A History of the Restoration and Conservation of Works of Art - Alessandro Conti (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.
At the Well – Where art conservation meets investigation
ICAR – International Journal of Young Conservators and Restorers of Works of Art, No. 4, ISSN 2719-6852, s. 237-249, 2020
This case study focuses on a series of paintings in the collection of the Zamoyski Museum in Poland: The Meeting of Eliezer and Rebecca at the Well and its pendant Preaching of an Apostle; and Capriccio with Shepherd and its pendant The Finding of Moses. These were believed to have been made in the 17th–18th centuries and were attributed to Italian artists such as Giovanni Paolo Panini. This paper re-examines these attributions and provenances. The paper discusses various ways of collecting information on a painting’s history: analytical methods to obtain insight into the technique and technology of the painting, surveys on the painting’s condition and secondary marks such as wax seals, investigation of historic documents, and examination of stylistic features. It is emphasised that a painting does not hold only aesthetic value. Its history adds to its value, enriching and converting it into an important source of past information. ___ In summary, various approaches to investigating the paintings, including analytical methods, attribution and provenance research, surveys of historical documents and red seals, all overseen by a conservator, led to a new attribution proposal, locating them in the beginning of the 18th century and shedding new light on the Zamoyski collection. The set of paintings from the Zamoyski Museum can be linked to the Roman workshops or circles of Alberto Carlieri. This investigation emphasised that the paintings no longer hold only aesthetic value. The history they have been part of has added to their value, enriching and converting them into an important source of information about the past. The survey concluded that the lack of scholarly attention to the capriccio genre has created a gap that needs to be investigated. The absence of signatures as well as the existence of workshops and followers of capriccio painters hindered attempts to attribute the paintings. A wider research scope that combines different fields and emphasises conservation and art history is needed. Hopefully the publication of this study will ‘introduce new variables in the equation’ in the form of Kozłówka’s set of paintings available for comparison to wider audience. After all, ‘deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?' ___ Open-acces at https://icarthejournal.asp.waw.pl/
in: Heritage for Future, 1/2018: Conservation Ethics today: Are our Conservation-Restoration Theories and Practice ready for the 21th Century?; issue editors: Ursula Schädler-Saub, Bogusław Szmygin; International Scientific Committee for Theory and Philosophy of Conservation and Restoration-ICOMOS , 2018
Art historical research needs to consider the materiality of artefacts, but the character of the material and the state of preservation of any object change over time. Today’s restoration and conservation sciences provide the basis for present research in the field of history of art and architecture. Following this premises and with some examples from current research projects our contribution tries to show how much the contemporary academic Art History can benefit from the material and technical knowledge of conservators.
“The Practice of Objects Conservation in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1870–1942).”
Given the importance of conservation to the mission of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is of interest to trace and document the beginning and evolution of conservation practices, philosophical approaches to collections care, and specific methodologies employed for treatment and study. The development of conservation practice at the Museum owes much to the scholarly interests of the earliest directors, three of whom were archaeologists at a time when large numbers of excavated objects requiring stabilization and restoration were entering the collection. Building upon the efforts of a diverse assemblage of craftsmen and artisans, restorers, scientists, directors, and curators, the field of conservation gradually attained professional stature in the Museum, culminating in the establishment of a Sub-Department of Conservation and Technical Research in 1942. Integral to this transition was an increased knowledge of artists’ materials and their aging properties, together with an expanded repertoire of investigative techniques. Perhaps of even greater significance has been the development of a philosophical framework that asserts the primacy of an artist’s intent and the importance of a thorough understanding of the context, history, and material nature of works of art.
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?
Rather than preserving original objects, the conservation of contemporary art should be thought of as managing change. This raises the question of how to theoretically capture the variability of the work without losing the sense of its artistic identity. The researchers participating in the interdisciplinary project New strategies in the conservation of contemporary art propose to use a biographical approach to investigate and compare the histories of artworks, both before and after they enter museum collections. In this paper the authors claim that not only do decisive turning points in an artwork’s life occur at other moments than those conventionally recognised, but moreover, that they are made up of various and diverging timelines, to be mapped as a river’s trajectory.