The impact of Paul Philippot on the theory and history of conservation/restoration (original) (raw)
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This chapter will investigate the gradual establishment of restoration principles during the Early Modern period in Europe by focusing on the treatment of paintings by Raphael. The High Renaissance artist Raphael (1483 -1520), who flourished under the patronage of Popes Julius II and Leo X in Rome, became even more famous after death than he had been during his lifetime. Influential theorists championed Raphael as the modern painter who had captured the spirit of the ancients most fully and whose art, therefore, should be emulated. The great value attached to Raphael's art meant that his works were typically owned by the wealthiest individuals and institutions. When they required restoration, exceptional trouble was taken. Sometimes this led to overly-ambitious treatments, while at other times new and improved standards were set. Often the treatments were documented with unusual care. The most notable advances in principled and ethical restoration occurred in institutional contexts and less so when Raphael's paintings were controlled by private patrons.
Reflection on Conservation-Restoration Practice Today. A European Perspective
Ochrona Dziedzictwa Kulturowego, 2019
The twentieth century was a period of significant development of theoretical principles of conservationrestoration. Some of the core concepts formulated in theoretical texts still play an important role in professional conduct today: the concepts of authenticity, integrity, minimum intervention, reversibility, author's intent etc., are often quoted by conservator-restorers as informing their professional practice. While the development of theoretical concepts can be easily traced back to Alois Riegl and Camillo Boito,
Heritage Science , 2020
The paper discusses the case study of the Marriage at Cana, a sixteenth century wall painting located in Ravenna and executed by Luca Longhi. A multi-analytical approach based upon OM, SEM-EDS, μ-Raman, μ-FTIR and biological analyses was selected to investigate the painting technique and the state of preservation of the artwork, compromised by a severe alteration. Data demonstrated that the artwork was executed with a dry painting technique: a siccative oil was used as binder, while indigo, lead white, carbon black, ochres, vermilion and red lead were identified as pigments. Biological analyses clearly allowed identifying Eurotium halophilicum as the fungus responsible for the white patina compromising the painted surface and, according to this result, Biotin T was selected as the most effective biocide to stop the biological attack. The precarious conditions in which the painting was, attributable to previously performed interventions and to the conservation environment, laid the groundwork for a challenging restoration conducted in 2016. Scientific analyses better clarified the kind of materials employed in the execution on the artwork, as well as how the previous restoration was carried out; furthermore, analytical data methodologically supported phases of the intervention like cleaning, filling of the lacunae and pictorial retouching, as products were selected on the basis of their affinity to original materials and painting technique. This study will hopefully encourage reflections on how a synergic dialogue between conservation science and restoration can represent an important reference point for interventions to be conducted with scientific criteria and suitable methodology, in the light of the shared vision and common goal of transferring patrimony to future generations.
Artworks and their Conservation. A (Tentative) Philosophical Introduction
2019
What is it like to restore the works of art of the past? What principles, constrains and rules underpin our conservative practice? In this essay we will take a philosoph-ical look at the discipline of art conservation. Different philosophical positions that impact the aesthetic, ontological and conceptual arguments as to how restoration is to be conceived will be discussed, in the context of examples of artworks that have undergone restoration, de-restoration or re-restoration. This will lead us to address the following questions: Why do we feel compelled to conserve artworks? Which values should we abide by when it comes to restoring them? What role do the intentions of the original artist play? Finally, does current audience have a right to be involved in the matter?
Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Conservation practice, material exploration and their respective 'scientific' rationales were not confined to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They also existed in the early modern and modern periods. The papers in this special issue seek to challenge the idea that these types of physical and intellectual interactions with collected objects only emerged in the Industrial Age. Great scientific advances in conservation and related materials analysis were made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by various museum directors, conservators and chemists, and with them the evolution of prominent conservation theories. But these achievements have become disproportionately represented in the growing literature on the history of conservation and have served to dominate the narrative. 1 The idea for this special issue developed from a one-day online conference held in 2021, organized by Morwenna Blewett at the Ashmolean Museum. Lucy Wrapson chaired a panel session and made closing remarks, drawing together the interrelationships between seven diverse papers, which tackled the preservation of art and material culture at a wide range of places and dates. The papers highlight the themes that were right at the heart of the early development of the Ashmolean Museum in the seventeenth century, and were so very clearly in train the century before. Among them are: material investigation; preservation; debates around damage; deterioration; loss compensation; documentation; and the very function and purpose of conservation and preservation. All these considerations motivated interpositions that were certainly not 'unscientific'. The shadow of achievements in the history of conservation history, stemming from the nineteenth century, serves to cement and provide a compelling origin story, particularly for those who played a traceable and autobiographical part in those events. And, if we look closely, we can see this tendency emerging in the comments of some of the indisputably accomplished figures of the twentieth century. A typical example comes as late as 1978, when Harold Plenderleith, the chemist, archaeologist and conservator who had worked at