It's about 750 years old, and actually it's the oldest painting in the National
Gallery's collection. It's a real privilege to work on it.
Hello and welcome. My name is Kristina Mandy,
and I am an Assistant Conservator at the National Gallery.
It's my pleasure to talk to you today about a painting that I have the
privilege of working on. The painting is entitled 'The Virgin and
Child Enthroned with Narrative Scenes of the Nativity
and the Lives of Saints' and it was painted by the 13th century
Tuscan artist Margarito D'Arezzo. The painting is
actually the oldest painting in the National Gallery's collection,,
being over 750 years old, and it was painted with egg tempura paint
and gold onto a support made of wooden panels.
What's quite interesting about this painting is that it has an engaged frame,
which means that the frame is integral to the painting, and cannot be detached.
So the painting entered the National Gallery's collection in 1857,
and we believe that the last major treatment that happened to this painting
probably happened in the early 19th century. This treatment was actually
something quite drastic, and it was done to the frame, whereby the
old and aged gilding was stripped away, and the frame was
re-gilded with fresh new gold, probably around the same time the red
border, between the main painted area and the
frame, was over painted, and repainted with a
reddish brown colour. And most likely, the painting itself was
also cleaned and restored. Now the treatment that was done to the
frame was relatively normal and acceptable for that period.
It was seen as a way of refreshing the painting,
but to our eyes the result is something that's quite out of keeping and
unsympathetic. So you have this beautifully aged and
cracked gilding, and paint layers on the major area of
the painting, next to this very sort of modern looking
and solid gold. So with the curators,
we made the decision to remove this regilding, and see what could be revealed from the
original layers below. And as you can see, a frame
conservator has removed this gilding, and revealed the aged and
cracked gesso layer below, which is beautifully cracked with the rest of the painting.
So let's go to the Conservation Studio and have a closer look at the painting itself.
What we were hoping by removing this 19th century regilding
was that we'd uncover some fragments of the original
gold on the frame underneath, but unfortunately that's not the case.
There are a few tiny fragments, but mostly what's left behind
is the gesso layer, which would have been underneath the gold,
and probably the reason why there really isn't anything left
is something to do with the way that they removed that old gilding,
probably using some sort of metal scraper, and removing the gilding in such a way that
it even damaged the gesso underneath. But what we have regained
is this lovely, cracked original gesso, and a few little fragments as well of
the gold underneath, and so while this treatment has been
happening to the frame, we also had the opportunity to look more closely at the
painting. And the border had been entirely
overpainted in the 19th century, so we realised that that repaint from
the 19th century was flaking off in a few areas, and especially along the top edge.
We could see a texture to the border which indicated there was some sort of
decorative pattern underneath. So I did a few cleaning tests, and after
discussions with the curators and the scientists, we decided to try and
clean that area of the painting as well, which is what I'll be showing you today.
But as you can see I've already removed the overpaint along the top edge, and the two side edges,
and just here in the bottom is where this sort of 19th century repainting of the
border still remains, which I'm still in the process of removing.
The way in which I'm removing this reddish brown overpaint
is through the use of a water-based gel. The use of a gel
allows me to do this cleaning in a really targeted and controlled way.
It allows me to keep the water on the surface, and that's important because the
layers underneath, including the original layers, are also
sensitive to water, so I have to be really careful, and very
methodical about how I approach this cleaning, watching carefully what I'm doing at every moment.
And so the way in which this works is I apply this water-based gel
to the overpaint layer, and after a couple of seconds it slowly
starts to swell and saturate this layer underneath, and
by softening this layer, it then becomes much easier for me to
use a blunted scalpel to carefully scrape away this overpaint
material, and reveal the original layers of paint underneath.
So the gel is just helping me to keep the water in one place,
not evaporate away and not go into the painting as well.
And then I'll come back with like a slightly damp swab.
just to clear the area and help judge how my cleaning is going
as I go across.
So hopefully you can see that the way in the 19th century they repainted this
border, they made the black edging, the line, a couple
of millimetres higher than it was originally, so the restoration kind of
creeps up to about there. That sort of glossy black.
Whereas the more muted black is the original. That's been a really
lovely thing to reveal during this treatment.
So the future plan with the frame is to re-gild it,
but we're planning on doing this in a very sympathetic way with the rest of
the painting. So it will be applied in a distressed
and aged way, so that's much more in keeping with the
rest of the painting, and we're also looking into the
possibility of adding a decorative scheme between the roundels on the frame as
that's something that is very intact on paintings that are
contemporary to this painting, whose frames survive in a much better
condition. With a painting of this age, there also needs to be a certain level of respect
and consideration for the centuries of time that have passed between the point at
which it was created, and now, and how the painting has aged and
changed over time. So certain aspects of the painting have
changed in a way that is irreversible, for example the azurite
blue that was used in the sea in the narrative scene of Saint Nicholas
has degraded and deteriorated in such a way that the sea creatures
that were painted in the sea are no longer visible, and
it's actually only through the use of infrared reflectography that we're able
to see what would have originally been there. One of the interesting things
about Conservation is that we're always looking at the
decision another restorer made when they were in our shoes tens, or
hundreds of years ago, and that's something we always need to
think about when we are doing our treatments,
is that our decisions will be revisited and maybe we thought and some might have a better idea
of how to do things. So what we ensure today is that everything that we do and put onto a painting
is done in a reversible and removable way. And that's something that we will
definitely do with this treatment going forward. I should also say that we've been
working with our colleagues in the Scientific departments and the
Curatorial departments in better understanding this painting,
and that will only help better inform us about how we progress the treatment going forward,
and that will also help us make better decisions when it comes to retouching
the border, regilding the frame, and this potential
decorative scheme that we might apply to the frame as well.
If you'd like to know more about our paintings, please click here
or here. I want to thank you so much for watching, and we hope you can join us again another time.