|
Besides preventing the physical deterioration of a painting, restoring
and conserving also enhances its visual qualities, making it as
close to the way it looked when it was created. When paintings are
badly cracked, dirty, faded, discolored, and even abraded or torn,
their luminosity and richness is lost. The details of the paintings
below, courtesy of European Art Gallery, Dallas, Texas and British Art Gallery, Piccadilly, London, appear as they were without the
proper conservation and/or cleaning. To clean them, just click on
the link beneath the image; unfortunately, cleaning and caring for the originals requires
much more effort. But it is worth it in the end.
|
|
Chiaroscuro
is the Italian word for light to dark, and has been one of the underlying
principles of Western art since the Renaissance. The full range
of lights and darks with mid-tones gives a depicted object a sense
of space and roundness. But with an old layer of yellowish varnish,
This portrait by Lidderdale loses its range of tones, and the painting
becomes relatively lifeless. Click here or on the links under the picture to see how much fuller it becomes when clean.
|
|
