http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
504 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), photographs ; 26 cm
Charting developments in conservation from the mid-sixteenth century to the present. This fascinating volume presents a wide-ranging overview of one of the lesser-known yet fundamental disciplines of art history: conservation. What happens when art ages? Bringing together some of the leading experts in the field, seventeen essays chart a journey through the theoretical, aesthetic, and technical debates surrounding the conservation of the work of the old masters. The problem of how to look after paintings as they grow old is a historically complex one. Should they be "restored" to their original glory, or should their appearance acknowledge the patina of time? What is to be done with damp and dirt, with rotten panels and yellowing varnishes? The development of conservation is entwined with the development of art history itself, as both deal with the interpretation of the past and its preservation for the future. Masterpieces like Jan and Hubert van Eyck's The Ghent Altarpiece or Rembrandt's The Night Watch have been treated and mistreated many times in their long lives. By the nineteenth century, the growing knowledge of the techniques employed by the old masters had a profound influence on the treatments applied to their works. In the same period, the birth of national galleries as public institutions entrusted with the collective heritage led to the need to preserve large numbers of paintings and establish conservation departments rooted in scientific research. By the mid-twentieth century, the materials and techniques of painting were utterly transformed, demanding fresh approaches to their preservation. A discipline that sits at the crossroads of art, science, philosophy, and technology, modern conservation is the result of an ongoing collaboration between conservators, scientists, and art historians following rigorous ethical standards and training programs.
The conservation history of the Ghent Altarpiece / Hélène Dubois -- Theodore de Mayerne, the King's black paintings and seventeenth-century methods of restoring and conserving paintings / Ulrike Kern -- Caring for the King's pictures: artists and restorers in the Spanish royal collection, 1576-1814 / Zahira Véliz Bomford and Ángel Aterido -- Public controversies in eighteenth-century painting restoration: the history of the transfer technique in France / Ann Massing -- Pietro Edwards: the restorer as 'philosophe' / Elizabeth Darrow -- Mary Merrifield's quest: a new methodology for technical art history / Zahira Véliz Bomford -- Sir Charles Eastlake and conservation at the National Gallery, London / Susanna Avery-Quash -- From Guizzardi to Cavenaghi: nineteenth-century Italian conservators / Giorgio Bonsanti -- Hopman and De Wild: the historical importance of two Dutch families of restorers / Esther Van Duijn and Mireille Te Marvelde -- The restorations of Rembrandt's 'Night watch' / Esther Van Duijn and Jan Piet Filedt Kok -- Helmut Ruhemann: paintings restorer in Berlin and London / Morwenna Blewett -- Jan Cornelis Traas: paintings restorer of the Van Gogh family collection / Ella Hendriks -- The history of painting conservation at the Yale University Art Gallery / Mark Aronson, Ian McClure and Irma Passeri -- Twentieth-cenutry Italian conservators and conservation theory / Marco Ciatti -- Scientific examination of works of art in museums and galleries / Jo Kirby -- Art history, science and practice: the training of paintings conservators in the twentieth century / Joyce Hill Stoner -- Accomodating change: twentieth-century American artists and conservators / Bradford A. Epley.
edited by Jane Martineau and David Bomford.
Includes 17 essays originally published in Burlington Magazine 2016-2022.
Includes bibliographical references and index.