Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

One day in mid-January, after the Renaissance Siena exhibition had closed and was being deinstalled at The National Gallery, London, an almost-500 year old painting slipped its temporary frame and hit the floor. Sienese master Domenico Beccafumi's Marcia (seen here) is an oil whose panel support consists of three planks fastened together--one of which promptly separated from the other two upon impact. I can imagine the wooden sound of protest and don't know what would be worse: the elevator drop of the stomach, or the hair standing up on the back of the neck.

Normally the public doesn't hear about mishaps of this nature, but this one was too huge not to make the minutes of the February 8 Board of Trustees meeting. Because The Gallery falls under the aegis of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the minutes are a matter of public record. And because these minutes have only just been published, we now know about an accident that occurred four months ago.

Marcia, happily, has been restored and is back on display. A second stroke of good fortune: Marcia belongs to The Gallery. You'd hate to think of this happening to a loan, as was Cornelia (lent by the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj in Rome) one of the three Beccafumi "Women of Virtue" panels in the exhibition. It seems as if the best possible outcome has been achieved, although, granted, it's tough to guess about the employment status of the two art handlers responsible for the accident.

Image credit:

Domenico Beccafumi (Italian, 1484-1551)
Marcia, ca. 1520-25
Oil on wood
92.1 x 53.3 cm
© The National Gallery, London