Art Chowder March | April, Issue 20 | Page 37

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 37