missing works from the dead.'

Many thanks to Paul Rhys and Emilie Iob
Published in December 2020

Facebook Twitter

New Perspectives on Raphael: an online panel by the Warburg Institute

On 19th November, Michelle O’Malley from the Warburg Institute talked with Ana Debenedetti and Adam Lowe about the recording of Raphael’s Cartoons at the V&A in August 2019.
While the discussion focused on Raphael, it also looked more generally at the role of digital recording in light of the museum closures and the restrictions caused by COVID-19. High-resolution recording, display and rematerialisation technologies have serious implications for the study, display and dissemination of works of art - both online and offline access will be increasingly important in providing access to culture.

Facebook Twitter

The Materiality of the Aura: exhibition walk-through with Adam Lowe

The founder of Factum Foundation, guides you through 'The Materiality of the Aura. New Technologies for Preservation', at Palazzo Fava, Bologna until 10th January 2021. Facsimiles of sculptures, paintings and books, digital restorations and physical recreations, 3D renders, 3D models and a variety of objects are presented in the six rooms of the exhibition, focussing on: the surface of paintings, sculptures, cartography, video-mapping and projections, manuscripts and, finally, Factum Foundation's work in the Valley of the Kings. The city of Bologna, where the Foundation has been involved in projects since 2010, is also a unifying factor tying together many of the rooms.
© A film by Óscar Parasiego for Factum Foundation

Facebook Twitter

Recording 'An Old Woman Cooking Eggs' by Diego Velázquez

On the 4th and 5th February 2020, a team from Factum Foundation has carried out the high-resolution digitisation in 3D and colour of 'An Old Woman Cooking Eggs' at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. In this video, Aidan Weston-Lewis, chief curator at National Galleries of Scotland, and Enrique Bocanegra, director of the Casa Natal de Velázquez, talk about the importance and relevance of this collaboration and the potential for digital technologies to recover Velázquez’s legacy, as part of a wider collaboration with CEEH (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica).
© A film by Óscar Parasiego for Factum Foundation

Facebook Twitter

The facsimile of UNESCO World Heritage ‘Cave No. 6’ of Risco Caìdo, Gran Canaria

Factum Arte has been working with the Cabildo de Gran Canaria since early 2019 on a project to record and re-materialise an exact facsimile of ‘Cave No. 6’, which has been incorporated into the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2019. The facsimile has been installed by our team in January 2020 and will be on permanent view at the new Risco Caído Interpretation Centre in the town of Artenara. The project is an exceptional demonstration of how new technology can serve to promote accessibility to vulnerable cultural heritage sites around the world whilst monitoring and maintaining their present condition.

Video © Óscar Parasiego for Factum Arte
Cover image © Courtesy of Cabildo de Gran Canaria

Facebook Twitter

3D recording of The Annunciation by Fra Angelico with the Lucida 3D Laser Scanner

In 2018-2019, the Annunciation has undergone a complex process of cleaning and conservation: the results was presented to the public as the centrepiece of the exhibition Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance at the Prado (May to September 2019). In-depth documentation is integral to current conservation practice. As part of the Annunciation’s conservation the Prado team performed an array of technical studies including high-resolution visible colour photography, infra-red reflectography and X-ray radiography, all of which enabled them to better understand the painting’s historical as well as its present condition. Find out more

Facebook Twitter

New technologies and the sharing of cultural heritage: facsimiles of two lamassu donated to the University of Mosul

On 24th October 2019, exact facsimiles of two lamassu statues (Assyrian protective deities in the form of human-headed winged lions) have been presented at the University of Mosul by Factum Foundation and the British Museum, with the logistical support of the Spanish Ministry of Defense, the Iraqi Government and the financial support of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. The project was managed by Ali Aljuboori, the director of the centre for Assyrian studies at the University of Mosul. Find out more.

Facebook Twitter

The sacred cave of Kamukuwaká
The destruction of indigenous cultures in Brazil

The cave of Kamukuwaká, a sacred petroglyph site representing the cosmogony of the inhabitants of Upper-Xingu, Brazil, and registered national monument, has been intentionally mutilated. In Sept. 2018, on a Factum Foundation visit to conduct high-resolution documentation of the sacred cave as a precautionary measure for such an attack, it was discovered that these petroglyphs had been systematically destroyed with chisels.

The data captured from this trip was combined with photographic documentation dating from before the attack to produce an entire 3D recreation of the cave. The Wauja have been working with the team in Factum to ensure the digital recreation is perfect and that the petroglyphs are correct. Part of this process is explored in this video: the careful digital restoration of the petroglyphs, carried out by Factum's expert 3D sculptor in close correspondence with the Wauja community.

Facebook Twitter

The resurrection of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry

This film was created as part of the campaign to save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

Gavin Kingcome’s short film contains interviews with different people affected by the decision to close the foundry, from current bell-ringers to representatives of the East London Mosque, the foundry’s nearest neighbour, who were never consulted by the property developer about plans to convert the foundry into a boutique hotel.

Find out more.

Facebook Twitter

Re-creating the lost silver map of Al-Idrisi

The map of the world made by the 12th-century Islamic cartographer Al-Idrisi for Roger II of Sicily was a masterpiece of mapping which remained the most technically sophisticated world-map for three centuries after its production.

The silver disk is now lost, and the Entertainment for those wanting to discover the world (Nuzhat al-mushtāq fi'khtirāq al-āfāq), survives only through later copies. Factum Foundation has undertaken to re-create Al-Idrisi’s fabled map. Neither facsimile nor copy, this re-creation nonetheless combines painstaking historical research with advanced digital techniques and the highest levels of craftsmanship, paying tribute to the lost original and offering yet another layer to add to the complexity of its transmission.

Find out more.

Facebook Twitter

We use our own cookies and third-party cookies to improve our services by analysing your browsing habits.
You can accept cookies by clicking on the "Accept" button or configure them or reject their use by clicking HERE.
ACCEPT     REJECT