Trono di Grazia 4.0 - The Project

“Trono di Grazia 4.0” is a very innovative project taking advantage of IoT technologies to deliver an all-inclusive solution for the fine arts logistics and exhibition.

Thanks to the real-time data collection and analysis, it’s possible to share alerts and core information with all stakeholders along all steps of a nail2nail transport, in order to prevent potential damages to the masterpiece.

The project was born thanks to a collaboration among See Your Box, Aon Italy for the risk consulting, Apice for the fine arts logistics, Ott Art for the climate-controlled showcases, Propagroup for the packaging hygroscopic materials and the Diocesan Museum of Caltagirone, owner of the painting.

Such a strong collaboration made possible to provide an all-inclusive service, which thanks to continuous data analysis allows a better management of the risk connect to transports, packaging, insulating materials, showcases for exhibitions, and an automated but accurate calculation of insurance risk profiles.

The project “Trono di Grazia 4.0” started back in 2014 when, thanks to See Your Box, the painting was transported to the Vatican Museums for a long and delicate renovation process.

This year, on March 29, the project “Trono di Grazia 4.0” was kicked-off at the Vatican Museums, where Fabio Raimondi, director of the Museum of Caltagirone, and Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican Museums, presented publicly the renovated painting Trono di Grazia, by the Flemish painter Vrancke van der Stockt.

The meticulous renovation was carried on by the Laboratories of the Vatican Museums, where the painting has been on display for around two months. The artwork is now going back to the Diocesan Museum of Caltagirone (Sicily, Italy), where it will be presented during a public event, next Thursday 13 June, together with an artwork, by the same author, lent by the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. Both paintings are part of the exhibition titled “Trono di Grazia. Il ritorno della tavola fiamminga a Caltagirone” (“Trono di Grazia. The return of the Flemish painting to Caltagirone”). The project lasts 2 years and allows partners to periodically meet to analyse and discuss data collected by the monitoring system. 

A nail2nail monitoring requires a continuous data collection: in the original museum, along the packing, transport and exhibition setup in the museum of destination, during the temporary exhibition itself and on the way back to the home museum. Delivering such a kind of monitoring is possible thanks to the extreme versatility and adaptability of the system and to the sophisticated AI algorithms, which enable the device to automatically understand in which phase of the complex process it is, self-adapting its behaviour and the parameters detected, without any human intervention. 

For example, by monitoring the variations in light intensity, the device is able to understand if the painting is exhibiting in a museum (constantly exposed to light) or inside a package, where light intensity and time of exposure are clearly reduced. In the same way, by monitoring the incline and the vibrations, the system understands if the painting is hanged on a wall or packed in a box, subject to small vibrations caused by the pavement. Furthermore, the devices can monitor for up to 5 months without any need for recharge, collecting and sending data at constant intervals. 

The technology is extremely simple: the devices don’t need any further integration; the whole system is continuously and autonomously monitored by servers. Once selected via the online platform, all parameters are transmitted after the device has been turned on by simply pressing the button. A full range of 60 parameters are collected every 10 minutes, all variations exceeding predefined thresholds are immediately transmitted with a detailed message to all linked users. All this can be accessed in real time through a web platform. The mission of the project “Trono di Grazia 4.0” is actually to provide artworks owners, be they a museum or a private collector, with an all-inclusive new-generation monitoring service, allowing to keep under control all life stages of a masterpiece, from its stay in museums and collections, to the transport, the planning of renovations and the management of risk.