The 2023 Mezzanotte Prize for Casa degli Omenoni
The conservation restoration of Casa degli Omenoni, at via degli Omenoni 3 in Milan, has received the 2023 Mezzanotte Prize as best restoration project. The award was presented at the MADE expo conference with the contribution of Assorestauro, ANCE and the Stati Generali del Patrimonio Italiano. For the firm it recognises a site that combined scientific rigour and craftsmanship on one of the most singular façades of the Lombard Renaissance.
A sculpted façade
The house was built around 1565 by the sculptor Leone Leoni, court artist to Charles V and Philip II, as his own home and workshop. The façade is marked by eight colossal telamons, carved by Antonio Abondio, depicting defeated barbarians; in the frieze beneath the cornice a relief of Calumny torn apart by lions alludes to the family name. Since 1924 the building has housed the Clubino.
The works
Between 2021 and 2022 RIVA carried out the conservation restoration of the façade and its sculptures. The stone surfaces were cleaned with latest-generation lasers, calibrating the intervention on the characteristics of each stone type; consolidation followed methods developed case by case. The scaffolding came down in February 2022, giving the city back the full reading of the «omenoni».
Before the site opened, as for every intervention by the firm, the diagnostic campaign read the materials and their state of conservation: stratigraphic and laboratory examinations of the stone surfaces, a thermographic survey of the detachments. The cleaning and consolidation choices followed from that data, not from a visual judgement, according to the principle that guides all the firm’s technicians and restorers: the beauty of the work must not emotionally involve the carrying out of the job, which stays focused on the conservation of the material.
The film
The work is told in the film «RIVA e il Premio Mezzanotte 2023», presented at the conference and available on the firm’s YouTube channel: few words and many images to follow the passage from blackened surface to clean stone, and the restorers’ gestures on the scaffold. At the end of the works, as always, the firm handed over the maintenance booklet for scheduled checks of the façade: the best way to ensure that such a demanding restoration does not have to be repeated.