Chapel of the Turin Shroud, restoration of the altar completed

The wait is over. Another 20 days and then (lockdown permitting) we will be able to see the restored altar of the Turin Shroud. The eyes of Marina Feroggio, architect of the Royal Museums and director of restoration work on the Bertola altar in the Chapel of the Shroud, peep out from the mask. An intense gaze to observe what must still be done. Few details: the two frontals on the altars, the four silver lanterns on the sides of the reliquary, the cherubs on the balustrade. These are the last steps needed to return Guarino Guarini’s masterpiece in its entirety to the public after a careful restoration made possible thanks to the funds (just over 100 thousand euros) of the Specchio dei Tempi Foundation.

At the moment the inauguration date is Tuesday 30 March, in time for Easter. Feroggio also displays a special heating mat that will prevent the public from getting cold during the visit. Only the government directives of the next few weeks (yellow, orange or red zone) will establish the effective date on which you can return to the Royal Museums, and therefore to the chapel. When it reopened in September 2018, almost twenty years after the fire, the restored architecture contrasted sharply with what was immediately renamed “The silent witness”. The altar of the Shroud in the centre of the chapel, built in 1694 by Antonio Bertola, the architect who intervened on the interior works after Guarini’s death, was blackened, mutilated and damaged before the eyes of visitors. Feroggio indicates it with her hand. It was also proposed to leave it like this, as evidence of the fire. Instead, despite Covid and the lockdowns, the San Luca Consortium in recent months has worked with a team of restorers led by Tiziana Sandri.

“In the tragedy of the fire – she explains – we must be thankful that almost all the wooden and silver furnishings were in the adjacent sacristy, saved from the flames”. We started from these surviving elements, already exhibited in an exhibition in 2010, carrying out painstaking work to reconstruct what was lost and amalgamate it with new elements and new gilding. The altar balustrade is once again dominated by the eight puttos in gilded wood, each of which holds a symbol of the passion of Jesus, made by Francesco Borello and Cesare Neurone. Around the urn, which contained the original case of the Shroud (it remained there from 1694 to 1992, except on three occasions: the Siege of Turin in 1706, the First and Second World Wars) there are statues of angels, only two, the others have been lost. The fascinating silver lanterns will be hung above the four metal shelves. The nineteenth-century ones: the originals were melted down by the Savoy in 1793 to finance the battles against Napoleon. The same fate happened to the candlesticks and to the two puttos, also in silver, at the base of the steps. Feroggio also shows the tabernacle made by Carlo Genova, known as Lacchetta, in 1791, still with the hallmarks of Vittorio Amedeo III.

The great absentee is the chiselled and embossed silver plaque of the City of Turin from 1632, set in the altar until 1992. An extraordinary work: this is the ex voto that the city officials made to the Shroud to give thanks for the end of the plague epidemic of 1630. It is not yet known whether it will be exhibited in the adjacent sacristy of the Cathedral. “The intent of the restoration was to re-propose the altar with the architectural dimension of Bertola – explains the director Enrica Pagella – without exaggerating with trappings”. In the months following the 1997 fire, the readers of La Stampa generously donated just over one billion and two hundred thousand lire at the time. The Specchio dei Tempi Foundation, in collaboration with the Amici di Palazzo Reale Association, which followed the historical-artistic part, was able to finance the restoration not only of the altar, but also that of the Savoy sepulchral monuments, in addition to the cataloguing of thousands of residual fragments of the fire, the creation of an information system to identify and relocate the fragments.

Invitations for tenders for companies in Turin and its province are back

Angelo Conti & Lucia Caretti

We have to start again. It will not be easy and it will be a battle into which we will also have to put a lot of courage. We will have to do it all together, returning to believe in our projects and our dreams. Specchio dei tempi has always meant hope and has always meant Turin. So we want to help our city and our province again, exactly one year after the launch of the “Coronavirus Emergency” subscription. We want to replicate the call for tenders of last May with an initiative aimed at supporting the small and very small artisan, agricultural, tourist and commercial activities that are trying to restart after the hardest months of the pandemic.

Specchio puts € 200,000 on the plate to offer a cheque of € 2000 to 100 micro-companies, to help their recovery and the morale of those who fight this difficult battle. As always, the possibility of sharing this mission is opened up to all, increasing the resources available and thus allowing a greater amount of aid.

The second edition of the “A breath for Turin” tender will be inaugurated on March 6, with the start of applications. There is time until 21 to participate by filling out the form available on this page and uploading all the required documents. At the end of March, the Specchio commission will meet and starting from 6 April we will begin to provide subsidies. All in a month, without wasting time, just as we like it.

HOW TO SUPPORT THE “A BREATH FOR TORINO 2” TENDER.
From 6 March 2020 to today, Specchio has raised over 10 million euros to support the fight against Coronavirus, through almost 16,000 donations from 70 countries around the world. Resources that every day have been transformed into concrete and immediate help: 1.1 million protective devices for health workers; 146 pieces of medical machinery and equipment (including two CAT scanners) donated to 19 Piedmontese hospitals; a thousand tablets, several hundred sanitizing kits and online teaching platforms for schools. Tens of thousands of shopping packages for the elderly and families in difficulty, distributed first in Turin and then throughout Italy. Anyone wishing to support this project and the tender for small businesses can do so by paying online with a click here, or by using any of the methods indicated here.

 

Covid, Specchio back at providing PPE to hospitals and public assistance services

Specchio dei tempi returns to the field against Coronavirus. In the last weeks, requests for public assistance have become pressing again for the many ambulance services that provide transport for the sick to and from hospitals, to and from medical tents, to and from intensive care. We were ready because we hadn’t excluded the possibility of a second wave of the epidemic so we had set aside about 150,000 face masks and other PPE items during the summer. We have stepped up deliveries of supplies to health professionals following continued requests for help. In recent days ambulance services have come under pressure and we have been able to respond.

The first delivery has been made to the Green Cross of Villastellone, one of the most active organizations in the area, also engaged in the city of Turin. “As in any emergency – explained the president of Specchio dei tempi, Lodovico Passerin d’Entreves – our foundation makes itself available to the community. Ours can be a small help in the face of a great tragedy, but the commitment will always be maximum ensuring the highest speed of intervention, compatibly with the resources available”.

Then the Maria Vittoria and Martini hospitals have been supplied with Pulse oximeters. Two hundred face masks have been given to the volunteers of Telefono Rosa, who work against violence towards women, often in difficult situations in hospitals. Specchio dei tempi has also provided 1000 face masks and 30 high-protection water-repellent suits to the White Cross of Ceva.

In the first wave of the epidemic, Specchio dei tempi raised almost 11 million euros, constantly supplying Piedmontese hospitals and public assistance services for months with over 1 million protective devices, hundreds of pieces of equipment, ultrasound scanners, ventilators, as well as two CAT scanners. Specchio also distributed over 18,000 food packages to as many families and elderly people in difficulty and over 1000 tablets to poor schoolchildren to facilitate distance learning. Specchio also hired a Boeing to allow the arrival, from Havana to Turin, of the group of 40 Cuban doctors and nurses who worked in the Covid emergency hospital in Turin.

The new A&E area of the Mauriziano hospital lacked a defibrillator and Specchio dei tempi immediately intervened with Piemonte Cuore (thanks to Marcello Segre) providing the department with one of our spare automatic defibrillators.

We are on the front line. Every day.