The Risky Business of Restoring Leonardos
Modernists were criticized for not considering the pre-existing skyline. Whether we’ve learned from those mistakes is questionable.
PARIS — Painting conservation is perilous business, requiring the perfect blend of historical knowledge, technical skill, and respect for the immeasurably fragile, ancient object held gently between gloved hands. Just ask Cecilia Giménez, the 83-year-old amateur painter whose farcically botched attempt to restore an almost century-old fresco of Christ in her local church in Borja, Spain, propelled her to international infamy. Other conservation mishaps have been far less amusing.
In 2011, the Louvre’s director of conservation, Ségolène Bergeon Langle, resigned in the midst of a scandal that followed the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne” (c. 1503). Begun in 2009, the restoration was supposed to be a celebratory event to kick off a series of restorations of Leonardo paintings in the Louvre’s collection (of 15 known to exist, the museum owns six). However, Langle, along with other experts, felt the conservators had gone too far in removing the various layers of yellowed varnish, eliminating or modifying original aspects of the painting.
