I'd like to talk to you now about the picture,
now that the cleaning is more or less finished.
You can see the work that we talked about previously where I've
been reducing the old, discoloured varnishes and taking away historic
retouchings, which had discoloured, has now been completed across the whole of the
painting surface and it's been given a temporary varnish and the cleaning is more
or less as I would like it to be.
You can see evidence of some changes in format
that happened during the course of the picture's subsequent life that is to say
probably around a hundred years ago was glued on to another canvas that is relined.
Some decisions were made at that time to kind of change the way the
composition worked by taking what had been the folded over turn over edge that
went around the original stretcher and folding it out, extending it, putting this
white filling on the raw canvas and then, you remember from before, there was a
dark line of paint which had been put on probably in the 19th century to match
this background, to change the composition to make it less packed and dense.
It's a really interesting aspect of many of Artemisia's paintings from this
period that she seems to favor these very tightly cropped compositions and
that's something we'll have to think about as we carry on with our work.
We're looking very much to restore what we believe to be something like the
original format, based on all sorts of technical evidence about the cusping
that is to say that the evidence of the canvas being pulled closer to the edge
of the original format and also looking at other paintings and being guided by
what we can see from the composition here so, although we know that she
favored tight crops in this period, we believe that's probably missing a little
bit here because we find that quite improbable that this jewel that you see
cut off at the moment wouldn't have been depicted by Artemisia in her painting.
So, now you see the work with all the varnishes I care to remove reduced or
taken away, most of the old retouching is taken down and you see the picture in
something like the best, the clearest example of its actual state of preservation.
So, in fact, for a picture of its age it's actually in very good condition.
You do see evidence of old damages: of course, we've talked about
this tear, this impact that went through the canvas and the lining canvas that
will require us to reline the picture and there's evidence of old losses
probably caused by the lining where the seam of the two bits of canvas Artemisia
joined has slightly raised and during that relining i think there's been some
paint loss here and some occasional losses and small impact
damages but on the whole the picture is in very, very good condition.
You understand the way she's so carefully controlled the lighting, the fall of
light, the manipulation, the orchestration of color intensities, the relationship of
red, white, and blue and the flesh tones. The fact that the most
intense, pure, highest color is of the sleeve which is the closest thing to you
which, in a frame, I think will have an amazing impact sort of nearly resting on
the edge of the frame. All these things... there that slight glint of the
highlight on that metal part of the Catherine Wheel...All these things are
working now in relationship to one another very much as Artemisia intended
I think some of the improvements we could see as we started with the
cleaning have now been carried out across the whole surface and it's quite
exciting to think about you know how we can read the picture and understand her
intentions much more clearly. I think the manipulation of the
relationships of red, white, and yellow and the way that they're kind of echoed
in the subtle shifts of yellow and pink and orange tones and her flesh; now
that's a kind of relationship, the way they kind of lock together. It's very
exciting. We talked a little bit about the manipulation of light and dark and
what that means for the kind of sculptural impact of the work and so
these things where we see these dark voids where this yellow drapery curves
around behind with the translucent effect of the veil above, the way that
the wheel tilts back in space and there's a much darker void again behind
the drapery which itself is in shadow, all those kinds of things that she's
orchestrated so cleverly are much more visible now, even this little tiny hint
of the bright yellow drapery that's emerging and catching the raking light
which makes it clear that it's this same fabric going around. These kinds of
things, I think, are really quite legible now and they'll be really exciting to
see when the restoration, the retouching itself is completed and you can see it
without the interruption of these old losses.
This, also, is the moment when we start to step up our collaborative research:
our investigation with the scientific department and my curatorial colleagues
to look at how this painting relates to other works, both in terms of how it's
made and just the more artistic intent and ideas about how she does achieve the
effects she's created here, both in terms of the way the composition works,
thinking about the build up of paint, changes, compositional alterations.
You see, for example, here along the shoulder there's a slight tweaking of the contour
which is an interesting thing. Just all these kind of tiny adjustments at the
end as she's thinking about how the picture's working, how she might just do
little improvements and move it along as the composition develops.
So it's an exciting time.
I think we'll be looking more at her technique in materials for
example or we'll want to find out more about pigments that are used.
This red lake, that is to say, this translucent red glaze which is usually an organic
material is probably faded somewhat but we want to find out more about that to
get a better sense of the original color relationships which are quite intact but
slightly changed among other things it's the moment where we really step up that
kind of investigation.
and now with the cleaning phase of the treatment substantially finished it'll
be time to start the structural work and my colleagues will be talking to you
about this in a week or two to come but what we're going to be doing is taking
off the old realigning that is the 19th century canvas which has been glued to
the back of our team uses canvas they'll be taking that away and replacing it
doing repairs of this tear and putting it on the new canvas backing but you'll
be hearing more about that from my colleagues in the next installment of
our progress reports on the treatment to date
you