It is amazing how the effects of age end up coloring our interpretation of art. The faded colors and lines of old pieces seem to lend an air of gravitas. When we see the paintings restored to their original colors, it can often feel like some of that gravitas has been removed and the colors become garish and the shapes cartoonlike.
After the restoration of the Sistine Chapel, a number of art historians were shocked at the results. Many had assumed that the darkened, muted palette they were used to was intentional. (A few examples: [1] [2])
The restoration of the Ghent altarpiece by Jan van Eyck changed the lamb at the center of the piece in a way that lots of people have found... bizarre and slightly disturbing [3].
And the strangest example is probably Greek architecture and statuary, which we today consider to be the height of dignity and gravitas, but were originally brightly painted. [4] But if we were to paint the Parthanon bright primary colors like the Googleplex, would we be recovering something or losing something? It feels like a bit of both.
Prob the best example is actually the Mona Lisa. A duplicate made at the same time, probably by a pupil, was discovered and shows how truly amazing the Mona Lisa could have been. The cloth actually looks translucent in the painting and the colors vibrant and cheerful.
The BBC has a show called The Repair Shop, where people submit their old wares and heirlooms to be restored by specialist artisans. In most episodes there are paintings involved, and the first thing the specialist restorer does is to strip away layers of old varnish. The results are typically spectacular: colours become vibrant again, right off the bat, completely changing the mood of the composition.
I’m sure there is a Louvre team dedicated to maintaining Mona Lisa so this will sound like an idiot request, but: maybe it’s time to do something like that for the old girl…?
One of my favourite YouTube channels is Baumgartner Restoration. He’s a fine art restorer, and his videos are well-produced mini documentaries that show the restoration process from cleaning to retouching to varnishing and framing.
So, as I understand it the problem with the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is that layers of paints have already been stripped and damaged (the layering of very thin coats of paint is the signature of Leonardo's technique) and the varnish itself has been carefully applied by Leonardo and is somewhat part of the painting. Add that the wood panels it's on have contorted and you've got an extremely difficult piece to restore. It's better to act very conservatively with it.
They definitely play this up on The Repair Shop, though. They tend to super saturate the video on the "after" shots. In fact the entire show has a "fake" feel to it because of the highly processed video. Still, a fun show to watch. I just wish they were more focused on the technical restoration work itself, but that's a complaint I have with pretty much all restoration shows.
Here, I can't help thinking that the painting is better without Cupid getting in the way....
What makes Vermeer so modern (or timeless) is that it tells a story simply by the power of the painting: the girl's face, her pose, the reflection, the quality of the light. The symbolism of the Cupid seems unnecessary and clunky, as if he was innovating but still hadn't broken free of a traditional approach.
Or am I just suffering from the bias mentioned in the parent?
I dont get what the point of restoring it in this way, unless you are 100% convinced that this was vermeer's final intent. i.e. yes, it might have been his initial intent, but he painted over it for a reason. who are we to destroy his final intent by revealing something else? If, this was a different story, that religious fanatics painted over cupid, not vermeer himself, then yes, there's value to "restoring" it to its originality. But that doesn't seem to the be the case here.
Because history happened since the original state. So it is known for both painted and alabaster conditions. (More now for the latter since that is more recent)
To be honest, the lamb pre and post restoration do only look vaguely similar. This does not only look like a simple refresh of paint, but rather like somebody painted a caricature. Quite obvious is that eyes and ears are in different places and angles, who knows what else was changed subtly during the "restoration"
Calling it a "restoration" is an insult to professionals who have spent years working on the painting.
Any changes to the painting (there are indeed more than just the lamb) were actually painted over during the 16th century. What you see now is the original and what you think is the original is actually a 16th century cover up.
Seeing the original I can understand the cover up, the original looks nothing like a lamb, and doesn't look like the usual human-headed animal, it's just disturbing.
As an traditionally educated artist I can assure you, that even with the help of Camera obscura or other "invention", the level of composition, precise, confident brushstrokes and craftsmanship of Vermeer are of the charts.
For the trained eye this is obvious.
If you don't have the knowledge of anatomy, composition and color you will just make unconvincing value transfer.
Yes, you can fool a lot of people, Youtube is full with "photo-realistic" amateur painters.
The idea that Vermeer is not properly trained and his paintings are just mechanical transfer done because of the technology is naive.
Technology in the hands of the master can create transcendental work. In the hands of the amateurs technology produces amusement for the masses.
In the documentary you can see the frustration of the process, when done only in transfer mode, without the needed knowledge and craftsmanship.
I laughed loud when they showed the closeups with chaotic brushstrokes and clear absence of mixing between the layers of paint.
Also as someone who photographed his whole live and worked as a DOP on film sets: even if you were a master at painting off a camera obscura what makes pictures work is not in the fingers, it is in the eyes that place that camaera obscura, that interpret the resulting composition etc.
A camera obscura might help to give you physically accurate angles and contrasts, but nobody will tell you which camera positions, angles, focal lengths, light situations and motifs will produce a stunning image.
It is a old hat I know, but try giving a shitty camera to a professional and a professional camera to an amateuer and the professional will still get you the better pictures. This is because a professional has a image in their head and knows how to get there with thw tools available while the amateur either has no image in their head (in which case the result will be a bit arbitrary) or they don't know how to get there (in which case it will look like a budget version of some other popular thing).
There are of course truly amazing amateuers that developed their own unique style and technique and I love that — but they wouldn't aim to be masters at what they are doing.
Whats interesting about this entire theory is that so many people involved in the art world have a vested interest in disproving/disparaging the idea. The closer art gets to paint by numbers, or an otherwise mechanical process, like a very large set of pixels, the less impressive, and therefore less valuable the art becomes. And who wants that?
But Tim's Vermeer makes extremely some compelling arguments about how certain features present in The Music Lesson would be impossible to recreate by eyesight alone, yet were trivial using the optical device.
Finally, if the painting is photorealistic, and the actual room was arranged like it is in the painting, isn't composition at least partially a property of the room itself?
- the room, subjects placement
- how they are lit
- camera position and angle
- focal length (strengthens or flattens the perspective effect depending on the room)
- other optical effects (depth of field, long time exposure, bokeh, flares, ...)
The last point probably wasn't relevant for Vermeer, but if he would have used a Camera Obscura, getting all the former points correct on a way that produces a compelling image is not easy.
I could also imagine that he used a camera obscura to study and understand perspective and light, but painted without it, simply because that seems a little bit more practical.
It is not impossible to recreate by eyesight, it requires more time. To accomplish this level of realism geometrically, you create a perfect perspective grid and place what you see in it.
To accomplish this level of tonal representation you patiently compare the values from the scene with values from your palette/canvas.
It is classical painting craftsmanship, lost in the collective mind in post-modernistic world without need of art culture and knowledge.
Using an optical device gives more time to concentrate on composition,execution and emotional message, that is the real point that becomes clear in the end of the movie.
Any technique, Tech you could say, is just a tool. In the right hands you can be a master. In the wrong hands any tool, no matter how amazing, will be disastrous.
Sorry to be that guy... restaurant (a place to eat) use that form which comes from Latin via French (food that restores you, and so a place for eating that food). For some reason the English version became 'restore' (to renew, repair, make good again) and so we use 'restoration'. Makes little sense to me.
I’m curious about the professional ethics of this. If they couldn’t know until after they uncovered it that it wasn’t covered by Vermeer how did they know they weren’t destroying the artist’s composition? If they didn’t know that how did they make the determination to do it?
The determination used expertise. People with PhD’s in art history and such. Chemists with mass spectrometers. Technicians with sophisticated X-rays. Archivists too.
All working together over the course of years guided by professional ethics and all watched over by bean counters, museum administrators, and public and private funding institutions.
> In light of the many indications that supported the idea that the overpainting had been carried out by a hand other than Vermeer’s, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, supported by the expert commission, decided early in 2018 to remove the layer of overpaint.
> During a restoration and research project that began in 2017 and was supported by a panel of international experts, the team made or re-evaluated X-rays, infrared reflectance spectroscopies and microscopies of the oil painting in the past few years. The backing canvas was also analyzed in detail and research was conducted into the painting’s restoration history. Multiple color samples were taken from Vermeer’s painting and the layers and consistency were analyzed in Dresden Academy of Fine Arts’ Laboratory of Archaeometry (HfBK). These studies played a decisive role in reassessing the extensive overpainting of the Cupid figure in the Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. We can now safely state that it was not Vermeer himself who painted over the background, and that the retrospective change was applied at least several decades after the painting was made, and significantly after the artist’s death. A full-surface X-ray fluorescence scan of the painting, conducted with the support of the Rijksmuseum in 2017, confirmed our new findings on the overpainting.
Is it just me, or was it a better composition with the empty wall?
It's clear that it was there to lend an indication as to the contents of the letter -- but for me, I liked it better when it was less cluttered and more ambiguous.
(I do look at it differently since watching Tim's Vermeer though. I wonder if the conservators looked at the painting a bit differently after seeing the documentary? Like hay, "Maybe it's not the masterpiece we thought?")
An interesting case where a faithful and expert restoration has cheapened and tarnished what seemed to be a truly great paiting
Would be delighted if it turned out that Vermeer used less durable pigments for this part of the painting on purpose. How sneaky and clever that would have been
After the restoration of the Sistine Chapel, a number of art historians were shocked at the results. Many had assumed that the darkened, muted palette they were used to was intentional. (A few examples: [1] [2])
The restoration of the Ghent altarpiece by Jan van Eyck changed the lamb at the center of the piece in a way that lots of people have found... bizarre and slightly disturbing [3].
And the strangest example is probably Greek architecture and statuary, which we today consider to be the height of dignity and gravitas, but were originally brightly painted. [4] But if we were to paint the Parthanon bright primary colors like the Googleplex, would we be recovering something or losing something? It feels like a bit of both.
[1]: https://external-preview.redd.it/I4wkSd0S_hGySQbGLAtITMMPJq-...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gardenbeforeandafter.jpg
[3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51205614
[4]: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180119-when-the-parthe...