Repair – Art Restoration
Last November we were fortunate enough to travel to Firenze and we were able to visit Santa Maria Novella where the well-known Masaccio is. If you’ve ever taken an art history class you likely learned about how this particular work — is “one of the first and foremost examples of Renaissance perspective.” And ever since seeing it last fall, I’ve been thinking about art restoration. Which is: “a complex and delicate activity.”
I’ve honestly had second thoughts about posting anything in the “repair” category of my blog as I’ve since come across some possibly AI generated things that sound an awful lot like things I’ve written….perhaps thinking about repair is part of the good ol’ zeitgeist these days? One will never know though right?
Anyway, Centro Europeo del Restauro says, the fundamental principles of art restoration are, “respect for the work,” “reversibility of the intervention” and “minimizing the invasiveness of the intervention.”
It’s a fascinating subject, and I know I’m not alone in loving the extreme care taken with restorations There’s a great insta account that the Met has about their projects, for example. Julian Baumgartner’s Youtube account is quite a delight and relaxing to watch somehow.
I know I don’t need to remind you of the news of the world. But there’s something about turning that off for a bit and thinking about art restoration — just the extreme care that goes into honouring a piece — the physical piece, the historical moment of it, the future of it. Just this very decent urge to understand the material, the techniques. And the thought to preserve it in such a way that if more advanced ways of proceeding come into being in some future, the current work will not interfere with that.
It seems we could learn a lot from this procedure.
On another adjacent subject, we watched a wonderful movie this past week called, The Dig. I mean, I love Ralph Fiennes, so I thought the movie would be watchable. I also adore Carey Mulligan and Johnny Flynn, so two more bonuses. I took Anglo-Saxon as my second language option (Italian was my first) in case I wanted to ever go and do a PhD in English Literature, which sadly wasn’t meant to be at that time. So I was also drawn to the movie because of that. The words, “Sutton Hoo treasure” have always felt magical to me, who knows why.
After watching, I went down the rabbit hole a bit, reading about the real life dig, and the making of the movie etc. The photographs are amazing, and the story of Edith Pretty is also amazing. The scene where they buried the ship imprint again after filling it with bracken to preserve it I found just very moving. In short, I adored this movie. Every bit of it. (And Ralph Fiennes is his usual genius self, so there’s also that).
I guess what it is that gets me is that there is a future being cared for with such diligence and hope and knowledge and good real experience. And these days it does all feel somewhat apocalyptic so that seeing these careful acts made with a thought to the future, this care-taking, it’s helpful. It’s hopeful.
