Recreations and Restorations

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at some of their major restoration projects over the years.

Nick Pace took us through five pictures detailing the work that had been done one them with good illustrations of them at various stages of the process. Surprisingly he started with Holbein’s “The Ambassadors” which looks so fresh and new but he pointed out that in the 1970s it was a much darker work and at some point the planks had actually parted company.

The most fascinating section looked at the Trinity Altarpiece by Francesco  Pesellino and Filippo Lippi which came to the gallery in 6 different sections starting with the figure of Christ and God the Father in the centre. Two saints on the left are still officially owned by the Royal Collections yet the work now looks like one seamless altarpiece.

It was nice to also look at Manet’s “Execution of Maximillian” which entered the National Gallery collection in fragments from the Degas auction when I listened to a talk on from the gallery a couple of weeks ago on Degas’s collection.

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