The Necessity and Means of Art Restoration

In December of 2011, Ségolène Bergeon Langle and Jean-Pierre Cuzin, two of France’s leading art experts, resigned from the Louvre’s advisory committee supervising the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin and Child With Saint Anne. In an interview with The New York Times, Bergeon Langle stated that she provided detailed reports to the Louvre and that she made it clear that she would leave “if certain red lines were crossed.” In this case, the “red line” was the potential over-cleaning of this 500-year-old painting. Many experts believe that the painting is now far too bright and has a quality that da Vinci never intended. [intro strategies]

Leonardo da Vinci, “Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,” Before Restoration, RMN, Musée du Louvre

Leonardo da Vinci, “Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,” After Restoration, RMN, Musée du Louvre

Should the museum have even attempted to restore Da Vinci’s painting? Would a less clean but less modified painting have been better in the long run? Art historians, museum directors, conservators, preservationists, and even philosophers have debated on the necessity and means of art restoration since before some of the works being restored now were even created. The earliest recorded instance of art restoration began in the mid-1500s with the first cleaning of Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Since then, the field of art restoration has grown exponentially, with the emergence of new techniques and a growing interest in preserving valuable pieces of visual history. Through looking at the controversy surrounding the cleaning of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and analyzing the expert and public responses to past restorations, we see that disagreement is consistent and widespread across the hierarchy of those involved with and interested in the work being restored. The discourse around any restoration is complex, but points of contention generally stem from two questions: Under what conditions should a work undergo restoration? And if it is decided that a work should be restored, what are the means of restoring it successfully?

In the dawn of early European painting restoration, the first of these questions was less relevant; works were restored when they absolutely needed to be. One of the first public restoration disputes arose from the second question, a question of the means of a successful restoration. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one particular restoration technique, the method of transferring a painting from one surface to another, gained both great interest and skepticism from the public in Italy and France. The transfer technique was used mainly with paintings on panel that is decayed, cracked, or worm-ridden. The process involved pasting a layer of paper followed by a layer of cloth over the painted surface, and then attaching the painting face-down to a working surface, where the wood and ground of the painting was removed, leaving only a thin layer of color. The new canvas was then attached to this layer and the paper and cloth were removed after the adhesive had dried. With the high risk and seemingly magic effect of moving just the paint from old panel to new canvas, the European public was fascinated by this emerging technique. In her work published in the Burlington Magazine, one of the world’s leading publications devoted to the fine arts, Ann Massing writes on public controversies in eighteenth-century painting restoration, specifically detailing the history of the transfer technique once it reached France.

In October of 1750, the first public art museum in Paris was opened, and among one hundred and ten paintings being displayed, two easels were displayed immediately beyond the entrance. On one was Andrea del Sarto’s Charity and on the other was a worm-eaten wooden panel, the painting’s original support. Behind this work was Robert Picault, a relatively unknown artisan who was originally employed to clean the King’s bronzes. Massing claims that Picault was simply a “clever man who knew how to exploit a situation,” by detailing his labor yet never revealing his methods, building his reputation transfer after transfer until a picture he restored cost more than a new original painting. Though incredibly impressive to the French public, Massing notes that Picault’s techniques have not stood the test of time. “We now know that the method of transferring panels to canvas employed by Robert Picault was simple enough, but horrific,” she explains. To isolate the paint from the support, Picault allowed nitric acid vapors to pass through the back of the rotting panel and then watched this setup for days until he removed the painting from the acid at a very particular moment: when all had been corroded except the thin layer of paint. He then lifted this layer with a spatula and glued it onto a canvas support using Picault’s “secret adhesive” which Massing says to have most likely been oil-based with a mixture of resin or wax. Once the transfer was completed, the piece was framed for the next round of viewer astonishment. 

Art changes with time, and the transfer process leads to unalterable changes, at least within the system of the paint layer. [transition] Massing points out that subtle changes can have a profound effect on how a piece is viewed or interpreted. In the case of Picault, the power of the restorer himself shaped the standards of acceptable conservation techniques. Though controversial, the means of restoration could not be properly questioned or analyzed because of the secretive nature of techniques. In the broader history of painting restoration, the chapter of the transfer technique has since closed. Because the support for a painting is now considered an integral part of the artwork, it is no longer an ethically acceptable restorative method. That being said, the case of Picault (and many other restorers who were able to master the transfer technique) illustrates the power that an individual can have in the discipline of art conservation; a focus on individual style and seemingly unchecked exploration of method has remained consistent from the inception of art restoration to the present day efforts to conserve great works.

The downfalls of the individuality of art restoration can be even more apparent in works whose ownership has been passed on over many years [concision]. One of these works is Joseph Mallord William Turner’s Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to warn Steam-Boats of Shoal-Water, an oil on canvas originally painted in 1840. Eric Shanes, an English painter and art historian who specialized in the art of J.M.W. Turner, wrote on the controversy around the Clark Art Institute’s restoration of Rockets and Blue Lights in an article published in Apollo, an international art magazine. Shanes begins by tracing the complicated history of the work and then raises the point that the true problem that this history brings up is less about technical methods and more an issue of “descriptive ethics.” Twelve years after Turner’s original exhibition at the Royal Academy, Robert Carrick created a chromolithographic reproduction of Rockets and Blue Lights while it was under the ownership of William Day Jr., who had purchased it solely for the purpose of this reproduction and sold it back to the previous owner immediately after the process was complete. It was generally believed that the painting was damaged in 1857 in a train collision that occurred during the process of transporting its new owner, but Shanes does not support this belief, citing evidence that the train collision occurred years before the work was transported. From the years of 1863 to 1932, Rockets and Blue Lights was then purchased by and passed through at least eighteen collectors or art dealers and now in the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute in Massachusetts.

All visual records of Turner’s painting through 1902 show no radical changes in appearance, but in 1910 reproduction for a sale catalog, there is clear evidence of extensive repainting. Shanes describes the new brush marks as “less reminiscent of Turner than of Degas” and the steam given off by the distant boat as “distinctly unTurnerian.” The painting had been restored without reference to the 1852 Carrick print and the canvas was relined, flattening the impasted paintwork that was classic to Turner’s style. After his 1964 restoration of the painting, William Suhr warned the Clark Institute that the painting was a lost cause. Over forty years later in 2002, the painting’s condition had comprehensibly worsened leading the museum to sponsor another restoration led by New York restorer, David Bull. Upon analyzing the painting, it was discovered that the apparent flaking of pigment on the painting’s surface was overpaint, not originally painted by Turner, but by others in previous restoration attempts. The Clark Institute entrusted Bull with the complete removal of the overpaint, which revealed a more stable paint surface of Turner’s own work.

Rockets and Blue Lights after William Suhr’s 1960s cleaning. Image from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Rockets and Blue Lights after David Bull’s 2002 restoration. Image from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

This “new” image greatly surprised viewers but garnered very mixed reactions. Some felt Bull’s restoration gave a new life and energy to the painting that highlighted Turner’s brushstrokes, while others felt that the work was now spatially and tonally changed for the worse and were especially upset by the complete loss of a ship previously on the right of the composition. Though Shanes feels the criticism for the Clark Institute and Bull’s restoration is understandable, he adopts a wider perspective on the issue and describes the museum’s position as impossible: failing if they restore the painting and failing if they do not. He understands the Clark Institute’s logic in removing everything that was unoriginal on the work, yet he points out that now the museum has allowed unethical claims to be made about the restored image: “Without doubt the Clark Art Institute can now validly argue that Rockets and Blue Lights is once again fully a work by J.M.W. Turner, possibly for the first time in well over a hundred years,” Shanes begins. “But quite evidently the museum also faces a concomitant duty to be absolutely honest with its public by making it abundantly clear that the Turner now seen by that clientele is but a shadow of its original self. To claim otherwise is very dangerous.” Shanes continues criticizes the museum for putting out an article in its annual journal titled “The Resurrection of Turner’s Rockets and Blue Lights” claiming that this title is fallacious. “How can a work be ‘resurrected’,” he asks, “if crucial components of its imagery have utterly disappeared forever?” [source management and quote integration]

There is so much that is unknown in this painting’s history, and while the largest controversy sparked from Rockets and Blue Lights was around Bull’s 2002 restoration, the root of the issue lies in the earlier private restorations leading up to 1910. Looking back at Picault’s early canvas transfers, Ann Massing argued that secrecy fueled  restoration and that any public interest could only help the discipline. In a more modern era however, Shanes emphasizes transparency, arguing that the restoration would only be a true success if the Clark Institute claimed only what it explicitly could. Though the 18th century transfer technique restorations and the early 2000s Turner restoration took place centuries apart, they both illustrate a pattern in art conservation that continues to be relevant today: uncertainty or secrecy followed by public scandal.

Though this pattern is in part due to the evolving nature of restoration techniques over the years, it also highlights the apparent lack of regulation in the world of art conservation. To address the overarching question on when and how a work should be restored, we have to look at the existing guidelines surrounding art preservation.  In her article in the Emory International Law Review, “Art Conservation: The Cost of Saving Great Works of Art,” Caitlin O’Riordan outlines the regulations for art conservation based on an analysis under the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). O’Riordan prefaces the  the article with the fact that international law is, in general, silent on the issue of painting conservation. Though the World Heritage Convention would technically be the authority to enforce regulations in art conservation, it traditionally applies to archeological sites of great significance because the process of protecting a site is so tedious. The World Heritage Convention can designate power to the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM). While ICCROM encourages art conservation, it does not hold failed restorations accountable or provide any guidance for conservation projects. Throughout this first section, it is emphasized that most organizations and committees support restoration without any guidelines for questioning the necessity of a project.

The only committee mentioned in the article that does not simply regard art conservation as a solely positive process for artwork is the Committee for Conservation within the International Council of Museums (ICOM-CC). The ICOM-CC claims to go beyond just promoting art conservation by also defining standard restoration techniques and checking the validity of a project through three questions: “(1) is there a conservation problem?; (2) should there be treatment?; and (3) is there accessibility?”. These questions take into account the artwork’s condition, its value, and its artistic and historical significance, which could help ensure a restoration meets the criteria for an effective and successful project. That being said, O’Riordan makes the point that while the goals outlined by the ICOM-CC are a step in the right direction, true regulation or standardization in the art conservation industry is not currently possible with any of the groups or regulatory bodies mentioned in article, because the industry as a whole lacks a governing body that can not only standardize how a restoration should be done but also if it should be begun in the first place, and she proposes a structure of organization that would be effective. “As they exist now, the current existing regulatory bodies fail to protect works from damaging restorations,” O’Riordan argues. “However, a committee with the enforceability of the World Heritage Convention and the scrutiny of the ICOM-CC could provide the perfect solution to the hole in international art law” (418). O’Riordan then introduces the idea of a cost-benefit analysis which would continue to fill the “hole” by mirroring the system of the more successful private market through considering the costs, risks, and benefits of each restoration. 

Though the committee O’Riordan proposes would be effective in standardizing the process of restoring aging or damaged works, such a regulatory body does not currently exist. With so few unifying guidelines, we need to look beyond what is “standard” in the discipline and more towards broader ideas of an artwork’s identity and history in order to determine case-by-case why and how a work is restored. In his piece, “The Metaphysics of Art Restoration” published in The British Journal of Aesthetics, Rafael De Clercq discusses two of the more philosophical questions of art restoration: First, what is the goal of restoration? Second, how can this goal be achieved? 

De Clercq opens with the point that while restorations often give rise to controversy, this is usually not because of a lack of skill in the restorer. Generally, disputes stem from a lack of agreement on the basic principles of a restoration. This point is supported by O’Riordan’s evidence of the lack of a governing body which would determine these basic principles. [synthesis] We need to begin by defining a general goal of restoration. After outlining many philosophical viewpoints, De Clercq summarizes that artworks can have timeless, unchangeable perceptual and aesthetic properties while still being concrete objects subject to change over time. He states that according to classical theories of conservation, the goal of restoration is to preserve an artwork’s “true” aesthetic state, to make a work appear to have the properties that it truly has. De Clerq then differentiates aesthetic and artistic value by framing the artistic value as the aesthetic value at the time the work was completed, making it a constant value. “For obvious reasons, this value is as unchangeable as the temperature in Paris on 19 October 2011, 10:18 a.m.,” De Clercq explains. “Of course, the aesthetic value of a work can change, just as the temperature in Paris will. This just shows that artistic value is not entirely the same as aesthetic value, although the former can be defined in terms of the later.” Using this logic, the artistic value of a work cannot be lost, yet restoration is necessary to maintain an aesthetic value as close to the original as possible. This introduces the issue of authenticity which divides two viewpoints in restoration. A purist restoration is limited to cleaning a work or reattaching anything original that may have come off the piece. An integral restoration allows itself to add in place of the original, to replace what has been lost with something new. Examples of integral restorations include Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes, both of which have been repainted over many times. Yet De Clercq emphasizes that purism is not simply a theoretical position, citing the example of the Lansdowne Herakles sculpture, which in the 1970s was stripped of the tip of the nose, several vine leaves, the left hand and wrist, and most of the club, and many right hand fingers. These parts were all eighteenth century additions, and were removed in an attempt to keep the sculpture purely authentic to the original artist’s work.

The Lansdowne Herakles with all eighteenth century additions removed. Image from the Getty Museum collection.

Though the approaches to restoration are varied, De Clercq makes an argument for a normative principle pertaining to art conservation as a whole: “restoration is to make as few alterations as possible,” she writes, “while aiming to return those properties that the artist intended the work to have, and which at some point after completion it actually had.” In general, controversies stem from the perceived “overcorrection” or too much alteration on a work. De Clercq’s proposed principle, if adhered to, would provide at least a first step towards standardization which will eventually lead to minimizing disputes surrounding preserving great works.

The question that is ever-changing will always be how these alterations should be done. There is always a push towards the latest technique, often without much widespread consideration. When speaking about the ongoing restoration of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Michael Daley, director of ArtWatch UK discusses this prejudice for the “new” in restoration. “In aeronautics, researchers have to get things right,” Daley begins. “They can’t afford for airliners to go down. But in art restoration, for all the great cultural importance of the works, the people who administer the restorations are not disciplined manufacturers; their activities grew out of craft traditions. And they can be amazingly casual.” It is clear that the discipline of art restoration will see little standardization over the coming years. The general trend of pushing new restoration to maximize the aesthetic value of a work will consistently face opposition from those holding true to the standard of “less-is-more.” Returning to the example of the 2011 Virgin and Child With Saint Anne restoration, this opposition is what drove the resignation of Ségolène Bergeon Langle and Jean-Pierre Cuzin from the Louvre’s advising committee. There is more to art conservation than the physical state of the work at the time of a restoration’s completion. “There is an ethical component,” Bergeon Langle comments. “Despite great progress in our competence we need to be driven by modesty. Better and more controllable materials are yet to be discovered. We need to leave some work for future generations.”