I’ve had these scenes from Italy, including the nighttime mountainscape of Naples, in my family since before I was born. I saw them in pictures at my grandparents’ home and I remember them being in my parents’ living room no matter where we lived my whole life. I believe they were obtained by my parents who had part of their chaperoned courtship in Naples. I’ve been going to Naples my whole life.

When my mother’s house was destroyed by fire in 2016, these paintings survived and were professionally cleaned. They came out of storage after she died of cancer a few months later. I had no room for them in my home in Hayward, so my daughter, who had moved back to the Bay Area again, took them for the year she lived right on Lake Merritt in Oakland. I don’t think she ever put all three up and now I think I know why, although it may not have even been her fault if they were damaged while being professionally cleaned.

Upon getting the pictures back when she moved back to New York, I saw there was some serious damage to the bottom corners of the largest frame, which she had not disclosed to me, so that stung. After moving to Vallejo in 2020, I had a wonderful space in the family room with our cathedral ceilings to mount them so I can now see them every day. While most people did not notice it, the damage to the frame pained my heart every day.

At one point before I relinquished them to my daughter, I did observe drips had formed coming down the face of a few of the paintings. That too is imperceivable from a distance. I might also have to settle for that being the cost of the professional cleaning and just remain grateful they survived the fire as well as they did.

So the good news is that when I was lamenting the frame damage, a good friend suggested I use a gold marker to fill in the gaps. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing and I was a little skeptical. However, as an avid fan of the Antiques Roadshow, I did not think a serious investment in the frame would be worthwhile, but then again, who knows?

So I went online and ordered some gold Sharpies. I was skeptical about it, but I just kept on coloring it in, and voila! While I neglected to take the “before” pictures up close, you can find them in an earlier posting on my blog when I first mounted the pictures. I’ll try to find those and link them here. All told, I’m extremely happy that it is much less obvious at a glance that there was frame damage, and one would really have to scrutinize the frames to find it since they are up so high. Now my only concern is that if we put a skylight in that room, as we’re intending to do, that we do not do any further damage to the paintings themselves.

Here are the “after” pictures: