Conservation in the Nineteenth Century

Based on the conference Conservation in the Nineteenth Century, this volume reconsiders the 19th century not as a period of misguided practices, but as a formative era in the development of modern conservation. Contributors explore how Enlightenment thinking, archaeological discoveries, and political upheaval-such as Napoleonic looting-influenced emerging preservation theories. The papers highlight early scientific approaches, the impact of industrial materials, and the complex legacy of 19th-century treatments that both challenged and preserved cultural heritage.

The papers in this volume, presented at the conference Conservation in the Nineteenth Century, suggest that we should not think of the nineteenth century as a time solely marked by conservation activities that should be criticised, but as an interesting confluence of various attitudes out of which modern conservation trends emerged. The conservation profession has its roots in the intellectual movements of the first half of the 19th century, following the Enlightenment. Scholarly study of objects made available by important archeological excavations and discoveries gave birth to the first debates on theoretical issues of preservation. Also the political events which disrupted Europe in the first decades of the 19th century played a significant role in conservation practice. In particular, Napoleon’s appropriation of works of art. As much as early conservation treatments can create many problems for conservators today, in some cases, they did prolong the life of an object that might not exist today. In some of these treatments we can see the interest in scientific methods that comprise the foundation of current conservation treatments. Nineteenth century technical inventions brought about by the industrial revolution led to the mass production of many materials. These have had both a positive and negative influence on conservation.

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Interpreting historical conservation terminology: ‘cleaning’ paintings in Dutch eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources

Mireille te Marvelde

Art, science and painting restoration in Napoleonic Italy, 1796–98

Cathleen Hoeniger

Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin in Milan and the restoration by Giuseppe Molteni (1858)

Giorgio Bonsanti

A higher reality, born of the mind: notes for a philosophy of transfer

Matthew Hayes

Richard Redgrave (1804–1888): first curator of paintings at the South Kensington Museum

Nicola Costaras

Charles Chapuis: Degas’ ‘picture doctor’ and painting restoration at the end of the nineteenth century

Ann Hoenigswald

Il Manuale by Giovanni Secco Suardo: its impact on the development of conservation and restoration in the nineteenth century

Bettina Achsel

The conservation of polychromy on mediaval sculptures in Belgium in the nineteenth century and its perception by the Royal Monuments Commission of the time

Delphine Steyaert

The search for an enduring painting technique: Franz Fernbach and his encaustic technique as a restoration procedure for wall-paintings in the early nineteenth century

Barbara Beckett

Jacob Kornerup and the conservation of wall-paintings in nineteenth-century Denmark

Susanne Ørum and Isabelle Brajer

Documentation of medieval wall-paintings in Denmark and Germany in the nineteenth century and its impact on conservation and contemporaneous art

Isabelle Brajer, Ursula Schädler-Saub and Susanne Ørum

Bonnardot’s Essai: a nineteenth-century restoration manual and its author

Christopher Sokolowski

The test of time: nineteenth-century innovations in paper fibre analysis

Debora D. Mayer

Restoration of flat textiles: ideological framework, ideas and treatment methods in Sweden before 1900

Maria Brunskog and Johanna Nilsson

Documentary and material evidence of nineteenth-century interventions on musical instruments of the collection of the Musée de la musique in Paris

Jean-Philippe Echard, Justine Provino, Thierry Maniguet, Christine Laloue, Joël Dugot, Stéphane Vaiedelich

The restoration and conservation of the bronze Apollo Saettante from Pompeii

Erik Risser and David Saunders

Precision and mastery: identifying the work of Raffaele Gargiulo on four Apulian vases

Marie Svoboda

Preservation of prehistoric objects in Denmark, 1807–32

Helge Brinch Madsen and Jan Holme Andersen

• Edited by Isabelle Brajer

"A traves, pues, de tan amplio recorrido, el lector puede encontrar y consultar una gran cantidad de datos muy valiosos para la profesion, tanto en materia de criterios, como de materiales y tecnicas. Un libro destinado, por tanto, a convertirse en una referencia fundamental sobre la restauracion europea en el siglo XIX. A book, therefore, destined to become a fundamental reference for European restoration in the 19th Century." Ge-conservacion - 2014, pages 102-103 "Here is an unashamedly handsome publication: hard-backed, generously illustrated and, would you know, typeset in Suffolk and printed and bound in Devon. A home-grown product if you're a UK-based reader. So what, you ask? Well, for this reader, and reviewer, it matters. It matters that beautiful specialist books (on acid-free paper) continue to be produced, and without any apparent corner-cutting. [...] It's that emphasis on getting to grips with nineteenth-century reasoning that makes dipping into this volume so rewarding, as every paper contains nugget after nugget. [...] These scholarly papers are revelatory reference material for conservators at all stages of our working lives and contribute significantly to our understanding of our professional antecedents." ICON News - July 2014
—

Here is an unashamedly handsome publication: hard-backed, generously illustrated and, would you know, typeset in Suffolk and printed and bound in Devon. A home-grown product if you're a UK-based reader. So what, you ask? Well, for this reader, and reviewer, it matters. It matters that beautiful specialist books (on acid-free paper) continue to be produced, and without any apparent corner-cutting. [...]

It's that emphasis on getting to grips with nineteenth-century reasoning that makes dipping into this volume so rewarding, as every paper contains nugget after nugget. [...] These scholarly papers are revelatory reference material for conservators at all stages of our working lives and contribute significantly to our understanding of our professional antecedents.

—

A través, pues, de tan amplio recorrido, el lector puede encontrar y consultar una gran cantidad de datos muy valiosos para la profesión, tanto en materia de criterios, como de materiales y técnicas. Un libro destinado, por tanto, a convertirse en una referencia fundamental sobre la restauración europea en el siglo XIX.

"A book, therefore, destined to become a fundamental reference for European restoration in the 19th Century."

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