Category: Conservation
A Jacobean bargain?
May 24 2012
Picture: Savills
This is a bit off-topic, but we like discussing anything old here. A reader writes:
Not sure this is quite 'on topic' for your blog, but I noticed in Country Life yesterday that Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire has been put up for sale by English Heritage, through Savills, for £2.5m.
It's an amazing building but years of neglect left it on the verge of ruin, such that English Heritage compulsorily purchased it in 2004, under the 1990 Planning Act, only the second time these powers had been used. It cost £3.6m, plus a further £4m restoring the basic fabric. So £7.6m in all.
If the house goes for the asking price - and it will only be sold to someone willing to commit to further very expensive work, who's happy to let the public in for 28 days a year, can deal with some annoying trees that are owned separately, and doesn't mind that it comes with next to no land - the taxpayer will have lost over £5m.
Who will save this important ancient pile? Remember, there's room for plenty of pictures if you do!
Update - a reader writes:
One of your readers wrote;
".....and doesn't mind that it comes with next to no land"
Yes, only 45 acres according to the details - barely worth employing a gardener then.
'The Happy Museum Project' leaves me sad
May 23 2012
Picture: The Happy Museum
Did you know about the Happy Museum Project? I didn't. But I do now, and I can't say I feel ecstatically happy. The Happy Museum Paper has been published, written by a learned team, and funded by a well meaning foundation. Like many of these museum world papers, it is a jargon-filled, impossible-to-read exercise in navel-gazing, twinned with right-on thinking and impossible idealism. Here, for example, is one of the paper's top ten tips to being a happy museum:
5. Lead on innovation towards transition
Ride the inevitable changes by positively embracing the need for innovation. Show that museums don’t have to be only storehouses of the past but can also be hubs of innovation. Test ways that assets like your collections, staff and communities can be imaginatively applied to current problems. For example, could you work with corporate sponsors to develop products and services that are high well-being, low-carbon?
If anyone cares to send in a translation of what this actually means in practice, I'd be most grateful. Of course, you won't be surprised to hear that the root of all this is the premise that museums shouldn't exist to educate and entertain with their collections - that's way too patronising. Here's the Happy Museum view of museums:
Museums are more accustomed to telling than to listening. Understandably, they see themselves as the ‘impartial expert’ whose role is to educate their visitors and, in many cases, they have become adept at presenting information to their visitors in an engaging and accessible way. However, they may be less adept at helping audiences find answers for themselves. [...] Treating visitors as passive consumers underestimates their capacity. Too often there is a one-way monologue whereas what is needed is dialogue that produces lasting change in both visitor and the museum itself. (Museums may be surprised to find that they have as much to learn from their audience as the audience does from them!).
Now I'm all in favour of museums listening to feedback from visitors. But the idea that museums should cease to see themselves as purveyors of expertise and information not available elsewhere is, if you take it to its logical conclusion, profoundly dangerous. The best response to all this can be found in an anonymous comment on the Museums Association website:
Anonymous (MA Member), 23.05.2012, 13:56
I never signed up to be a social worker.
"The Happy Museum" project was very exciting - for the first couple of pages. Yes, of course the primary purpose of museums is to improve lives, and it's thrilling when they do. But the project's call to turn our backs on collections in favour of communities (whatever they might be) left me with a bad taste in the mouth, which Maurice's article has strongly reinforced.
I came to work in museums because I love old things, their beauty and what they can teach us, and I have aways had a strong belief in their value in bringing joy and insight to society. As a curator, I have always understood my purpose to be the care, study and interpretation of collections. It now seems that the skills and knowledge of collections curators are redundant (as well as the collections themselves), and that we are expected to abandon everything we hold dear (including the loyal audiences who have always enjoyed and sustained museums) to become social workers.
Finally, just when you thought things were getting loony enough, we have the article alluded to in the comment above, by Maurice Davies, the Museums Association's head of policy, who suggests that in these austere times it may be better to close a museum, and forget about looking after the collections therein, because:
Working on Museums 2020 [the Museums Association’s campaign to formulate a vision for the next decade] has led me to think that the core business of museums (like any service organisation) is in fact to have an impact - to make a difference to people’s lives.
How about this: if times ever get so tough that we can no longer have it all, perhaps it should be the building - and collections care - that we let go, giving priority instead to Keith Merrin’s “facilitating communities to celebrate their own heritage”?
Is this Titian in the corner of his masterpiece?
May 18 2012
Picture: Telegraph
Probably not, but it's a great story. Conservation of Titian's 1558 masterpiece, The Martyrdom of St Lawrence [Santa Maria Assunta, Venice] has revealed a head in the lower left hand corner that looks a little bit like Titian. Full details here.
How not to move a statue
May 15 2012
From Brecht, in Belgium.
New Turner hang at Tate
May 14 2012
Picture: BG
I went recently to the Turner extension at Tate Britain to admire their new hang. If you haven't already been, go too. It's a triumph. For the first time in many years, the galleries have a cohesive narrative, and highlight not only the best of Turner's work in an engaging and fresh manner, but also reveal a number of new discoveries. An example is the above reclining nude, cleaned for the first time, and, wonderfully, hung unframed in all its unfinished glory (you can see a photo of it before cleaning here - if Francis Bacon had painted that, it would sell for £50m). Gone, thankfully, are the curious 19th C 'Romantic' works by lesser painters that the Tate had shoved into the Turner galleries during their renovations. And gone too is the mawkish shade of green that dominated the rooms, now replaced by cool blues and greys. It's reassuring to see Tate doing something so well. Now we just need to hope that the cohesiveness of the hang is not disturbed in future years, as happens too often.
Preparing a painting for exhibition
May 7 2012
Video: Royal Collection
A new video from the Royal Collection shows how great care is taken when transporting masterpieces. The picture in question is a Canaletto from the Royal Collection, sent for display at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Presumably, therefore, it didn't have far to go.
These days, most public collections insist on this sort of treatment, no matter how short the distance travelled, or how insignificant the item. It's one reason why loan exhibitions have become so inordinately expensive. Some collections, though, do manage to maintain a sense of proportion. Some years ago, we had a loan exhibition of Tudor art at our gallery; one item, a miniature of no enormous value, had to be flown first class with an accompanying curator in a specially constructed crate. The transportation bill was about the same as the item's value. The most valuable exhibit, on the other hand, came in a curator's handbag via the Tube.
Cleaning Poussin
May 3 2012
In Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria has spent a year restoring Poussin's Crossing of the Red Sea. The video above shows its unveiling - and it's nice to see a museum making such an effort to show the results of conservation to the public. Here is an excellent site charting the restoration process. You can even watch a video of it being varnished. More galleries should follow this example.
Update: get the full lowdown on the painting from David Packwood here.
Analysing Durer
May 1 2012
Picture: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremburg
To coincide with an exciting new exhibition on Albrecht Durer, in Nuremberg from 24th May to 2nd September, new research has revealed previously unknown aspects of Durer's technique. In his 1493 Self-portrait (x-rayed above), researchers discovered that on occasions he painted with his thumb and the ball of his hand. Full details in Der Speigel here.
How to clean a Monet
April 30 2012
Picture: Washington Post/US National Gallery of Art
Ann Hoenigswald, a restorer at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, tells The Washington Post how a subtly discoloured varnish can change the whole meaning of a picture:
Claude Monet painted “The Bridge at Argenteuil” in 1874 with its blue water and sky and its white clouds and sail. Yet by the 21st century, the important painting was looking dull and needed to be cleaned.
“It struck me it was much too yellow. What disturbed me was that yellow varnish had accumulated in the interstices of the brushwork. With the magnifying loupe and the microscope, you see how thick the varnish layer was and how it altered the intention of the artist,” said Hoenigswald, senior conservator of paintings at the National Gallery, who works on the fading canvases.
Now that the refreshed Monet has been rehung in the newly arranged 19th Century French Galleries, Hoenigswald talks about her satisfaction with revealing the artist’s intentions.
‘There’s a return to the palette which was intended by the artist. The whites were no longer yellow, the blues were no longer green and the purple shadows emerged, as did the crisp texture of the brushwork,” she explained. “However, what is always the most striking is the sense of space which is reestablished when the discolored varnish is removed. It is particularly apparent in landscapes. The relationship between foreground, middle ground and background makes sense again.”
Museums - lock up your jades
April 19 2012
Picture: PA/Mail
The dizzying demand from China for antique jade is having alarming implications for museum security. Recently, thieves stole millions of pounds worth of jade from Durham University. And now up to £18m worth has been stolen from the Fitzwilliam. More here.
The Sun, naturally has the best headline:
'£18m jade snatch by merciless Ming gang'
Here, incidentally, is a heretical thought. Given the sudden and astronomical rise in value of these previously rather neglected items, and given the fact that UK museums have literally tons of the stuff, should they consider selling some of it, perhaps to bolster acquisition funds?
Exclusive - A new Titian at the National Gallery?
April 11 2012
Picture: National Gallery
One of my sharper-eyed readers has alerted me to the new upgrading of a Titian at the National Gallery. For may years thought to be a copy, recent conservation has convinced the National Gallery that this portrait of a man thought to be Girolamo Fracostoro can be displayed as 'Attributed to Titian'.
I'm not a Titian specialist, but I can see that the argument has merits. The composition is of course very Titian-like for a work of the 1520s, and the handling of the cape and elements of the face seems right. However, the main problem with the picture is its condition. In parts, particularly the darks (which are the softest pigments, and are the first to be lost in over-cleaning) there is little left to see but bare canvas. So it's unlikely we can ever really be sure about the attribution.
You can see the picture in room 12. There is no illustration online at the National Gallery, but the above is a photo prior to restoration.
The one thing we should return?
April 10 2012
Picture: Adrian Pingstone
There was news this weekend that the Turkish government has formally requested the return of a 1st century BC stone relief, the Samsat Stele, which is held in the British Museum. The Stele thus joins the Elgin Marbles as an artefact of international dispute.
I'm generally not one for repatriating items such as the Marbles. But I've always thought that 'Cleopatra's Needle' in London probably should be returned to Egypt. Unlike objects in the British Museum, it is not preserved for study by scholars, or a destination for the world's tourists. Instead, it is largely forgotten, hidden by trees, and eaten by pollution to such an extent that its hieroglyphics have become unreadable. I doubt many would notice if it was replaced by a replica. Would you miss it?
Archive throw out - questions for Tate
April 5 2012
Picture: Guardian
And the bad news is, it seems Tate doesn't want to answer them. To recap, in February it was alleged in The Guardian that Tate was about to throw out a valuable photographic archive. It was only rescued after the director of the Paul Mellon Centre, Professor Brian Allen, hurriedly sent round a van.
In response to the furore, Tate said that it had always planned to give the archive to the Paul Mellon Centre.
In 2008, Tate decided that it would be more useful to scholars if this photographic research material on British Art, which had not been augmented since the 1980s and much of which is available online, were to be located with equivalent material at the Paul Mellon Centre.
I can tell you that Tate had not planned to give the material to the PMC, and that the story in The Guardian of the PMC needing to rescue the archive is true. I therefore asked Tate the following question:
Can you please confirm how the PMC was told about the decision in 2008, and when.
Answer comes there none...
Furthermore, I suggested at the time that Tate may have broken some quite strict rules on archive policy, as well as its own guidelines on archive handling. (Regular readers will know that I sit on the government's advisory council for archives.) In response, Tate contacted me thus:
We would like to make the clarification that the material which went to the Paul Mellon Centre was NOT from Tate Archive.
The key thing here is the capital letter. The Tate Archive is an official public record, for which there are rules about making disposals. Not all archives at the Tate are part of the Tate Archive - and this is a perfectly sensible policy. At the time of the disposal, Tate says, the photographic archive was not part of the Tate Archive.
The central question, of course, is should it have been? Following discussions with various people involved, I therefore asked Tate:
Could you please let me know what material, if any, was subsequently returned from PMC to Tate, and where that material is stored now.
Again, answer comes there none. Why is this last question so important? Because if it transpires that material which was previously part of the disposed photographic archive is now part of Tate Archive, then it follows that the disposal was not only incorrectly handled, but that it should not have occurred in the first place.
There is more to come on this. And it may yet involve the words 'cover-up' and 'scandal'.
Video of cleaned Leonardo 'St Anne'
March 30 2012
Video: AFP
PS - Don't confuse the cleaned Leonardo with the copy...
Louvre unveils Leonardo cleaning
March 29 2012
Picture: Louvre
It took many years, had become controversial, and even been described as the fault of 'les Anglais'. But now the Louvre has finally revealed its cleaned Leonardo Virgin and Child with St Anne. You can see not particularly good images here on the Louvre site. (If the Louvre doesn't make high-resolution images available, one might begin to wonder why.)
The picture is part of a new exhibition at the Louvre on the painting, which runs until 25th June, and to which the National Gallery has loaned the Burlington Cartoon. The loan was all part of the deal to secure the Louvre's Virgin of the Rocks for the recent 'Leonardo' exhibition in London. More details and photos of the exhibition here.
If you want to see this again in the next ten years...
March 27 2012
Picture: Czartoryski Foundation
...then you'll have to go to Poland. 'Polish authorities' (say the Associated Press) have decided not to let the painting be loaned again for 'at least ten years'. More here.
Update - a reader writes:
It will probably be easier to see Cecilia in Cracow...
Re-hanging the Wallace Collection
March 26 2012
Video: Wallace Collection
A fascinating video on the the now completed refurbishment of the Dutch Galleries at the Wallace Collection. (Here's hoping they dusted the frames this time...)
Drilling for Leonardo - Martin Kemp's view
March 19 2012
The noted Leonardo scholar, Professor Martin Kemp, has written some penetrative insights on the results from the Leonardo drilling in Florence. And you have to say that, from the drillers' point of view, they're not good:
The search is important. It has been underway, on and off, since the late 1970s. It needs to be resolved one way or the other. Maurizio Seracini, who is leading the investigation, has the skills to pursue it. If the unfinished Battle of Anghiari - the central knot of fighting horsemen - is discovered in legible condition, it will be one of the greatest art finds of any era - much like the unearthing of Laocoon. The timing and handling of the announcement is, however, unfortunate, and is clearly driven by political, media and, I guess, financial imperatives. The mayor is pressed by critics, and Maurizio presumably needs funding to be sustained. The timing is also related to screening of the National Geographic TV programme on the search. The whole project over the years has been dogged by premature ejaculations via the press. This, as I know from the story of the portrait in vellum, is precisely how not to secure scholarly assent. I have been fed bits of somewhat garbled information by the media.
It is said that there is "proof" that Leonardo's lost Battle has been discovered. My reactions are:
1) the published data about Vasari having built a wall specifically to protect Leonardo's painting is inconclusive;
2) I have seen no evidence that the layers behind Vasari's fresco feature a continuous, flat, primed and painted surface;
3) the "manganese" pigment that has been identified in the core sample taken by the small bores is said to match that in the Mona Lisa. Manganese is a standard component in umber or burnt umber, and cannot be taken specifically to signal Leonardo;
4) the "red lacquer" in the press reports is presumably a red lake pigment - based on an organic dye. The best red lakes were expensive but were used in tempera and oil painting. They could also be used on walls with a binder;
5) it is claimed that there was no other painting in the Council Hall from its construction in 1494 until Vasari's intervention. The idea that the hugely important Council Hall would have been left with bare plaster walls during the almost 20 years of the Republic is untenable. The precise location of Leonardo's horsemen is not certain, and the pigments could well be traces of other decorations in the hall, such as heraldic shields;
6) if Vasari did wall up Leonardo's painting, what might remain? The long-term adhesion of oil paint on a wall in such circumstances is hugely questionable. We might well have only a micro-jigsaw puzzle of fragments fallen off the surface.
This all seems to undermine the confident messages coming from Florence. Meanwhile, over on the indispensable 3 Pipe Problem, we find news that a total of six holes were drilled (a planned seventh was abandoned), as well as the views of Dr Cristina Acidini, the Superintendent of the Polo Museale in Florence. She seems to be more persuaded than Kemp that the pigments found so far can certainly be linked to Leonardo. But note the final sentence of her remarks:
We are dealing with a winding road. Now it is necessary to go deeply into these initial results of the investigation and months will be required to carry out the necessary analyses. When we reach the end, there might be a disappointment. As of today, our only certainty is that there is an intervening space and that there are the same substances that Leonardo used for the Gioconda and the Saint John the Baptist....it is now necessary to proceed step by step, using non-invasive methods.
In other words, if you think we're going to start removing more bits of Vasari to get to the Battle of Anghiari - if it remains - think again.
Regular readers will remember that when the drilling plan was first mooted, I was fairly relaxed about it. As Professor Kemp notes, to find even a fragment of Leonardo's lost work will be exciting. But there is something grating and unnecessarily flamboyant about the way the latest procedures and results have been announced to the world. So far, the evidence that we are dealing with a lost Leonardo is very thin. For example, it looks as if the sophisticated endoscopic cameras inserted into the supposed gap behind the Vasari can show a great deal of information, and relay easily viewable images. I suspect, therefore, that if they had spotted anything like a flat painted surface, we would know about it. There is, of course, the possibility that the best bits of footage are being kept for the National Geographic's programme - perhaps there really will be a glimpse of a hoof, or a finger.
And yet I can't shake the sense that the discovery of a few old flakes of paint, which may or may not relate to Leonardo, constitute an anticlimax for the team behind the search. For if they had found that glimpse of finger, they wouldn't need to test any paint. It would incontrovertibly be the Leonardo. In the meantime, we have beamed images to millions of people around the world which say that no matter how implausible your theory (and please let's get over this Da Vinci Code-like idea that just because Vasari wrote 'Cerca Trova' he was suggesting there was a Leonardo behind his painting) it's ok to start drilling into old masterpieces. Is art history really the winner in all this? Not yet.
A rare Tudor survival
March 15 2012
Picture: Philip Mould Ltd
Last night at the gallery we hosted the launch of Tudor historian Suzannah Lipscomb's new book, the enjoyable and thoroughly useful Visitor's Companion to Tudor England. In her speech, Suzannah mentioned some of the only remains of Henry VIII's magnificent Nonsuch Palace, a series of painted canvas panels at Loseley Park in Surrey generally accepted to have been commissioned for Nonsuch. This reminded me that some years ago we handled two of the panels (above), showing Juno and Neptune. And since they haven't been widely published, I thought I would post them here, for any Tudor art lovers among you.
The two panels had left the Loseley Collection when they were given to John Paul Getty in the 1980s. We bought them after Getty's death, when they were sold by his estate through a London auction house. The auctioneers hadn't really grasped the importance of what they had, and we were lucky enough to acquire them. Like the rest of the set at Loseley, the panels were covered in literally centuries of over-paint and dirt. We were able to remove this, so in these two panels at least, we can see them more or less as Henry VIII would have seen them all those years ago. What surprised us most about what emerged was the overall quality. The detail and colouring is quite sophisticated, especially for English 16th Century decorative painting.
Here is my research note on the panels. It looks at the probable artist, Antonio Toto del Nunziato (1499-1554), one of many Italian itinerant painters working at the Tudor court.
ATTRIBUTED TO ANTONIO TOTO DEL NUNZIATO (1499-1554)
The Nonsuch Panels’
Oil on Canvas; 50 by 17 ¾ inches, 127 x 45 cm
Provenance
Commissioned for Henry VIII; In the possession of Sir Thomas Cawarden (c.1514–1559); His executor Sir William More (1520–1600); By descent at Loseley Park Surrey to Mr & Mrs James More-Molyneux; Until gifted to John Paul Getty c.1980, at Sutton Place, Surrey.
Literature
Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, Edward Croft-Murray, London 1962, Vol. I p.18, Vol II p.313. Marcus Binney, ‘Loseley Park’, Country Life, October 9th 1969.
These paintings are known by tradition as the ‘Nonsuch Panels’, due to their apparent origin at Nonsuch Palace, the greatest of Henry VIII’s Tudor palaces. They can be attributed with some certainty to Henry VIII’s Sergent Painter, Antonio del Nunziato, or, as he was known in England, Anthony Toto, and are part of a series of his only attributable works. They were painted c.1543-4, probably for an important royal celebration or Henry’s final wedding to Katherine Parr, and represent a rare and highly important survival of decorative art from the Tudor court.
The present panels are two of a larger surviving set of at least a dozen others at Loseley Park in Sussex, home of the More-Molyneux family for over four hundred years. The panels came to Loseley through Henry VIII’s Keeper of the Tents and Master of the Revels [1], Sir Thomas Cawarden, and there remained until the 1980s, when the present paintings were given to John Paul Getty. All scenes in the series depict classical figures, and are of varying condition. The present pair have been the subject of recent renovation, during which numerous layers of later overpaint have been removed.
The panels were first attributed to Anthony Toto by Edward Croft-Murray in his 1962 survey Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, on the basis of a listed receipt in Toto’s hand and signed by him “for painting of hatchements, arms and badges of the King’s to be set upon his Highness’s tents and pavilions” in the Loseley archives dated May 31st 1544 [Loseley MS 1893]. This view was reaffirmed by Marcus Binney in a 1969 article for Country Life. The present works would have been typical of the temporary ‘hatchements’ painted for the interior of a royal ‘tent’, or pavilion.
Further research by the present author has unearthed an additional, more comprehensive, description of the work carried out by Toto for Carwarden. The document, in Toto’s own hand, not only helps confirm the attribution of the present pictures, but sheds important light onto the activities of an artist in the Tudor court. It is undated, but was drawn up between 1544-47. The list of work carried out begins, “Things made and paynted for the kings Majestie by Antony Totto Serjeant Paynter [for] Sir Thomas Cardew Knyght” and goes onto detail a mass of heraldic hatchements “of the Kings Armes wt the beasts around the garter, and the Kings words [ie, motto]”, and large number of smaller “pensills paynted upon Burkeram wt the Kings badge” [Loseley MSS 1891/2]. There are also a number of painted earthenware pots listed, apparently for use in stables, suggesting that the riot of colour and decoration seen in the present paintings was employed in even the most mundane corners of the court.
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Drilling for Leonardo
March 12 2012
'Lost', 'hidden', 'Leonardo'; three words guaranteed to deliver a cascade of press interest. The quest to find Leonardo's lost painting The Battle of Anghiari in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, which some say was covered up by Vasari's later murals, has uncovered... some old flakes of paint. From The Guardian:
Researchers in Florence say they are one step closer to proving a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, The Battle of Anghiari, is painted on a hidden wall in a cavity in Florence's town hall, where it has remained unseen for five centuries.
After drilling tiny holes in a fresco painted on a wall which hides the cavity, the researchers inserted a 4mm wide probe and took samples of paint, which they say is similar to that used by Leonardo when he painted the Mona Lisa. [...]
The research team's probe confirmed the existence of an air gap, originally identified through radar scans conducted of the hall, between the brick wall on which Vasari painted his mural and the wall located behind it. "No other gaps exist behind the other five massive Vasari frescoes in the high-ceilinged hall," the team said.
A sample of black material removed from the back wall was analysed with a scanning electron microscope using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to identify its chemical makeup.
The chemical composition "was similar to black pigment found in brown glazes on Leonardo's Mona Lisa and St John the Baptist, identified in a recently published scientific paper by the Louvre, which analysed all the Da Vinci paintings in its collection", the team said.
"Note that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa in Florence at the same time," said Seracini, who was featured in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.
Flakes of red material were also found. "Analysis of these samples seems to identify them as organic material, which could be associated with red lacquer. This type of material is unlikely to be present in an ordinary plastered wall," the team said.
And on the BBC, a note of dissent:
Tomaso Montanari, an art historian who has led the opposition to the research said that he did not "consider the source of these findings credible."
He added: "What do they mean by saying the findings are compatible with Leonardo? Any painting from the Renaissance would be. Anything from that era could be painted on that wall."
Whether this was worth all the effort remains to be seen. If the Battle of Anghiari has miraculously survived, and if it is anything like Leonardo's other famousy fragile frescoe, The Last Supper, there won't be much left to see. One could reasonably believe that if it was covered up by Vasari, it must have been done so for a good reason - that is, it had perished beyond use. We know Leonardo took great risks with his murals, and was constantly experimenting. After all, what are the chances that Vasari, the first great art historian and Leonardo's biographer, deliberately covered up a viewable Leonardo?
