From the executive techniques and constitutive materials to the attribution of St.Rocco and the Angel canvas (XVI sec.),

The paper presents the results of the investigations carried out on paintings ascribed to Filippo Paladini, a Sicilian painter of sixteenth century, to confirm Paladini as the author of the canvas "St.Rocco and the Angel". The textile used is called "diamantina" because its diamond-shaped (lozenge) plot. It's quite elegant and refined, compared to the usual supports, in order to give extraordinary light effects to the painted surface. The grazing light observations revealed a peculiar crazing on hardened paint layers probably due to a mechanical origin. The crazing of the paint layers, developed in correspondence to the orientation of some plot yarns, shows a repetitive and regular marks which a vertical trend up and down the whole surface of the painting. This specific form of decay is strictly related with the materials and the technique used and the causes of the damage process were deeply investigated. The study of the nature and shape of this peculiar damage has been quite interesting in order to recognize the kind of textile and its orientation and to provide further information concerning preparation layer of other paintings on canvas with the same decay. The results of the investigations showed that the painter used always a textile support, identified as tovagliolato diamond shaped. The preparation, pigmented and mixed with fragments of crystalline silica, silicates, shells and siccative oils founded in the canvas is very diagnostic because it's unusual and rarely in oil paintings technique. The crystalline silica founded in the preparation layers is related to the use of flint; calcite may occur in small amounts and probably the presence of organic compounds contribute to give a dark color. The presence of long chain salified organic acid is probably due to the hydrolysis and salification of siccative oil. The crazing of the hard paint layers is linked both to the complex plot of the underlying textile and to the presence of flint, quartz  and calcium carbonate; these elements give to the surface a slight rigiditywhich makes it react to the pressure of the plot yarns embossed on the textile support. The typology of textile, the inert-rich pigmented preparations and the crazing of the paint layers already founded in other paintings ascribed with certainty to Paladini represent useful identifying marks to recognize and classify unknown works that probably belong to his production.