Our painting conservator has been working on this very large 17^th century Neapolitan still-life.  Over the centuries, the edges of the canvas have suffered damage and loss.  There were broad areas of fill and overpaint along all the edges. 

The edges were X-rayed as a part of the preliminary examination.  In the X-ray image of the lower right corner, it could be seen that there was another egg to be found below the main grouping, under the old restorations, marked here with a red arrow.

Careful cleaning with solvents uncovered some of the egg:

Next, our conservator worked under the microscope and used a scalpel to remove the red-brown fill.  Whatever remained of original paint was thus uncovered:

The final result shows that there is enough original paint to reconstruct the ‘lost’ egg in the next stage of treatment, the inpainting phase. 

Anonymous Neapolitan school (active 17^th c.), Still Life with Game, Bequest of Frieda Hauck by exchange, 1956.10