Art: The Fashion for Flaying

The delicate art of cleaning and restoring fading masterpieces was once the province of cautious artisans armed with little more than a magnifying glass, a loaf of fresh bread (without the crust) for gently erasing dirt, and perhaps some soapy water and varnish. Now a new breed of “scientific” restorers, equipped with a surgeon’s tools, a chemist’s swabs, and a burning curiosity about what lies under the next layer of paint, has moved into most of the world’s great museums. At best, their efforts have resulted in such spectacular triumphs as the restoration of Leonardo’s Last Supper (TIME, Oct. 4, 1954). But all too often their scientific zeal has destroyed what it was meant to preserve. Last week the simmering battle of science v. art came to a boil in the letters columns of London’s Times.

To Portrait Painter Pietro Annigoni, who touched off the ruckus, most modern restorers are no more civilized than scalp-lifting red Indians. “The war did not destroy a greater number of works of art [than they],” said he. “I do not doubt the meticulous care employed by these renovators, nor their chemical skill, but I am terrified by the contemplation of these qualities in such hands as theirs.”

Mortal Wounds. “What is interesting” about a masterpiece, Painter Annigoni argued, is always “the surface as the master left it, aged, alas! as all things age, but with the magic of the glazes preserved, and with those final accents which confer unity, balance, atmosphere, expression—in fact all the most important and moving qualities in a work of art. But after these terrible cleanings, little of all this remains . . . Falling upon their victim, [the scientific restorers] commence work on one corner, and soon proclaim a ‘miracle’; for, behold, brilliant colors begin to appear. Unfortunately what they have found are nothing but the preparative tones, sometimes even of the first sketch [made] in preparation for the execution of the finished work. But the cleaners know nothing of this, perceive nothing, and continue to clean until the picture [is] mortally wounded.”

Annigoni’s letter drew a fervent “amen” from Bernard Berenson, dean (91) of Renaissance art experts: “It says everything I have been wanting to say for many years past about the iniquity of the way Italian pictures particularly are being skinned alive by restorers.” Other letters pointed out various masterpieces in London’s National Gallery which may have ceased to be masterpieces through too much cleaning. Among them: pictures by Giovanni Bellini, Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Velásquez, and even Leonardo’s great Virgin of the Rocks. Leonardo’s figures, wrote one angry correspondent, “are now bathed in a light only seen on the faces of the dead; or the neon lighting of a coffee bar.”

Glorious Revelation. Restorer Stewart Goodall fought back hard for the defense in general and the National Gallery in particular. Through modern cleaning, said he, the world has been permitted to see “hopeless, black, uninteresting daubs restored to life and vigor: we saw colors that we had begun to think were entirely reserved for modern works gloriously revealed in their finest expression in the works of the masters. We saw detail that had lain hidden for centuries … If in this glorious process of revelation just a few of the subtle touches of the originals be lost, who can complain? … I agree with Mr. Annigoni that under the operations some have died: but is he trying to suggest that we cease operating?”

That was the idea exactly, as a new spate of letters to the Times made plain. Said one answer to Goodall: “If you were a picture, would you prefer to go dirty, or be flayed?” Augustus John, perhaps the world’s best living portraitist, suggested that “further investigation is obviously called for, and in the meanwhile cleaning operations might well be suspended.”