Following a stunning restoration, Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck’s Ritratto di Marcello Durazzo takes pride of place in the Sale del Convitto during Homo Faber. Depicting a nobleman wearing precious black velvet, a material intimately connected to Italian artisanal skill, this 17th century masterpiece is a perfect fit for Homo Faber. Its restoration was supported by Venetian Heritage in collaboration with the Michelangelo Foundation, Arthemisia and Marco Voena. For the Michelangelo Foundation, helping to restore this painting was a chance to support skilled restorers, preserve a precious artwork and give something back to Venice, the wonderful host city of Homo Faber.

The portrait uses dark colours, following the Spanish-influenced fashion of the time, with sophisticated modulations of blacks and browns, which interact with the red curtain in the background. This in turns opens to reveal a view of the sky streaked by clouds, an evident homage to the Venetian pictorial tradition. The painting showed the presence of widespread inconsistent glazing, overpainting, and inpainting carried out over the original surface. A line of filler, now removed, extended in the centre for the entire length of the painting, creating a significant visual disturbance. Most of this damage was probably caused by an intervention carried out before the painting was put up for sale on the antiquarian market. After that, the painting was subject to two restorations in the 1940s and 1970s, which failed to recreate the original colour tone.