Volume 40, Number 19 · November 18, 1993
Restoration or Ruination?
By Charles Hope
Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business and the Scandal
by James Beck, with Michael Daley
John Murray, 210 pp., £17.99
Like anything else, works of art inevitably change over time. Some of the pigments in Renaissance paintings are unstable, and the varnishes often used to protect the surface gradually become discoloured. Alterations in temperature and humidity, which happen anyway but are more acute when pictures are moved, cause panels to crack, canvases to sag, and paint to flake. Frescoes suffer from other problems. The Italian technique of buon fresco, involving the use of water-based mineral pigments on wet plaster, is remarkably durable, since the paint itself forms a chemical bond with the lime of the plaster, but the lime can react with various types of atmospheric pollution, often with unfortunate consequences. Further problems can be caused by damp, and still others by the intrinsically more fragile techniques of painting a secco, on top of dry plaster. Marble sculpture, which is chemically similar to the plaster used for frescoes, can also suffer from pollution and, as is inevitable, gradually acquires a darker surface, while bronzes too develop a natural patina (although, as with marble, this can be added artificially too).
Review, 4496 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |