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The restoring of paintings was something that excellent
painters of the past frequently devoted themselves to,
let us mention at least Jan Jakub Quirin Jahn in the second
half of the 18th century and many others.
In the 19th century restoration work was also carried
out by second-rate painters and craftsmen using routine
techniques which often damaged the paintings. They used
drastic means to take off the surface dirt and remove
the varnishes (from onion, potato, garlic, milk, etc.
to alkalis – lyes, ammonia, potash, ashes, or the removal
of varnish by mechanical abrasion). They carried out the
regeneration of varnishes with a balsam of copaiva which
softens the paint layer, or the so-called Pettenkofer
method with the aid of spirit fumes which from the long-term
point of view is ineffective and with subsequent removal
of varnish damage is done to the actual paintwork, softened
by the spirit. With the exuberant removal of varnishes
and overpaintings there occurred damage to or washing-off
of glazes, sometimes including the top of final layer
of the painting. The damage caused to paintings in this
way then was the reason for subsequent overpaintings.
Also the retouching of small defects was carried out in
an original fashion, using oil paints and covering far
more than the original blemish. The approach to filling
was similar and so we often find beneath oil putty applied
generously with a palette-knife a system of several
smaller blemishes. All these procedures then caused further
damage to the work or at best the deformation of the artistic
intention of the author.
One is not, therefore, surprised by a critical memorandum
of the thirties of the 19th century in which the famous
painter Antonín Machek draws the attention of the municipal
authorities to the dubious method of restoration of precious
altar paintings in Prague churches, especially the painting
by Karel Škréta in the Týn Church. He demands that such
work be entrusted only to qualified artists and adds that
»the artist must then be conscientious and not ask more
than is proper.«
This situation led art historians, the founders of the
Vienna School Alois Riegel and Max Dvořák, in the effort
to prevent this damage, to the theory that it was better
not to restore, merely to conserve. The basic work for
the execution of the conservation concept of care for
the cultural heritage is the Catechism of Care of the
Cultural Heritage, published in Vienna in 1916, in which
Max Dvořák developed and summarised Riegel´s ideas.
The effort for precise and safe delimitation of restorers
interventions on the basis of exact investigation led
us, around 1930, to the beginning of the introduction
of natural science methods in restoration.
It is roughly here that we may seek the roots of the formation
of two differing concepts of restoration. The first concept
developed in our lands. It arose thanks to the fortunate
conjunction of two strong personalities with exceptional
artistic talent and exceptional esthetic sense, Academy
Painter and restorer Bohuslav Slánský and art historian
Dr. Vincenc Kramář, who each in his own field were exceptionally
well-educated, grounded and sensitive professionals and
who dealt with esthetic problems of intervention by restorers
on a high level in mutual discussions. From this branch
there developed the tradition of the Czech School of Restoration
and the esthetic principles and technical and professional
requirements formulated at this time are still practically
valid today.
The founder figure of modern restoration in this country
was Bohuslav Slánský. He studied painting at the Prague
Academy of Fine Arts under Professors Pirner and Švabinský
and then studied restoration in Munich, Vienna, Dresden
and Haarlem. There he paid particular attention to questions
of technology, the development of historical techniques
of painting and natural-science methods applicable for
the investigation of paintings. In his 1931 article
»On the Restoration of Paintings« he expressed the basic
requirements and principles of modern restoration which
are in many respects still applicable today. The basic
requirement is the restoration of a work in a way which
does not disrupt the original, the use of reversible materials,
absolute respect for the damaged original in retouching,
etc. He further pointed out that restoration is a highly
demanding and responsible task which calls for a widely
educated and qualified artist restorer. It cannot be carried
out by everyone who knows a bit about painting; in restoration
scientific methods of investigation must be used. From
today's point of view these requirements appear completely
natural and are already generally respected, but at the
time they were very modern principles.
Professor Slánský implemented these principles in his
work. His theoretical opinions and the practical results
of their application were published in professional articles.
After 1936, when he took the post of restorer in the State
Collection of Old Art, his discussions and cooperation
with the Director of the Gallery were also of great importance
for the theoretical formation of the field. During the
time he was working in this collection, later to become
the National Gallery, he discovered and restored many
Gothic panel paintings which he verified through his technological
investigation and helped to categorise. In the investigation
and discoveries of famous Czech Gothic Madonnas which
Professor Slánský restored in the gallery use was already
being made of all the methods still used by restorers
today, such as x–rays, investigation under UV and IR radiation
and investigation of the colour layers under a microscope.
Even before 1930 conservation and restoration procedures
were gradually being given a scientific basis. The
suitability of conservation materials was critically investigated
not only on the chemical side, but also on the optical
side. The basic requirements were absolute respect for
the preserved authentic state of the original, the precise
definition of retouchings and fillings by the extent of
the blemishes and the easy removal of retouchings and
varnishes without risk of damaging the original colour
layers.
We can, then, state that even before the Second World
War there was in this country a clear theoretical and
technological opinion in the spirit of modern restoration,
but these principles were used only by a few of the leading
restorers. Let me mention at least Adolf Bělohoubek, who
was working with Vincenc Kramář even before the arrival
of Professor Slánský in the restoration studio of the
Gallery on the liberation of many works in the collection
from the deforming yellow fllter of thick layers of varnish
giving a flattening monochrome gallery tone to the paintings.
This advanced care was, however, limited to the restoration
of topquality works which were the centre of interest
of the professional public. The other works were left
to the care of the most varied workers, often without
even the simplest craft skills.
The effort to broadcast modern principles throughout wide
restoration practice led Bohuslav Slánský to found in
1946 a restorers´school of university level in the Academy
of Fine Arts. From the beginning the teaching was based
on a combination of art training in the painting studio
and theoretical and practical professional studies in
the restorers´studio.
The restoration of works of art then developed in this
country into a speciflc independent art field, fully accepted
by associations of artists and legislature.
A considerable part was played in the consistent implementation
of the quality of restoration work in practice and the
gradual inclusion of young graduates on the basis of detailed
knowledge of their specific abilities and skills by the
system of distribution and supervision of work and its
approval by a single professional restorers´commission.
This system proved its worth and the results of the work
of our restorers are generally highly valued in the world
because of their sensitive artistic approach to restoration
and to the interpretation of the damaged work. They are
usually given the overall name of the »Czech School of
Restoration«.
The Czech School of Restoration sees a work of art complexly
as an indivisible whole, the material base of which is
merely the vehicle of the spiritual artistic significance.
An untrained technician without art training cannot fully
understand and respect a work to the fullest extent of
the authoťs intention. Not even a trained restorer who
lacks the actual artistic preparation is capable of creating
and realising the artistic concept of the restoration
intervention or the artistic concept of the presentation
of the damaged work. The Czech School of Restoration fully
respects the authentic artistic form and material basis
of the work, which retouching makes whole only to the
extent necessary to make it accessible to the beholder.
A quite natural requirement is an exact, one might say
scientific approach to the work, cooperation with the
scientist and the art historian in the investigation work,
the use of reversible techniques and the preservation
of the traits of age - here we have in mind the traces
left on the painting by time - the patina and tiny, not
quite suppressed blemishes, or the leaving of slight unevenness
on the surface of the painting during the relining – in
brief the subordina-tion of the entire restoration to
maximum respect for the authenticity of the work. Also
based on this is the artistic concept, created on the
basis of the investigative work, which must be respected
at all stages of the restorer´s intervention, whether
during the removal of the darkened varnishes or overpaintings,
or during retouchings and interpretation of the damaged
work.
The second concept of restoration began to develop in
countries where restoration carried on from a craft tradition
and where restoration was still seen as a craft many years
after the 2nd World War. In these countries unqualified
restorers, without an university education, were guided
in their work by art historians and technologists. These
professions, which de facto participate in the execution
of restoration work, began here to emphasise out of all
proportion their importance for the actual work of restoration
and at the same time to belittle the requirement that
the restoration of a work of art should be dealt with
by a trained artist-restorer who is capable of understanding
the work of art fully, deciphering the delicate nuances
of its painting technique and respecting all the phases
of the author´s construction of the work. The requirement
of the university education of the restorer is understood
in those countries somewhat differently than here, because
there they admit to their schools applicants without study
of painting and with only preliminary education either
in the history of art or in chemistry or in some cases
in any university field. Restoration is taught in the
form of post-graduate study.
In particular, however, it is reflected in the understanding
of the work of art as such. Technicians speak of a work
of art as material, a material structure which must be
repaired by some technical process. They declare that
for diagnosis of disease technical means alone are sufficient
without artistic ability and actual painting experience
of the restorer, which help him to penetrate the author´s
handwriting, the author´s intention, the structure of
the work.
In this country now we have a confrontation between these
two concepts of restoration - the technical and what we
might call the artistic, using scientific methods.
The technical branch, promoted by technologists, naturally
emphasizes the technical side of restoration, which leads
to the unhealthy and impious handling of works of art,
to an exaggerated multiplying and development of analyses
and to the excessive expansion of investigative research,
developed from the technical viewpoint.
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Questions are placed by the interest of
the technologist, possibly also of the art historian,
in information not directly connected with restoration
but which broadens our secondary knowledge of the work.
It is certainly necessary to weigh things up carefully
and decide if it is necessary to have this detailed information
on the side, obtained at the expense of the work because
of the greater number of samples which must be taken.
It is not possible to take 30 samples from a single Gothic
panel just because this irresponsible taking of samples
is being carried out by a technologist or even art historian
ignorant of the problems of restoration from the state
studio preferred by the communists, as happened in the
case of the enforced investigation of the Theodoricus
panels from Karlštejn Castle before 1989 simply because
there was a greater statistical chance of confirming certain
hypotheses.
For restoration we need to acquire from a few carefully
taken and suitably selected samples the most precise and
complete information possible directed towards the actual
restoration.
I am fundamentally against the so-called large-scale statistical
verification of some hypothesis, whether of an art historian
or a technologist. We do not have the right to destroy
a work in order to expand our own knowledge, to deal with
a work with unbridled sovereignty merely as an interesting
material structure. People who see a work of art as a
technical material structure basically need more humility
and a pious approach to the work. The restorer sees a
work as a living organism where the matter is only
the vehicle for an idea and he is educated towards this
approach by his training and the whole of his work.
In this country, too, there occurred in the eighties a paradoxical
effort, at complete variance with the tradition of the
Czech School of Restoration, to promote a technical
concept of restoration. By a decision of totalitarian
political power the State Restoration Ateliers (StRA)
were established as part of a planned network of state
restoration workshops in which there were to be obligatorily
employed, within the framework of so-called socialisation,
freelance graduate restorers. In this way the almost fifty-year
tradition of university-level artistic restoration was
to be gradually liquidated and replaced by unqualified
workshop craft work, controlled by technologists. In other
words, the liquidation of the principle of the Czech School
of Restoration.
Of this entire plan the totalitarian administration and
interested technologists and art historians managed to
realise only the centre – the State Restoration Ateliers,
whose unqualified work disgraced them completely and they
were boycotted by graduate restorers and the majority
of investors.
The beginnings of this attempt coincided basically with
the period of the teaching of the technology of restoration
in the Chemical-Technological University (VŠCHT). Here
they established the training of technologists for the
StRA and the planned network of state restoration workshops.
Graduates from the Chemical-Technical University (VŠCHT)
were trained on an implanted platform of opinion which
is de facto foreign to the tradition of the Czech School
of Restoration.
It is, of course, connected with the countries which have
a different tradition, which I have already referred
to, a tradition based on the technical understanding
of restoration. The examples of these countries, better
equipped for their profession, then serve them as an argument
to throw doubt on the importance and present level of
the Czech School of Restoration due to the insufficient
instrumental equipment for detailed definition of the
analysis of materials (e.g. binding media); such analyses,
however, are not absolutely necessary for the actual execution
of the restorer's intervention. From their technical position
they do not fully appreciate the progressive nature of
the concept of the Czech School of Restoration, emphasising
the artistic nature of the work and the real cooperation
of the restorer with the natural scientist and the art
historian.
The result of this politically motivated and directed
process was not only considerable damage to the cultural
heritage, but also the deformation of relationships, the
establishment of distrust and often even antagonism between
graduate restorers and participating technical professions
which, until then, had cooperated as partners each in
his own field in the interest of the restored works of
art. The fruits of this twenty-year anomalic situation
deeply marked the cli-mate in the entire sphere of care
for the cultural heritage and help will have to come from
maintenance of cooperation in professional fields and
a clear legislative limits.
After the forced departure of Professor Slánský from the
school, caused by the impatience of his younger colleagues
and implemented by political means, the continuity of
the passing on of Slánský's opinions was disrupted for
20 years. His two-volume publication, a basic work of
its time, which came out in 1955, and a reduced and supplemented
re-edition of the first part on painter´s and restorer´s
materials of 1977 were the last comprehensive publications
issued here. A certain degree of stagnation was also caused
by other factors: the inaccessibility of foreign literature
and the insufficient contact, based only on individual
relations, with technological development abroad, and
last but not least the inaccessibility of new materials
for the critical testing of their use in comparison with
classical techniques.
This is, then, the present situation and also the task
we are faced with: to gather all the new technological
findings, to test their utility under present conditions
here, to acquire the missing literature, store translations
so that they are available to restorers and students in
the Archives of Historical Art Technology (AHVT) and publish
up-dated and expanded study material. This task is certainly
great in extent and, if it is to be fulfilled to the required
standard, it will call for the cooperation of a team
of leading experts which will, I hope, work in the interest
of the further development of the restoration field.
The realisation of this task will also call for considerable
financial means which exceed the possibilities of the
budget of the Academy of Fine Arts. To cover this expenditure
I have just submitted an application for a grant
from the Czech Government. The theme of the second grant,
which the Academy of Fine Arts has submitted jointly with
the Research Institute of Audio, Video and Reproduction
Technology (VÚZORT), is the remote investigation of paintings
using non-destructive multispectral optic methods. The
programme for a digital computer record of a painting
and its filling in a database, which is a condition
of the project, would be an important step in the equipment
of the Archives of Historical Art Technology (AHVT) and
its connection with the database of the National Gallery.
Apart from the already mentioned Archives of Historical
Art Technology, which came into being under the auspices
of the Academy of Fine Arts on the initiative of the Association
of Restorers with the cooperation of the Institute of
Art History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in
1990 and which publishes the annual Technologia Artis,
the Academy of Fine Arts also strove to create a scientific-technical
hinterland for the field of the restoration of works of
art which would serve both the requirements of teaching
expanded by the methods which the laboratory of the Academy
of Fine Arts lacks, and also for the requirements of the
National Gallery and as a service for the wide practice
of restoration work. This project has not yet been realised
for financial reasons. The equipment of the laboratory
for our field, bought on the basis of the requirements
of restorers by the Ministry of Culture in the eighties,
was, then, on the basis of a dubious project of the State
Restoration Studios (StRA), installed in the laboratory
there; in spite of the fact that the StRA have disintegrated,
the present Ministry of Culture has decided to maintain
the laboratory for the wide sphere of the cultural heritage
and refused its specialised use for the sphere of the
restoration of works of art in the scientific-technical
centre of the Academy of Fine Arts by a transfer from
the Department of the Ministry of Culture to that of the
Ministry of Education, Youth and Physical Training. The
Academy of Fine Arts has, then, still got its own laboratory,
very well equipped for microscope work (we have UV-, polarising
and stereo-microscopes, including a stative binocular
magnifying glass for restoration work) and thin-layer
chromatography. We also have a relatively good x-ray
for paintings, ramps with UV lamps and photographic equipment
which are so far sufficient for the operation of the school
and the normal requirements of tuition, but do not allow
us to find the answers to more detailed questions concerning,
for example, binding media, etc.
In order to allow our student´s to become acquainted with
other investigative methods used at present we have reached
an agreement on cooperation with the Natural Science Faculty
of Charles University where we intend jointly to consider
the use of still further methods of investigation.
In conclusion allow me oné topical comment on retouching.
I think that today it is possible to observe both abroad
and also in this country a certain shift in opinion on
methods of retouching in the direction of imitative making
whole of a fragmentary work. I would like to comment in
this connection that the characteristic trait of the Czech
School of Restoration was always a sensitive and
artistic approach to a work which meant a middle
path between the extreme of mere conservation of the preserved
state of the work and the other extreme of imitative covering-up
or even renewal of the original appearance without respecting
the traits of age.
In my sporadic field-trips I see that there is often excessive
retouching even in places where it is not necessary and
often imitative retouching is used in a surprising
manner, even though localised only to blemishes and differentiated
by shading, from a distance it gives a very full, completely
healed impression; it completely suppresses the basic
authentic traits of ageing, the blemishes which the painting
acquired in the course of the centuries. I speak of a
distance for the reason that distance is an exceptionally
important factor, especially in the retouching of wall
paintings or in the retouching of polychrome reliefs in
an interior, especially in the interiors of large churches.
Here it is necessary to proceed in a similar manner to
wall paintings, i.e. to count on the optical fusing of
the shading of the retouching as a result of distance,
to be humble in the amount of retouching and piously leave
the small blemishes so that the retouched painting does
not lose the authenticity of age and does not fuse into
an unblemished whole.
I am not talking here of the tendency to »help« the original
colourwise, typical of amateurs, or the shocking interchange
of restoration and reconstruction typical of countries
where it was necessary after the war to considerably reconstruct
damaged historical works.
 author
Karel Stretti, AHVT A 050
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