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George Stout’s Legacy in Conservation

The film The Monuments Men is bringing much-deserved attention to the group of men and women who risked their lives to protect and recover art during World War II—including former Fogg Museum conservator George Stout (the inspiration for George Clooney’s character, Frank Stokes). What many may not know, however, is how Stout and his colleagues at the museum helped lay the foundation for such an enormous endeavor, well before the Monuments Men ever set foot in Europe. Stout’s experience at the Fogg would prove instrumental not only to his role in the Allied mission to protect cultural heritage, but also to his success in furthering the field of conservation after the war.
When George Leslie Stout first came to Harvard in 1926 to study art history and work at the university’s art museum, he could not have suspected that this decision would lead him to laboring in the salt mines in Austria almost two decades later. Stout was drawn to the Fogg Museum for its unique approach of applying science to the study and preservation of art. Director Edward W. Forbes and Associate Director Paul J. Sachs, who envisioned the Fogg as a laboratory for art, introduced Stout to the world of restoration and technical research. The museum would become a premier training ground for museum professionals in the United States, including a number of the Monuments Men.
In 1928, Forbes established the Fogg’s Department for Technical Studies and named Stout the museum’s first conservator. Over the next few decades, in partnership with staff chemist Rutherford John Gettens and others, Stout helped raise the standards in the profession. They experimented with treatments, standardized examination and documentation procedures, and produced scientific data on a wide range of topics. In 1932 they launched Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts, the first journal dedicated to conservation-related research. By providing an arena for the open exchange of scientifically based knowledge and ideas, the journal was seminal to the growth of the field of conservation, both in the United States and abroad. And Gettens and Stout’s book, Painting Materials: A Short Encyclopedia, was immediately recognized as an invaluable resource for artists and those concerned with preserving art. It remains a standard reference work for conservators.
As the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 increased fears that the fighting might reach this country’s shores, Stout provided the museum community with information, drawn from European publications, on the emergency protection of works of art during wartime. In these early years of the war he also spearheaded a conference at the Fogg for museum professionals worried about the protection of cultural heritage, and he co-edited a “first aid” manual for the armed forces, called Notes on Safeguarding and Conserving Cultural Material in the Field.
Finally, when concern for works of art in war zones reached a crescendo, Stout and Paul Sachs, along with Harvard University dean George Chase, mobilized museum directors and museum associations to petition the government to create a formal program to protect monuments overseas. With growing pressure from academic and cultural institutions in the Boston area and beyond, the government soon formed the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, also known as the Roberts Commission (1942–47) after its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts. Sachs was in charge of selecting men and women to represent the commission in the field, in a section officially called Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFA&A), or the Monuments Men. Stout was an obvious choice. He and Sheldon Keck, who had also trained at the Fogg, were the only conservators in the group. Most others were art historians and museum professionals, a number of whom were Sachs’s former students.
Stout arrived in Europe in 1944 and stayed two years. Because the MFA&A was not considered a military unit, Stout and the other Monuments Men had little logistical support or rank within the military hierarchy. But the few hundred officers who were spread across Europe managed to perform an incredible job against huge odds. Traveling in small numbers close to the front lines, the officers initially helped with emergency repairs of objects, found storage, documented the condition of monuments and works of art, tried to track down treasures that had been legitimately evacuated from museums for safekeeping or that had been stolen, and safeguarded cultural property against U.S. armed forces. As inspector-at-large, Stout used his skills in creating systems and organizing: he outlined procedures for documenting objects and indexing monuments. And after the U.S. army discovered thousands of repositories of hidden and confiscated cultural objects while moving into Germany and Austria, Stout helped uncover some of the most spectacular repositories, starting with the Siegen mine. Stout’s training as a conservator proved essential in the next phase of the project, when he spearheaded efforts to find safe places to store these retrieved objects, to pack the works, and to ensure their safe handling and transportation. He also trained others so that they could complete the daunting project.
At the end of the war, Stout was among those responsible for administering one of the earliest collection points set up for retrieved objects, and he helped select the officer to run the central collection point in Munich. He also served as chief of the Arts and Monuments Division of the Civil Information and Education Service for the Far East in Japan and helped with postwar preservation and restitution efforts.
The experience of handling displaced works of art on such a large scale raised awareness of the environmental factors and hazards involved in transporting them. This, in turn, attracted more people to the field of conservation. Stout’s longtime efforts to professionalize the field were finally successful in 1950, when he helped found the first international conservation association, serving as the organization’s first president. Now known as the International Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC), the IIC formalized the international network of scientists, conservators, and museum officials, reestablishing much-needed arenas for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. In 1972 the American branch of the IIC developed into the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC). Thus, the many international connections that were forged before, during, and just after the war helped lay the groundwork for these professional organizations, all of which are still in existence today.
George Stout’s legacy of leading the charge to protect and rescue works of art during the war will remain popular, but his leadership in the development of conservation is equally important. His early work at the Fogg Museum is carried on today in the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, which remains a pioneer in developing new methods and techniques in the field and contributes to the education of museum professionals around the world.

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I restauri della basilica di Sant’Andrea a Mantova

Un det­ta­glio de­gli af­fre­schi di Gior­gio An­selmi, Man­tova, Ba­si­lica di Sant’Andrea, cu­pola (Foto M. Nascig)

Stanno ter­mi­nando in que­sti giorni i re­stauri delle strut­ture in­terne della ba­si­lica di Sant’Andrea a Man­tova, ini­ziati alla fine del 2008 e fra­zio­nati in tre lotti: il primo com­pren­deva le su­per­fici dell’abside, del pre­sbi­te­rio e i bracci del tran­setto, il se­condo ri­guar­dava le pa­reti e la volta della na­vata men­tre l’ultimo ha in­te­res­sato la cu­pola (tam­buro, pie­dritto, ca­lotta e lan­terna per un to­tale di circa 3.000 mq di su­per­fi­cie di­pinta). Per­tanto l’edificio sarà re­sti­tuito a una vi­sione rin­no­vata sia per gli in­ter­venti di pu­li­tura sull’apparato de­co­ra­tivo sia per l’introduzione di una nuova il­lu­mi­na­zione a luci led che per­met­terà di co­gliere l’armonia delle li­nee ar­chi­tet­to­ni­che dell’edificio e lo splen­dore dell’impianto pittorico.

Gli in­ter­venti di re­stauro, con­ser­va­tivi e ma­nu­ten­tivi, hanno per­messo di dare nuova luce alle do­ra­ture in fo­glia, fis­sate a gom­ma­lacca sulla de­co­ra­zione. Le su­per­fici di­pinte che non pre­sen­ta­vano sol­le­va­menti pit­to­rici sono state pu­lite prima a secco e poi a umido men­tre sulle por­zioni più cri­ti­che si è in­ter­ve­nuti con un pre­con­so­li­da­mento e con mi­nu­ziose stuc­ca­ture. La su­per­fi­cie è stata trat­tata con ri­toc­chi ad ac­que­rello o con in­te­gra­zioni dei mo­tivi ripetitivi. La fab­brica della ba­si­lica di Sant’Andrea co­nobbe un iter lungo e tor­men­tato che ri­chiese circa tre­cento anni di in­ter­venti co­strut­tivi e di re­stauro. Av­viata nel 1472 da Luca Fan­celli dopo la morte di Leon Bat­ti­sta Al­berti, fu por­tata avanti, tra di­verse in­ter­ru­zioni, fino all’inizio del Set­te­cento, quando la grande cro­ciera del tem­pio era an­cora priva di co­per­tura de­fi­ni­tiva. La prima pie­tra per l’erezione della cu­pola è po­sta nel 1732 e il pro­getto, af­fi­dato all’architetto e pit­tore pia­cen­tino An­drea Gal­luzzi, al­lievo di Fran­ce­sco Galli Bib­biena, non trova d’accordo il Pri­mi­ce­rio della ba­si­lica, Ni­cola Ta­sca, che nel 1733 in­vita a Man­tova l’abate Fi­lippo Ju­varra, già pro­get­ti­sta della cu­pola del duomo di Como. Pur in as­senza di di­se­gni e con po­chi do­cu­menti che ri­man­dano all’esecuzione dei la­vori, la pa­ter­nità ju­var­riana è av­va­lo­rata an­cora oggi da ra­gioni sti­li­sti­che. La strut­tura mu­ra­ria, che rag­giunge 70 me­tri di al­tezza e per­mette an­cora oggi di rag­giun­gere la ca­lotta at­tra­verso una scala a chioc­ciola in­terna, è ter­mi­nata nel 1758 quando è col­lo­cata la croce in ferro sulla co­per­tura della lanterna.

Tas­sello di re­stauro (Foto M. Nascig)

Nel 1778 l’architetto Paolo Pozzo, di­ret­tore della scuola d’architettura dell’Accademia di Scienze, Belle Let­tere e Arti di Man­tova, è in­ca­ri­cato di ter­mi­nare i la­vori di mu­ra­tura della ba­si­lica. Nel corso de­gli anni Ot­tanta Fe­lice Campi, pit­tore man­to­vano, la­vora con al­cuni al­lievi dell’Accademia alle spec­chia­ture del tran­setto e della na­vata. L’artista ve­ro­nese Gior­gio An­selmi, che aveva già ese­guito le al­le­go­rie della Sala dei Fiumi in pa­lazzo du­cale, è in­ca­ri­cato di ese­guire gli af­fre­schi del ca­tino ab­si­dale della ba­si­lica con il Mar­tiro di Sant’Andrea e so­prat­tutto di de­co­rare la cu­pola di Ju­varra, cer­ta­mente la parte più im­pe­gna­tiva e sug­ge­stiva dell’intero ap­pa­rato de­co­ra­tivo. Il boz­zetto della sua opera su­scitò aspre cri­ti­che da parte dell’Accademia man­to­vana ma egli com­pletò il la­voro in po­chis­simi anni tra il 1777 e il 1782. Tra il gran nu­mero di fi­gure rap­pre­sen­tate si tro­vano la Tri­nità, la Ma­donna, la città di Man­tova in sem­bianze di ma­trona con una co­rona tur­rita ac­canto ai vasi del Pre­zio­sis­simo San­gue con San Lon­gino, fi­gure di pa­triar­chi, di pro­feti, di santi, di pa­dri della Chiesa, di mar­tiri e una schiera di an­geli in cielo. Nei ri­qua­dri de­gli ar­chi vi sono le quat­tro parti del mondo che si pie­gano di fronte al Van­gelo e a fianco i frutti della Re­den­zione e della Pre­di­ca­zione. Nei quat­tro pen­nac­chi stanno gli Evan­ge­li­sti. I re­stauri hanno con­fer­mato le no­te­voli qua­lità co­lo­ri­sti­che e sce­no­gra­fi­che del pit­tore che tut­ta­via uti­lizza mo­delli ac­ca­de­mici. La ve­lo­cità nell’esecuzione delle fi­gure, prive di tracce di spol­vero no­no­stante la va­sta su­per­fi­cie, non pe­na­lizza l’attenzione ai par­ti­co­lari, agli ef­fetti di luce e om­bra sui pan­neggi e sui volti dei per­so­naggi rappresentati.
La va­sta de­co­ra­zione della cu­pola dello Ju­varra è con­clusa con l’intervento di Gae­tano Cre­vola, pro­fes­sore di ar­chi­tet­tura della Reale Ac­ca­de­mia man­to­vana, ne­gli or­nati del tim­pano e dei quat­tro ar­chi­volti, di Luigi Fe­de­rici nelle do­ra­ture e dello stuc­ca­tore ti­ci­nese Paolo Bolla che ese­gue le sta­tue di Fede, Spe­ranza, Ca­rità e Re­li­gione e quat­tro bu­sti di profeti.

Re­stauri del tam­buro (Foto M. Nascig)

Ve­duta della na­vata della ba­si­lica di Sant’Andrea con l’impalcatura, zona tran­setto (Foto D. Sogliani)

Stanford professor looks underwater for history of the Roman Empire

Using archeological evidence from shipwrecks and harbors, classics scholar Justin Leidwanger uncovers the story of economic networks during a millennium of classical antiquity.

Stanford scholar Justin Leidwanger spends a lot of time underwater.
An assistant professor of classics, Leidwanger is a maritime archeologist. His research entails what it sounds like it would – exploring artifacts that lie beneath the sea.
A scholar with interests in the Roman and early Byzantine eras, Leidwanger has conducted thousands of dives – mostly to explore shipwrecks of the Eastern Mediterranean region. His students, too, don snorkels or scuba gear and work underwater.
Marine archeology, Leidwanger says, provides a privileged perspective on ancient history.

“There is a lot of theoretical work on the maritime economy of the Roman Empire, but I am interested in the close details of sea travel and how archeological finds can shed light on the history of consumption and connectivity around the Mediterranean,” said Leidwanger.

The social networks established by sea travel, Leidwanger says, were the basis of commerce during the Roman Empire, and in the shipwrecks and harbors he is able to see evidence of “who was interacting with whom and how and when these objects were being transported and for what reason.”
Leidwanger’s aim is to bring together the theoretical models of ancient economics and socioeconomic connectivity with hard data from his underwater fieldwork.
“The Roman Empire was the most complex state structure at the time with a lot of movement of goods and people through the landscape,” Leidwanger said. “I am interested in how these structures and social networks change over the life of the Roman Empire.”
He is currently engaged in two projects, the Marzamemi Maritime Heritage Project in Sicily and the Burgaz Harbors Project in Turkey.

“Sicily was a nexus of communication and commerce between the eastern and western Roman Mediterranean. In the shipwrecks there, we are finding evidence of the changing patterns of commerce when the capital moved from Rome to Constantinople in the 4thcentury A.D.,” Leidwanger notes.

In Turkey, archeologists are currently excavating four shallow-water harbors to get a picture of what the harbor structures were like. In the 4th century B.C., during the late Classical period, Burgaz became a regional and international economic center for the export of agricultural goods.

“We are finding evidence of how these integral structures changed over time,” Leidwanger says.

Uncovering history in the mare nostrum

The location of Leidwanger’s current research is key to uncovering archeological data about the importance of the Mediterranean Sea for the Romans.
“The Mediterranean Sea has been described as an ‘inverted continent,’ a zone of human culture and relationships centered on the sea rather than land, a product of geography that led me to focus on the maritime,” Leidwanger said.
To undertake his research, Leidwanger maps and excavates marine sites to understand what was being transported and when.
At sites in Sicily or Turkey, where he travels each summer with Stanford students, Leidwanger excavates harbors and shipwrecks that often contain well-preserved artifacts that he can analyze in the lab.

“The great thing about shipwrecks is that I often find intact pottery jars, which are very helpful, as you can then determine their capacity, what they transported and how they were used.”

These artifacts, he says, often provide glances into their history.
“They sometimes have inscriptions on them, one scratched over another, so I can establish a life history of those objects, which can then quantifiably fit into a larger history on the movement of objects and the nature of consumption in maritime antiquity,” Leidwanger said.
“In Sicily, I have raised artifacts from half a mile off the coast of Marzamemi, where there are a dozen shipwrecks, including vessels carrying massive granite columns and prefabricated marble architectural elements, probably to be used in an early Byzantine church during the 6th century,” he said.

High-tech teamwork

Leidwanger’s work is an international operation. In his two current projects in Sicily and Turkey, Leidwanger has collaborators from Canada, Italy, Turkey and Israel. Stanford students also play a fundamental role on the field trips.
“Our students get a lot of field experience in different parts of the world. This summer, I’ll be taking a number of undergraduates and graduates with me to both Turkey and Sicily. It is a cultural experience, and one in which the students’ input is vital,” Leidwanger said.
Megan Daniels, a graduate student in classics, works with Leidwanger on the site in Turkey, assisting with pottery analysis.

“We perform visual and scientific analyses on the ceramics to better understand local and long-distance trade routes and the long-term dynamics of the maritime economy. Working with the raw materials of trade to contribute to a broader picture of the ancient economy is very exciting,” Daniels said.

Technology plays a key role in the equipment- and cost-intensive world of marine archeology. Sonar and other remote sensing technologies help to find and contextualize sites, while innovative computer applications allow archaeologists to create 3-D maps of the seabed.
“It is important to choose the right tools for the right occasion, and you need to have the right research questions. What goods were moving, and why? How did this change over time? These are the questions that motivate me,” Leidwanger said.
Marissa Ferrante, an undergraduate majoring in archeology, traveled to Sicily as part of the team last summer.
According to Ferrante, who is currently creating a 3-D topographic map of the site and the seabed, “Excavating underwater sites and collecting data in the field has allowed me to relate classroom discussions of theories and archaeological best practices to real-world applications.”

Preserving cultural heritage

Leidwanger and his team use technological tools to map the site and then set up a conservation lab to begin analysis.
“Underwater artifacts tend to soak up salt, so they need long-term treatment. Wood, pottery, stone and metal all need different treatment processes. At our colleagues’ lab in Turkey, for example, they are still conserving and mending pottery that was excavated in the 1980s and 1990s.”
After the artifacts are extracted and restored, they are often exhibited in museums and used to highlight heritage issues and establish marine preserves.
Leidwanger, who teaches a class on archeological ethics, is passionate about the process of sustainable archeology.
“Legal jurisdictions, particularly underwater, aren’t always well defined, and heritage and preservation therefore become key issues. The sovereignty over sites and excavated materials can be unclear and there are some opportunists around.”
Leidwanger makes an effort to situate his research within a broader dialogue on natural and cultural heritage practices. In Sicily, for example, he said he is “helping to implement state-of-the-art site management alongside local initiatives for environmentally sustainable tourism and economic development.”
For Leidwanger, archeology is more than just looking at artifacts and excavation sites:
“For me, it is about establishing and maintaining cultural heritage so that we can better understand history. It is about social networks and human relationships with objects and places, relationships that are as important today as they were in the past.”

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http://artdaily.com/news/68709/French-government-returns-three-paintings-confiscated-by-the-Nazis-during-World-War-II#.Uzcap4V_0f1

7:10 pm / 12 °C The First Art Newspaper on the Net Established in 1996 Portugal Saturday, March 29, 2014 Home Last Week Artists Galleries Museums Photographers Games Subscribe Comments Search Contact French government returns three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II Picture of three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II, taken on March 11, 2014 in Paris, during a ceremony marking their return to their real owners. AFP PHOTO MARTIN BUREAU. Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print Share on gmail More Sharing Services 101 PARIS (AFP).- France on Tuesday returned three paintings seized by the Nazis to their rightful owners, just the tip of the iceberg in a country where nearly 2,000 such artworks remain unclaimed. All works of art identified as having been stolen by the Nazis are kept in French museums that are required to report them and put them on display in the hope that the previous owners, their heirs or assignees will spot and claim them. Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti returned the three paintings -- "Mountain Landscape" by Flemish artist Joos de Momper (1564-1635), a "Portrait of a Woman" oil canvas dating from the 18th century and a "Madonna and Child" painting -- in an official ceremony. Filippetti said she was "happy and moved to once again accomplish an act of reparation and justice", which she described as a "moral duty" of her ministry. "Mountain Landscape" belonged to Baron Cassel van Doorn, a non-Jewish Belgian banker who had homes in France and whose possessions were confiscated by the Nazis in December 1943. The painting had been housed in a museum in the eastern city of Dijon. Jacqueline Domeyco, one of van Doorn's granddaughters, said she was "happy to have recovered a memory". "For a long time in our family nobody spoke of these seizures. It was too tough," said Domeyco, who lives in Chile. The "Portrait of a Woman" canvas was housed by the famed Louvre museum in Paris, and could be the copy of a portrait of an 18th-century actress by French artist Louis Tocque. The artwork belonged to art dealers from Berlin, and was auctioned off in January 1935 as part of the public sale of Jewish goods. The last painting, which the Nazis seized in June 1944 in the southern French city of Cannes and was also held by the Louvre, was claimed by the great-granddaughter of a banker who owned the artwork. So far, France has managed to return only around 70 pieces of art that were seized by the Nazis to their owners. © 1994-2014 Agence France-Presse Today's News March 12, 2014 French government returns three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II Paintings commissioned by one of Britain's greatest actors acquired by The Bowes Museum Metropolitan Museum launches MetCollects, an online series featuring recently acquired works of art Getty completes conservation of Jackson Pollock's milestone painting Mural, on view at the Getty Sotheby's announces a unique sale bringing together British art and design from the twentieth century Exceptional Torah, estimated at €1,000,000-1,500,000, to be offered at Christie's Paris on 30 April Andy's World: Christie's announces online-only sale to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Dinosaur-killing impact acidified oceans says study by Japanese scientists A collection of unseen Henry Moore prints to be offered at Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions' sale Scholars rediscover a lost American artist; Book celebrates 90th anniversary of her first masterpiece Art Deco masterpieces from the private collection of Félix Marcilhac exceed estimates Spacesuits and moon notes from Apollo 11 among the stars at Bonhams Space History Sale The Estate of Baron Pierre DeMenasce to highlight Doyle New York's March 17 Asian Works of Art Sale Rare 17th century longcase clock sells for £286,800 at Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions Monumental sculpture created by Dimitar Lukanov for JFK's Terminal 4 redevelopment Cartes de visite of Abraham Lincoln and son Tad, other historic photos to be auctioned March 20 by Waverly When "Life" is a £20,000 present: A gift from a wandering Indian artist for sale at Bonhams "Dana Kyndrová: Woman's Destiny" opens at Rosphoto, State Museum and Exhibition Centre A Groovy Kind of Love at Strauss & Co: are and undocumented work by Stanley Pinker to rock the market The Cheng Huan S.C., Collection of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist art for sale at Bonhams Marfa: Cultural oasis in Texas desert Hayward Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Jananne Al-Ani Most Popular Last Seven Days 1.- Swedish artist Jonas Dahlber's landscape memorial to Breivik victims sparks outrage in Norway 2.- French police recover Rembrandt stolen 15 years ago 3.- Major Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective exhibition opens at the Grand Palais in Paris 4.- Rembrandt's Claudius Civilis temporarily on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam 5.- 160 works by Frida Kahlo on display for the first time in Italy at the Scuderie del Quirinale 6.- "Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice" opens at the National Gallery in London 7.- Man admits theft of Rembrandt's "Child with a Soap Bubble" missing for 15 years 8.- London's Natural History Museum: Earliest Human Skull-Cups Made in the UK 9.- Thieves steal depiction of the goddess Artemis; "Chiseled off" with a metallic object 10.- Henie Onstad Kunstsenter returns Matisse painting to art dealer Paul Rosenberg's heirs Allow Andy Warhol In A Flower Patch To Cure You Of Your Winter Blues Keith Haring's Album Covers, T-Shirts And More Go On View The Voyeur's Guide To Navigating A Crowd The History Of 'Comfort Women': A WWII Tragedy We Can't Forget Everything A Feminist Needs To Know About Quilting Happy Birthday, Rene Magritte! 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French government returns three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II Picture of three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II, taken on March 11, 2014 in Paris, during a ceremony marking their return to their real owners. AFP PHOTO MARTIN BUREAU. Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print Share on gmail More Sharing Services 101 PARIS (AFP).- France on Tuesday returned three paintings seized by the Nazis to their rightful owners, just the tip of the iceberg in a country where nearly 2,000 such artworks remain unclaimed. All works of art identified as having been stolen by the Nazis are kept in French museums that are required to report them and put them on display in the hope that the previous owners, their heirs or assignees will spot and claim them. Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti returned the three paintings -- "Mountain Landscape" by Flemish artist Joos de Momper (1564-1635), a "Portrait of a Woman" oil canvas dating from the 18th century and a "Madonna and Child" painting -- in an official ceremony. Filippetti said she was "happy and moved to once again accomplish an act of reparation and justice", which she described as a "moral duty" of her ministry. "Mountain Landscape" belonged to Baron Cassel van Doorn, a non-Jewish Belgian banker who had homes in France and whose possessions were confiscated by the Nazis in December 1943. The painting had been housed in a museum in the eastern city of Dijon. Jacqueline Domeyco, one of van Doorn's granddaughters, said she was "happy to have recovered a memory". "For a long time in our family nobody spoke of these seizures. It was too tough," said Domeyco, who lives in Chile. The "Portrait of a Woman" canvas was housed by the famed Louvre museum in Paris, and could be the copy of a portrait of an 18th-century actress by French artist Louis Tocque. The artwork belonged to art dealers from Berlin, and was auctioned off in January 1935 as part of the public sale of Jewish goods. The last painting, which the Nazis seized in June 1944 in the southern French city of Cannes and was also held by the Louvre, was claimed by the great-granddaughter of a banker who owned the artwork. So far, France has managed to return only around 70 pieces of art that were seized by the Nazis to their owners.

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French government returns three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II Picture of three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II, taken on March 11, 2014 in Paris, during a ceremony marking their return to their real owners. AFP PHOTO MARTIN BUREAU. Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print Share on gmail More Sharing Services 101 PARIS (AFP).- France on Tuesday returned three paintings seized by the Nazis to their rightful owners, just the tip of the iceberg in a country where nearly 2,000 such artworks remain unclaimed. All works of art identified as having been stolen by the Nazis are kept in French museums that are required to report them and put them on display in the hope that the previous owners, their heirs or assignees will spot and claim them. Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti returned the three paintings -- "Mountain Landscape" by Flemish artist Joos de Momper (1564-1635), a "Portrait of a Woman" oil canvas dating from the 18th century and a "Madonna and Child" painting -- in an official ceremony. Filippetti said she was "happy and moved to once again accomplish an act of reparation and justice", which she described as a "moral duty" of her ministry. "Mountain Landscape" belonged to Baron Cassel van Doorn, a non-Jewish Belgian banker who had homes in France and whose possessions were confiscated by the Nazis in December 1943. The painting had been housed in a museum in the eastern city of Dijon. Jacqueline Domeyco, one of van Doorn's granddaughters, said she was "happy to have recovered a memory". "For a long time in our family nobody spoke of these seizures. It was too tough," said Domeyco, who lives in Chile. The "Portrait of a Woman" canvas was housed by the famed Louvre museum in Paris, and could be the copy of a portrait of an 18th-century actress by French artist Louis Tocque. The artwork belonged to art dealers from Berlin, and was auctioned off in January 1935 as part of the public sale of Jewish goods. The last painting, which the Nazis seized in June 1944 in the southern French city of Cannes and was also held by the Louvre, was claimed by the great-granddaughter of a banker who owned the artwork. So far, France has managed to return only around 70 pieces of art that were seized by the Nazis to their owners.

More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/68709/French-government-returns-three-paintings-confiscated-by-the-Nazis-during-World-War-II#.Uzcap4V_0f1[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

French government returns three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II Picture of three paintings confiscated by the Nazis during World War II, taken on March 11, 2014 in Paris, during a ceremony marking their return to their real owners. AFP PHOTO MARTIN BUREAU. Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Share on print Share on gmail More Sharing Services 101 PARIS (AFP).- France on Tuesday returned three paintings seized by the Nazis to their rightful owners, just the tip of the iceberg in a country where nearly 2,000 such artworks remain unclaimed. All works of art identified as having been stolen by the Nazis are kept in French museums that are required to report them and put them on display in the hope that the previous owners, their heirs or assignees will spot and claim them. Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti returned the three paintings -- "Mountain Landscape" by Flemish artist Joos de Momper (1564-1635), a "Portrait of a Woman" oil canvas dating from the 18th century and a "Madonna and Child" painting -- in an official ceremony. Filippetti said she was "happy and moved to once again accomplish an act of reparation and justice", which she described as a "moral duty" of her ministry. "Mountain Landscape" belonged to Baron Cassel van Doorn, a non-Jewish Belgian banker who had homes in France and whose possessions were confiscated by the Nazis in December 1943. The painting had been housed in a museum in the eastern city of Dijon. Jacqueline Domeyco, one of van Doorn's granddaughters, said she was "happy to have recovered a memory". "For a long time in our family nobody spoke of these seizures. It was too tough," said Domeyco, who lives in Chile. The "Portrait of a Woman" canvas was housed by the famed Louvre museum in Paris, and could be the copy of a portrait of an 18th-century actress by French artist Louis Tocque. The artwork belonged to art dealers from Berlin, and was auctioned off in January 1935 as part of the public sale of Jewish goods. The last painting, which the Nazis seized in June 1944 in the southern French city of Cannes and was also held by the Louvre, was claimed by the great-granddaughter of a banker who owned the artwork. So far, France has managed to return only around 70 pieces of art that were seized by the Nazis to their owners.

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1,800-year-old letter from Egyptian soldier deciphered

A newly deciphered 1,800-year-old letter from an Egyptian solider serving in a Roman legion in Europe to his family back home shows striking similarities to what some soldiers may be feeling here and now.

Grant Adamson, a student at Rice University took up the task in 2011 when he was assigned the papyrus to work on during a summer institute hosted at Brigham Young University (BYU).
The private letter sent home by Roman military recruit Aurelius Polion was originally discovered in 1899 by the expedition team of Grenfell and Hunt in the ancient Egyptian city of Tebtunis. It had been catalogued and described briefly before, but to this point no one had deciphered and published the letter, which was written mostly in Greek.
“This letter was just one of many documents that Grenfell and Hunt unearthed,” Adamson said. “And because it was in such bad shape, no one had worked much on it for about 100 years.” Even now portions of the letter’s contents are uncertain or missing and not possible to reconstruct.
Polion’s letter to his brother, sister and his mother, “the bread seller,” reads like one of a man who is very desperate to reach his family after sending six letters that have gone unanswered. He wrote in part:

“I pray that you are in good health night and day, and I always make obeisance before all the gods on your behalf. I do not cease writing to you, but you do not have me in mind. But I do my part writing to you always and do not cease bearing you (in mind) and having you in my heart. But you never wrote to me concerning your health, how you are doing. I am worried about you because although you received letters from me often, you never wrote back to me so that I may know how you.

“I sent six letters to you. The moment you have(?) me in mind, I shall obtain leave from the consular (commander), and I shall come to you so that you may know that I am your brother. For I demanded(?) nothing from you for the army, but I fault you because although I write to you, none of you(?) … has consideration. Look, your(?) neighbor … I am your brother.”
Adamson believes that Polion was stationed in the Roman province of Pannonia Inferior at Aquincum (modern day Budapest), but he said that the legion to which Polion belonged is known to have been mobile and may have traveled as far as Byzantium (modern day Istanbul).
“Polion was literate, and literacy was rarer then that it is now, but his handwriting, spelling and Greek grammar are erratic,” Adamson said, which made English translation of the damaged letter even more difficult. “He likely would have been multilingual, communicating in Egyptian or Greek at home in Egypt before he enlisted in the army and then communicating in Latin with the army in Pannonia.”
Adamson believes Polion wrote home in Greek because writing home in Egyptian was not really an option at the time, and because his family in Egypt most likely did not know much Latin.
To establish an approximate date for the letter, Adamson depended on handwriting styles and a few other more specific hints.
“Dating ancient papyri is generally hard to do very specifically unless there happens to be a date or known event mentioned in the text,” Adamson said. “But you can make a preliminary decision based on the handwriting.”

Image courtesy of University of California, Berkley’s Bancroft Library

Another hint is the soldier’s Roman name Aurelius; he could have acquired it as part of a widespread granting of Roman citizenship in the year 212. And another hint is Polion’s reference to a “consular commander,” which suggests a date after 214 when the Roman province of Pannonia Inferior came under consular governance.
Because of the letter’s personal nature and common theme of familial concern, Adamson’s publication of it in the latest volume of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists has been receiving national and international media attention.
“One thing that I think is important about this letter is that it reflects the emotions of a soldier in the ancient world,” said April DeConick, chair of Rice’s Religious Studies Department and Adamson’s faculty adviser. “His emotions are really no different than those of soldiers today, who are longing to go home.”
The papyrus, which was on loan to BYU in 2011, is housed at the University of California, Berkley’s Bancroft Library.

Kangaroo in 400-year-old manuscript could change Australian history

A 16th century manuscript featuring an image that looks like a kangaroo could prove that Portuguese explorers discovered Australia before the first recorded European landing in 1606

A drawing of a kangaroo on a 16th century Portuguese manuscript could potentially change the world's understanding of Australia's history.

The manuscript, which is thought to date from between 1580 and 1620, appears to show a small kangaroo within the letters of its text. If the image actually is a kangaroo, the drawing suggests that Portuguese explorers may have discovered Australia before the first recorded European landing on the continent by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606.

The document, which contains text or music for a liturgical procession, was recently acquired by the Les Enluminures Galley in New York, which has valued the item at $15,000 (£9,174). It was previously in the possession of a rare book dealer in Portugal.

Laura Light, a researcher at the gallery, told Australia's The Age newspaper that "a kangaroo or wallaby in a manuscript this early is proof that the artist of this manuscript had either been in Australia, or even more interestingly, that travellers' reports and drawings of the interesting animals found in this new world were already available in Portugal."

The text also includes the image of two half-naked men wearing crowns of leaves, which researchers believe may represent Australian aborigines.

Siena, si apre alle visite il pavimento del Duomo

Unesco stops unauthorised reconstruction of Bamiyan Buddhas

Unesco stops unauthorised reconstruction of Bamiyan Buddhas

Organisation says actions of German archaeologists who have partially rebuilt one of the statues “border on the criminal”

German archaeologists have rebuilt the lower appendages of the smaller statue

The international community has reacted furiously to news that a German-led team of archaeologists has been reconstructing the feet and legs of the smaller of the two Bamiyan Buddhas, the monumental Afghan sculptures blown up by the Taliban in 2001. News of this reconstruction, which has taken place without Unesco’s knowledge or permission, was revealed during the 12th meeting of Unesco’s Bamiyan working group, in Orvieto, Italy, in December.

A team of archaeologists from the German branch of Icomos (the International Council on Monuments and Sites), led by Michael Petzet, who himself served as the head of Icomos from 1999 to 2008, spent most of last year rebuilding the smaller Buddha’s lower appendages with iron rods, reinforced concrete and bricks, an operation that Francesco Bandarin, Unesco’s assistant director-general for culture, describes as “wrong on every level”. He says: “Unesco has nothing to do with this project. It was undertaken without the consent of the Afghan government and has now been stopped.”

Andrea Bruno, the architectural consultant to Unesco for the past 40 years, confirms that the work was carried out “against Unesco’s decision [taken in 2011] not to rebuild the Buddhas” and says the organisation was never made aware that the project was going ahead. Bruno says the work has caused “irreversible damage, bordering on the criminal”. He adds that the work had not yet started when he visited Afghanistan last March.

Petzet told The Art Newspaper that he and his team “just wanted to preserve what can be preserved”. He says: “Everything we have done was discussed with the Afghan authorities: this [project] is nothing new.” However, Bandarin says that the Afghan minister of culture was not aware of the work when Bandarin asked him to put a stop to it.

Petzet says that his team’s funding was originally provided by Unesco. Bandarin has confirmed that Unesco “has a contract with Icomos Germany to build a platform [where the smaller Buddha once stood] to protect visitors from falling rocks”, but reiterates that the reconstruction work was not part of the deal and that Unesco wants to dismantle the results.

The question is: how did Petzet’s team manage to carry out such extensive work without anyone noticing? “Things like this can happen in such a remote Afghan province,” Bandarin says, “especially since they have worked there for years before this.” Icomos, which was founded in 1965 and works to conserve and protect heritage sites around the world, advises Unesco on World Heritage Sites, but Unesco remains in charge of their management, conservation and restoration. Experts at Unesco asked the central Icomos office to file a report to the Afghan authorities by the beginning of this month, and an additional report on the matter is due to be presented to the World Heritage Committee in June.

The Buddhas once stood along the ancient Silk Route in the remote Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, around 250km west of Kabul. The sculptures—53m and 35m tall—were carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamiyan valley in the sixth century, at the height of the Kushan empire and before the Islamic invasion of the late seventh century. Several attempts were made to destroy the statues during centuries of Islamic rule, until the Taliban brought them down with anti-aircraft guns, artillery and dynamite.

When less is more

The future of the site was formally decided at a Unesco meeting in Tokyo in 2011. The organisation reviewed numerous plans for the site’s conservation or restoration, ranging from laser projections of the Buddhas onto the cliff face to Michael Petzet’s proposal to reassemble the surviving fragments of the smaller Buddha in its niche using metal frames. But the final decision was to leave the niches empty. Andrea Bruno told The Art Newspaper in May 2012 that “the void is the true sculpture” and that the Buddhas would be best remembered through their absence. Rebuilding them could also cause offence to the country’s Muslims, because Islam forbids religious images.

Nevertheless, their destruction was a disaster for the local population of Shia Muslims, who have been persecuted by the Taliban, because it deprived them of what little income they had from foreign visitors. A Unesco-led project aims to encourage visitors in the future with a series of initiatives.

Salvage Drive for Rare Jewish Mural in Vermont

 

BURLINGTON, Vt. — The mural was created inside a synagogue in 1910 by a sign painter named Ben Zion Black, who had just moved to this city’s growing Jewish community from Lithuania. He was paid $200 by the Chai Adam congregation for what became a two-story artwork in a style that was common in Eastern Europe’s painted wooden synagogues. Most vanished in the Holocaust.

Now it seems that the work here in Burlington — a city better known as the birthplace of the rock band Phish than as a cradle of Jewish history — is among the most complete existing examples of this kind of folk art. And few people knew it existed.

For more than 25 years it disappeared from view, walled off by Sheetrock when the building — first a synagogue, then retail stores — was converted into apartments. It remained hidden until a couple of years ago, when some of the city’s Jews began devising a plan to uncover and preserve the mural.

“Because this is the only one of its kind in the world, there’s no choice,” said Aaron Goldberg, 57, an estate planner who is the archivist at the city’s Ohavi Zedek synagogue, with which Chai Adam merged and which is leading the preservation effort.

To do that, Mr. Goldberg and others have begun a complex and costly effort to stabilize and clean the ravaged surface, remove the roof and wooden beams around it and extract it from the building, in one piece, if possible. They plan eventually to install it in the lobby of Ohavi Zedek.

For much of its century-long history, the mural was viewed as a decidedly local curiosity. The synagogue in which it was painted was at the center of a section of town that was laid out like the Lithuanian shtetl from which many of its residents — including Mr. Goldberg’s ancestors — had emigrated, with synagogues surrounded by purveyors of kosher goods in “Little Jerusalem” in Burlington’s Old North End.

The mural, which originally sat behind the synagogue’s ark and rose to adorn the arched ceiling, was a rendering of traditional Jewish iconography: two rampant lions of Judah on either side of a tablet of the Ten Commandments beneath a Torah crown. The images are shrouded by elaborate curtains that evoke the Tabernacle, the Israelites’ tentlike desert sanctuary.

Photo

Ms. Silver restoring the mural. Credit Jacob Hannah for The New York Times

But the artist, a lover of music and Yiddish theater, added personal touches: The work shows musical instruments, dismaying some in the congregation, according to the archives. The upper part of the mural that rose above the ark survives; the lower half and the adornment of the ceiling having been lost over the years, after the building entered private hands.

In 1939, Chai Adam merged with Congregation Ohavi Zedek, and the mural later became a peculiar backdrop for the stores that later filled the space.

“It was kind of an intriguing oddity that was surrounded, as I recall in youth, by carpets and business and things of the sort,” said Jeffrey Potash, 60, who is also an archivist at Ohavi Zedek and who, like Mr. Goldberg, grew up here, noticing the mural. “So I never gave it much thought.”

Photo

The painter, Ben Zion Black, right, with his wife.

But Mr. Goldberg’s intuition told him the mural was worth saving. When the building was to be converted into apartments in 1986, he tried in vain to find an institution that would take the mural. He made archival photos and had the mural hidden behind a false wall in the hope of eventually preserving it. At the time, Mr. Goldberg said, “There was really very little scholarly work that had been done on the lost painted synagogues. We couldn’t even determine what we had then.”

For nearly 25 years, he says, tenants filled the apartment with no idea it was there. But it gnawed at Mr. Goldberg, who had a segment of the wall opened and resealed in 2010, and then began exploring his options to preserve the mural.

When the building was sold again, he approached its new owner, Steven Offenhartz, who was not himself sure what was behind the wall.

Photo

The original mural depicted in the same book.

“I’d heard rumors that it was there,” he said, but after learning more he agreed to donate the mural to Ohavi Zedek in the name of his father, Michael. Mr. Goldberg and the synagogue rented the apartment that held it. In 2012, Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Potash arranged to take down the Sheetrock and consulted with preservation experts to devise a plan to save the mural.

Last year, the mural caught the attention of Samuel D. Gruber, an art and architecture historian who has lectured at Syracuse University and who has extensively studied the Eastern European painted synagogues. He was astonished by the mural. He said that he had seen pieces of surviving murals in Europe, and examples of decorated synagogues in Chelsea, Mass., and Toronto, but that he had not seen such a complete segment of the decoration where so much was known about the artist. “When I saw the first photos of it, I knew it was special. I couldn’t point to a single other example like it anywhere,” said Mr. Gruber, who added, “I really didn’t expect to see this in Burlington.”

On a recent afternoon, a conservator, Constance Silver, of Brattleboro, Vt., had her tools spread out in front of the mural. A breeze from outside ruffled the plastic that was helping to stabilize segments of paint. Tiny, crispy specks of paint had already fallen off the wall, dusting the carpet.

“This is about as close as it gets to self-destructing,” Ms. Silver said. The work, she said, was painted directly onto the plaster of the synagogue’s wall, which has absorbed the paint’s oils, rendering them dry as cornflakes, which she is now securing, square by square. And the mural has yellowed with the grime of indoor smoking and cooking from the kitchen. When the paint is fully stabilized, Ms. Silver will clean it. She already knows this will electrify its colors — including turning the curtains it depicts from dark green to a bright blue, consistent with Jewish symbolism.

But restoration and relocation will be expensive. So far the organizers say they have raised at least $64,000 of the several hundred thousand that will be needed for that process, and to create educational materials around it. But for those who have seen the piece, the cost is beside the point, as is its monetary value.

Elizabeth Berman, a Boston appraiser who is working with Mr. Offenhartz and Mr. Goldberg, said it would be difficult to assign a value to the mural because there was little to compare it to. “This issue is that it’s so rare and we don’t really see cases like this in the appraisal world,” she said.

Mr. Gruber, the historian, said, “We’re not talking about a great art masterpiece,” but added, “What really makes it special is that it is a survivor.”

Ancient fresco stolen from Pompeii

Ancient fresco stolen from Pompeii

Italy’s culture ministry calls emergency meeting to address security issues at the site

A 20 cm-wide section of the fresco, showing the goddess Artemis and her twin brother Apollo, was reportedly removed with a metal object

The Italian culture minister has called the second emergency meeting this month with the heads of Pompeii to “reinforce management and security” after part of a fresco was stolen from the House of Neptune and Amphitrite.

Dario Franceschini met Wednesday with the archaeological site’s new superintendent, Massimo Osanna, the director general, Giovanni Nistri, the deputy director, Fabrizio Magani, of the “Great Pompeii Project”, and the commander of the art crime unit of the carabinieri, Mariano Ignazio Mossa. This meeting comes less than three weeks after politicians convened to discuss the collapse of buildings at the site caused by heavy rains.

The group decided on a number of measures to take immediate effect, including recruiting extra guards, installing new video cameras and fences, consulting with the carabinieri on theft prevention and with Rome’s state school of conservation on the damage done to the House of Neptune and Amphitrite.

A 20 cm-wide section of the fresco, showing the goddess Artemis and her twin brother Apollo, was reportedly removed with a metal object. The theft was discovered by a guard on 12 March, but withheld for several days as police carried out preliminary investigations. It is not known when it occurred, as the area is closed to visitors and not covered by the 24-hour video surveillance system.

An initial theory that the fresco had been taken away for conservation was quickly disproved. Another wall painting fragment, from the House of the Orchard, was previously stolen from an on-site laboratory during restoration, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reports. It was returned anonymously in January from a post office in Florence.

Catherine the Great’s rooms restored to former glory

Catherine the Great’s rooms restored to former glory

Conservation of the interiors at the Russian imperial family’s summer home wins heritage award

Workers pull up the floors of the Agate Rooms at Tsarskoe Selo. Photo: Boris Igdalov

A project to restore Catherine the Great’s Agate Rooms at Tsarskoe Selo, the former summer residence of the Russian imperial family near St Petersburg, is one of 15 conservation initiatives to be recognised with a prestigious European heritage award. The winners of the annual EU Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award were announced today.

Remarkably, these 18th-century interiors, decorated with marble, parquet floors, bronze ornaments, gilded ceilings and coloured jasper from the Ural and Altai mountains, survived the Second World War—although not without significant damage and losses. Another well-known room at Tsarskoe Selo, the Amber Room, was not so fortunate: its panels carved from precious amber were looted by the Nazis and then disappeared. Their whereabouts continue to puzzle scholars.

Prior to the project, which began in 2010 and finished last year, the suite of rooms designed by the Scottish architect Charles Cameron, had not undergone any major restoration treatment. The jury praised the “quality of the science” involved in the project, noting “the special problems” that geological materials can present.

Other conservation projects to receive awards include the restoration of Abbotsford, the home of the Scottish poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott on the banks of the River Tweed in Scotland, and efforts to clean, reinforce and correct the harmful post-Second World War restoration of a 16th-century basilica designed by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio in Vicenza.

A further twelve awards were given to projects in the areas of research, dedicated service, education, training and awareness-raising. Six grand prize winners, selected from the 27 laureates, will be announced at a ceremony in Vienna on 5 May.

Great Pyramid of Giza vandalised

Great Pyramid of Giza vandalised

German researchers allegedly scraped pigment from a pharaoh’s cartouche, in an attempt to prove it is a forgery

Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann hoped to raise the possibility that the Great Pyramid was constructed by a civilization much older than the ancient Egyptians

Following accusations of vandalism and theft at the Great Pyramid of Giza, two researchers are under investigation in Germany and six individuals have been detained in Egypt, including the head of a tour company, archaeologists and local guards. Officials with the Ministry of Antiquities responsible for the pyramids have reportedly already been transferred to other positions as punishment for negligence.

In April 2013, Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann are suspected of having illegally scraped samples of pigment and stone from one of the uppermost chambers of the Great Pyramid, focusing their attention on a red ochre cartouche of King Khufu. Most scholars date this mark to the pyramid’s construction in around 2500BC, while alternative theorists, including the two German researchers, have long claimed the cartouche to be a fake, painted by its discoverer, Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837 to help him secure further funding for his explorations. To prove their claims, Goerlitz and Erdmann allegedly smuggled the pigment samples from Egypt to Dresden University for further study; by proving the modernity of the pigment, they hoped to raise the possibility that the Great Pyramid was constructed by a civilization much older than the ancient Egyptians.

Their hopes of rewriting history were dashed in November, however, when a self-posted trailer on YouTube for a documentary detailing and revealing their exploits, drew almost universal condemnation and angered Egyptian authorities. After the controversy broke, the German embassy in Cairo released a statement emphasising that neither Goerlitz nor Erdmann were associated with the embassy or the German Archaeological Institute. The researchers, who have no archaeological training, also had no affiliation with Dresden University, although they approached one of its laboratories to study the samples taken from the pyramid. The university lab has since stated that it was unaware of the samples’ origin, and now wishes to return them to Egypt. Nonetheless, Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, the head of the Pharaonic Antiquities section of the Ministry of Antiquities, has stopped any future cooperation with Dresden University, saying that the German researchers broke Egyptian law when they took the samples without permission.

In December, both Goerlitz and Erdmann apologised for their behaviour in a letter addressed to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, offering to pay compensation for the damage and stressing that they did not mean harm to the pyramid. Egypt’s head of antiquities, Mohamed Ibrahim, has so far rejected their apology.

Rare tapestries back at Frick Art Museum after restoration

Three gems from the Frick Art Museum collection have returned home with a new glow.

http://triblive.com/aande/museums/5789487-74/frick-museum-art#axzz2wz3fSM1J 

The tapestries “Two Musicians,” “The Court of Love” and “Lady and Attendants” are once again hanging in the rotunda of the Point Breeze museum after undergoing restoration work in Baltimore.

“These colors seem much more rich,” says Sarah Hall, director of curatorial affairs for the Frick. The rotunda's fourth tapestry “Rest on the Flight Into Egypt,” which is receiving complete restoration work that's supported by a $30,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant, is expected to be back in place by June 2015.

All four tapestries have greeted visitors to the museum since it opened in 1970.

The museum's founder, Helen Clay Frick, purchased the tapestries between 1965 and 1970 with the museum in mind. The Frick's neo-classical rotunda was designed to display them.

They date from the early 16th century. “Two Musicians” and “Lady and Attendants” are French, while “The Court of Love” and “Rest on the Flight Into Egypt” are Flemish.

“Rest on the Flight Into Egypt” is the star of the museum's collection.

“It's the most significant because it is intact,” Hall says. “The others are fragments, but gorgeous decorative things … about courtly life and gracious living.”

All the museum's tapestries receive routine vacuuming every 12 to 18 months, Hall says.

But, periodically, they require more in-depth work.

Baltimore-based conservator Julia Dippold spent nearly seven months cleaning and stabilizing the three tapestries that range in size from approximately 50 square feet to 89 square feet.

During that time, she removed the old backing fabric, which allowed her to clean the fronts and backs of the tapestries and the silk threads. She replaced the backing and attached new support straps to distribute and support the weight.

Dippold also uncovered an intriguing mystery.

After removing the tapestry's backing from “The Court of Love,” she found evidence that the large tapestry, which shows courtiers at a gathering, may contain fragments from other works.

Dippold, who has done conservation work for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, as well as the Frick Art Museum, saw that heads and hats appear to have been stitched into the design, not part of the original work. Whether these heads were revisions or repairs in unknown, but the work may have been done as late as the 17th century.

“Julia thinks the whole tapestry was pieced together from other compositions, yet (the scene) fits together so well,” says Hall.

Hall estimates the cost of stabilizing the three tapestries at between $4,000 and $7,000 each, which will be covered by the museum's operating budget.

Once “Rest on the Flight Into Egypt” returns to the gallery, the Frick plans to celebrate the completion of the project with a presentation on the stabilization process, a gallery guide on techniques employed and updated panels describing the results of research and conservation efforts.

In the meantime, visitors can view the three completed tapestries in the rotunda of the Frick Art Museum, 727 Reynolds St., Point Breeze, which is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays.

Under the paints and pigments, the science behind art restoration

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/health-science/item/64537-under-the-paints-and-pigments-the-science-behind-art-restoration-
To restore a painting, it takes a village, a team of art historians, conservation experts and cultural sleuths. Right now a 17th century painting, long abandoned at a dusty Villanova University library, is being brought back to its past glory.
For almost 60 years, the Faley Library at Villanova University held a hidden treasure in plain view — an enormous painting hanging high on the wall. But it was so dark and deteriorated that few noticed it. That all changed when a group of Villanova scientists and art historians decided to do something about it.
Separated from the rest of the library by a 10-foot-high chain-link fence with pad-locked doors, is the restoration site of the 17th century canvas. The painting, "Triumph of David" by Pietro da Cortona, was donated to the university in 1950.

Going beneath the surface

The first step in approaching the painting was to bring a team from the prestigious University of Delaware Art Conservation Department to take a look at it. Lead conservator Kristin deGhetaldi remembers that, when she first saw the canvas, it was so damaged she wasn't so sure about the condition.
So she climbed a scaffold, took a closer look, and took some miniscule samples and handed them over to Dr. Anthony Lagalante, science and chemistry professor at Villanova and the principal scientist in the restoration project.
He applied advanced analytical techniques to study and identify individual pigment particles. So, Lagalante says, "if Kristin wanted to know exactly what this blue is, we were able to establish how the artist worked, and dug through layers of paints and pigments, about 15 in this case, and figured out what was behind the surface of what we see to the naked eye, to establish the combined reflection and absorption of light."
The tests revealed the chemical composition of the paint, an important factor in deciding what cleaning solvents to use. Importantly they also revealed that, under the varnishes and repainting of overeager, amateur restorers lay a true treasure.
"Lo and behold," says deGhetaldi, "there were these brilliant, beautiful colors underneath," sparking the idea of conserving the painting.
Faced with this rare opportunity to have total access to an old canvas of this importance, chemistry professor Lagalante decided to use the painting as a living lab, a hands-on classroom, so to speak, to explore the many intersections of art, science and new technology.
Early radiology and spectography was pretty primitive, says Lagalante, but now they're able to use advanced military techniques and technologies on paintings. It allows the team to look inside the painting in a non-destructive way and to find how Pietro da Cortona and his apprentices worked in his workshop near Rome.
He was a sought-after painter who worked on huge canvases and frescoes commissioned by wealthy families and the Catholic Church. Da Cortona's "Triumph of David," painted around 1620, depicts a joyful Biblical scene of the shepherd David delivering the head of Goliath to King Saul.
The parade has almost a cinematic quality. Villanova art historian Timothy McCall, who is part of the restoration team says, "You get the sense of dynamism and movement. You can almost hear this painting."

From Rome to Villanova

So how did this Baroque canvas end up in a Villanova University library? The story reads like a novel; there's love, death, greed, and the ravages of World War II.
It starts in the late 1920s when Alabama-born heiress Jenny Berry married a young Italian prince she met in Washington, D.C., diplomatic circles.
Berry, now Princess Eugenia Ruspoli, says McCall, "was about 40 years old. He was in his early 20s, had a name but not a lot of money. With her money they bought a castle where this painting had been."
Then the castle was bombarded during the Second World War's Battle of Rome in 1944.
"U.S. troops were involved in the battle of Rome at Castle Nemi," adds Anthony Lagalante. "It's assumed that some of the damage to this painting was done during World War II, but we have no way of knowing."
No one knows for sure how the artwork made it out of the castle and ended up in the United States, but what's documented is that the princess met Villanova University's Father Faley as he was raising funds for a new library and persuaded her it would be a good place for Pietro da Cortona's "Triumph of David."

An open forum

The entire restoration process will take approximately two years and, by now, almost half of the bottom part of the big canvas has been cleaned. The work is painstakingly slow, as scientists analyze each segment and seek the best techniques to unlock the secrets the canvas holds.
To do that, science professor Lagalante is also applying a technique called molecular imaging, which he says is a method of deeper analysis based not on the color or the absorption of light, but on how much a molecule weighs.
Since it's a university library and not a museum, students and the public can watch, get near or behind the canvas and talk to the conservators. There's not a lot of action, but there is excitement in the air, especially when a new detail, like a face, emerges — or when a bunch of unattached feet suddenly appear.
There's a reason and a name for that surprise, says Kristin deGhetaldi. "We begin to see things that the artist never truly intended us to see. They wanted to cover up this area here, because they decided to change it. When we first started, we saw evidence of eight different feet in this group down here, it's called 'pentimenti.' When you have a painting of this size with multiple hands at work, there are going to be a lot of changes, and this is something that is commonly associated with his large painting. We know this for a fact."
The team knows it can never bring da Cortona's "Triumph of David" completely back to its original glory, confesses deGhetaldi. Still, this collaborative effort will leave behind an enormous sense of achievement and new scientific knowledge in the art of restoration.
For details on the restoration process and scientific research.

Monuments Man in War, Conservator in Peace

 

BY now, much of the moviegoing world is familiar with “The Monuments Men,” an art-historical film that sees George Clooney, Matt Damon and other stars swashbuckling around Europe during World War II, trying to save masterpieces like the Ghent Altarpiece and a Rembrandt self-portrait from bombs and the clutches of German and Russian troops. As the film opens, Mr. Clooney’s character is seen addressing President Roosevelt, trying to persuade him to help safeguard Europe’s cultural patrimony.

“While we must and will win this war,” he intones, “we should also remember the higher price that will be paid if the very foundation of modern society is looted or destroyed.” Near the end, having discovered Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges hidden by the Nazis in Austria’s Altaussee salt mine, he cocks his head at her jauntily and says, “Let’s get out of here.”

Mr. Clooney’s debonair, mustachioed role was inspired by the real-life exploits of George L. Stout, the American conservator who dreamed up the idea of sending art experts to war to protect Europe’s cultural treasures, as Robert M. Edsel recounts in the 2009 book on which the film was based. As depicted in the movie, Mr. Stout traveled to the front as part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Allied military effort, a detachment of eight men who tried to safeguard and repatriate monuments and artworks under fire. But like so many other veterans of the war effort, Mr. Stout rarely tooted his own horn about his wartime feats.

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Stout was a pioneer of scientifically grounded art conservation. Credit Archives of American Art

In fact, his posthumous outing as a boots-on-the-ground war hero seems to have taken many conservators by surprise. In their world, Mr. Stout, who died in 1978, is already revered, but for a very different achievement: being a pioneer and promoter of the scientifically grounded conservation methods that define the field today.

In 1928, together with the chemist Rutherford J. Gettens, Mr. Stout established America’s first conservation research laboratory at Harvard University’s Fogg Museum, under the leadership of the museum’s director, Edward W. Forbes.

After the war, Mr. Stout became the founding president of the field’s first international professional association, now called the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (known in the field as the I.I.C.), established in 1950 to foster scientific training and help members share expertise across national borders.

He also produced seminal publications and textbooks, served as director of two major museums, helped establish America’s first graduate conservation program (at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1960) and generally led a vast range of efforts to modernize and professionalize the way art was restored and preserved.

Without Mr. Stout, said Jerry Podany, the senior conservator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the I.I.C.’s president emeritus, conservation might have remained a matter of “dark magic,” practiced by “a scattered group of restorers who worked with traditional recipes that didn’t have a good solid material science base.” Imagining the profession without Mr. Stout’s input, Mr. Podany added, “is like asking where doctors would be if they hadn’t started looking at biology and anatomy.”

Sarah Staniforth, the current I.I.C. president, who oversees historic properties for Britain’s National Trust, credits Mr. Stout with “setting up conservation departments and laboratories and training a whole generation of conservators in the United States.”

Born in 1897 in Iowa, Mr. Stout enjoyed drawing as a boy, but his real involvement with art began only after World War I. Having served with the Army in a field hospital near Munich, he said in a 1978 interview conducted by the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, he returned home in 1919 and decided to study drawing and painting at the University of Iowa. After graduation, he taught drawing there for three years. But by 1926, he was at Harvard, pursuing a master’s in art history and working part time as a researcher in the university’s art museum, the Fogg. He was named director of the laboratory when it was created in 1928. At the time, conservation was typically a matter of artisanal spiffing up — cannily retouching paint that had peeled or eroded, carving a new arm for a broken marble sculpture, or trying to stop a wood panel from buckling by gluing heavy wood battens to the back (often without worrying if what was being done would cause new problems, or if the process could be reversed).

The Fogg’s director, Mr. Forbes, was intent on promoting a more solid scientific grounding. By the time Mr. Stout arrived, the museum had already embarked upon a broad and systematic X-ray study of paintings, the better to understand their materials and compositional techniques. When Mr. Forbes urged him to work with a chemist, Mr. Stout hired another graduate student, Mr. Gettens. Soon after receiving their degrees, the two became an indefatigable — and effective — double act.

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George Clooney, center, played a character based loosely on George Stout. Credit Claudette Barius/Columbia Pictures

At first, Mr. Stout said in the 1978 Smithsonian interview, “we were interested primarily in materials, pigments, mediums and whatever went into the construction of a painting.” They analyzed pigment and varnish samples, with an eye to developing more durable artists’ materials. They designed a hypodermic needle, the microsectioner, that allowed them to extract microscopic samples from specific paintings, the better to understand how they were structured. Mr. Stout set about codifying the language used by conservators in condition reports. And together, the two pioneered the use of polymerized vinyl acetate (the transparent resin used in white glue), which for a time seemed a miracle solution to the problem of flaking paint.

But “what really put the Fogg on the map,” said Francesca G. Bewer, a research curator at the Harvard Art Museums who is the leading authority on the conservation department’s history, was when Mr. Stout and Mr. Gettens pieced together and stabilized some celebrated early Buddhist mud wall paintings that had been acquired in pieces by institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Royal Ontario Museum. And because they “felt accountable toward future generations,” Dr. Bewer added, they scrupulously documented what they’d done, becoming a driving force for improving documentation in other museums. (As America was entering the war, Mr. Stout also pulled together best practices for protecting and storing art, and he circulated the information to museums and the public — know-how that came in handy later when he was rescuing objects at the front.)

“Every problem that came to us was an adventure,” Mr. Stout said in another 1978 interview, this one for Museum News. (Nonetheless, as he also noted, this pragmatic approach didn’t always go over well. To some, he noted, “it was vulgar to talk about material and condition. That was as naughty as to inquire about the digestive system of an opera singer.”)

The Fogg was not the only museum in the world with a scientific research lab. The first was established in 1888 at the Royal Museums of Berlin, the second in 1920 by the British Museum, after its curators realized how badly their iron and bronze antiquities had decayed during World War I, when they had been stored in the humid tunnels of the London underground.

What set the Fogg apart was that it was a teaching institution. Its experiments ranged beyond its own holdings. And, to disseminate knowledge, Mr. Stout founded the first conservation journal, Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts, which was published quarterly from 1932 to 1942, with him as editor. Mr. Gettens and Mr. Stout went on to publish some of their findings in the manual “Painting Materials: A Short Encyclopedia” in 1942. Even today “it remains a key source for our field,” said Joyce Hill Stoner, who teaches at the Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Del., and also directs the preservation studies doctoral program at the University of Delaware in Newark. “There is nothing that has yet supplanted it,” Dr. Stoner added. “That’s extremely amazing to say about something from 1942.”

Mr. Stout was eager to promote international cooperation. He had represented America at the first world conservation conference, held by the International Museums Office of the League of Nations in Rome in 1930, and had strong contacts in Europe when the aerial bombardment and looting of its masterworks began. After the war, in an effort to keep communication flowing, he advocated creating an international body that could carry on the work of the Monuments Men in peacetime, which resulted in the 1950 foundation of the I.I.C. (Although the first meeting that led to this was at the Fogg, the new organization was instead based in London, on the theory that a midpoint between America and Continental Europe would prompt more participation.)

Meanwhile, back in America, Mr. Stout was setting up more conservation labs; the first at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, where he was named director in 1947, and the second at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which he directed from 1955 until his retirement in 1970.

In 1975, he needled Dr. Stoner, then a young conservator herself, into establishing another important resource — the oral history archive that she now oversees for the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation, a national association formed in 1973. Now composed of nearly 300 interviews, as well as conservators’ papers, it provides a useful adjunct to postgraduate work, with former students volunteering to interview their elders. “It’s one of the great ways to get young people grounded in the history of our field,” Dr. Stoner said. (The program draws interviewers from Europe, as well as America’s four graduate conservation programs, at New York University; the University of Delaware with the Winterthur Museum; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Buffalo State College, part of the State University of New York.)

In fact, Dr. Stoner said, generating major ideas, planning them precisely and encouraging other people to carry them out was Mr. Stout’s typical modus operandi. “He wasn’t someone who was up on a scaffolding saving great works of art,” she said. “He was a think tank. He looked at the big picture, internationally. He saw what publications were needed, what sort of conferences should be held. Then, in his quiet way, he would cause it to happen.”

And “while he would of course parry any depiction of himself as a hero,” Dr. Stoner added, “he would also get a good chuckle out of George Clooney playing him.”