I
n his essay “An Old Fiddle
on a Green Lawn: The Perverse
Fascination with Dirty Pictures,”
art historian, curator, and museum
director Dr. M. Kirby Talley, Jr. raises
an issue: “For thoughtful people
restoration poses many difficult
questions that do not allow for glib
answers: Who should undertake
the work and who should bear
the ultimate responsibility? What
materials and procedures should be
used? How far is too far? Who are
the judges? Criticism of restorations
is not a new phenomenon.”
Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79 tells of
a painting by the ancient Greek artist
Aristides of Thebes (4th century
B.C.) that had hung in the temple of
Apollo in Rome but was “ruined”
through the “ignorance” of the artist
engaged by praetor Marcus Junius to
clean it.
After the flowering of the
Renaissance problems of preservation
began to appear, accompanied by
disputes over cleaning, as if in waves,
through the ensuing centuries. In
the late 17th century an attempt
was made to repair and clean
Raphael’s celebrated frescoes in the
papal apartments, which had been
damaged and marred with graffiti
by German soldiers during the sack
of Rome in 1527 and blackened
with accumulated dirt. The effort
was met with such outrage that the
work stopped, only to recommence
in 1702 through papal intervention.
“Otherwise,” in the words of artist
Carlo Maratta (1625-1713), “These
miracles of our profession would
have perished because of past neglect
and the superstition of ignorant
connoisseurs.”
William Hogarth (1697–1764)
Time Smoking a Picture
ca. 1761
Etching and aquatint
9 ¼ x 7 ¼”
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Turmoil over picture cleaning reemerged after the French Revolution. France’s Museum
Commission, created in 1792, set about the business of restoring paintings seized from
royal palaces and churches and employed a group of artists to undertake the work.
Soon voices arose denouncing the work, including that of Jacques-Louis David who
said of Correggio’s Antiope that, “the glazes and halftones, in a word all that specially
characterizes Correggio, have disappeared.” The Commission was disbanded and
replaced. An exhibition of partially cleaned paintings helped to assuage skeptics and the
controversy eventually died down.
March | April 2019
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