Studies in pictures; an introduction to the famous galleries . gallery to-day; yetit was only a few decades ago that almost all the gal-leries were given over to dust and spiders, the touristwent straight away from Ihcm instead of towardthem, and the j)ictures themselves fared no betterthan any other abandoned furniture. Of course pic-tures do not recover from such bad treatment. Theyalways wear scars; and restorations may patch andcover and hide, but they do not really restore or atonefor injuries. At first you will not find it easy to detect injuriesby repainting and restoration. The surface
Studies in pictures; an introduction to the famous galleries . gallery to-day; yetit was only a few decades ago that almost all the gal-leries were given over to dust and spiders, the touristwent straight away from Ihcm instead of towardthem, and the j)ictures themselves fared no betterthan any other abandoned furniture. Of course pic-tures do not recover from such bad treatment. Theyalways wear scars; and restorations may patch andcover and hide, but they do not really restore or atonefor injuries. At first you will not find it easy to detect injuriesby repainting and restoration. The surface will alllook alike. You may stand in front of TitiansMan with the Glove and see nothing peculiarabout it. But when one at your olljow tells you thatthe neck is repainted you will inimediately noticethat the repainting creates a false value just eye is easily trained and soon begins to noticeinconsistencies and inetjualities in a painted about the time the eye becomes very sensitiveit is necessary to it with caution. Jt amy be. u o>^ 6_io CL PICTURES RESTORED AND REPAINTED 25 too keen, see too much, lead you into making toomany sweeping conclusions. Painters themselvesfrequently make bad blunders, are unequal, uneven,and inconsistent, or paint in different styles thatoften lead wise critics on false trails. The poor re-storer in tlie cleaning-room is not to be charged upwith all the ills that may be apparent in the the restorer frequently meets with ills that nei-ther he nor any one else can remedy—ills that aredue directly to the folly or the carelessness of theartist himself. I refer now to the use in paintingof pigments that change color, of mixed or insecuremediums, and of that painters pest called with different mediums has beenthe bane of many an artist, and the ruin of many afine picture. Did not Leonardo, defying all guildtradition, paint in S. M. delle Grazie in Milan thecelebrated Last Supper on a
Size: 1486px × 1680px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublish, booksubjectpainting
