The exhibition presents the "result" of the long and patient intervention which involved a painting on paper depicting a vase with flowers made in egg tempera in the 1870s by Edoardo Marchionni, then Director of the Opificio.
The painting, never exhibited before, was the 1:1 model for a semiprecious stone panel made with the clerk's technique by the highly skilled craftsmen of the Opificio for the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1878. The work remained unsold due to the very high price, due to the preciousness of the materials and the quality of the painting. Therefore, remaining in the heritage of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, it is now permanently exhibited in the Museum which tells its story.
On the contrary, the model, a working tool with a view to the finished work, has received less conservative attention over time. Made in egg tempera on dusting paper, it was found and identified in the Opificio archives in critical condition, folded in a folder together with other projects, degraded both in the paper and in the fragile pictorial film.
The complex restoration project, which began in 2023 and recently concluded, has recovered the integrity of the image.