"The desire of repairing the outrages of time has unfortunately accelerated the decay of several pictures by coarse repainting and bad varnish, by which much of the original work has been covered. Other motives, too, have conspired against the purity of the most beautiful compositions: a prelate has been seen to cause a discordant head of hair to conceal the charms of a Magdalen."
"Nevertheless, efficacious means of restoration have been discovered: a painting, the convass of which is decayed, or the pannel worm-eaten, is transferred to a fresh cloth; the profane touches of a foreign pencil are made to disappear; the effaced strokes are reinserted with scrupulous nicety; and life is restored to a picture which was disfigured, or drawing near to its end. This art has made great progress, especially in Paris, and experienced recent improvement under the superintendance of the Administration of the Museum; but it is only with a religious respect that any one can venture on an operation which may always give rise to a fear of some change in the drawing or colouring, above all when the question is to restore a picture by RAPHAEL."[[1]]
"The restoration may be divided into two parts; the one, which is composed of mechanical operations, whose object is to detach the painting from the ground on which it is fixed, in order to transfer it to a fresh one; the other, which consists in cleaning the surface of the painting from every thing that can tarnish it, in restoring the true colour of the picture, and in repairing the parts destroyed, by tints skilfully blended with the primitive touches. Thence the distinctive division of the mechanical operations, and of the art of painting, which will be the object of the two parts of this Report. The former particularly engaged the attention of the Commissioners of the Class of Sciences; and the latter, which required the habit of handling a scientific pencil, fell to the share of the Commissioners of the Class of Fine Arts"
FIRST PART.
"Although the mechanical labour is subdivided into several operations, it was wholly intrusted to Citizen HACQUINS, on whose intelligence, address, and skill, it is our duty to bestow every commendation."
"The picture represents the Virgin Mary, the infant Jesus, St. John, and several other figures of different sizes. It was painted on a pannel of 1-1/2 inches in thickness: a crack extended from its circumference to the left foot of the infant Jesus: it was 4-1/2 lines wide at its upper part, and diminished progressively to the under: from this crack to the right hand border, the surface formed a curve whose greatest bend was 2 inches 5-1/2 lines, and from the crack to the other border, another curve bending 2 inches. The picture was scaling off in several places, and a great number of scales had already detached themselves; the painting was, besides, worm-eaten in many parts."
"It was first necessary to render the surface even: to effect this, a gauze was pasted on the painting, and the picture was turned on its face. After that, Citizen HACQUINS made, in the thickness of the wood, several grooves at some distance from each other, and extending from the upper extremity of the bend to the place where the pannel presented a more level surface. Into these grooves he introduced little wooden wedges; he then covered the whole surface with wet cloths, which he took care to remoisten. The action of the wedges, which swelled by the moisture against the softened pannel, compelled the latter to resume its primitive form: both edges of the crack before-mentioned being brought together, the artist had recourse to glue, in order to unite the two separated parts. During the desiccation, he laid oak bars across the picture, for the purpose of keeping the pannel in the form which he wished it to assume."
"The desiccation being effected slowly, the artist applied a second gauze on the first, then successively two thicknesses of grey blotting paper."
"This preparation (which the French artists call cartonnage) being dry, he laid the picture with its face downward on a table, to which he carefully confined it; he next proceeded to the separation of the wood on which the painting was fixed."
"The first operation was executed by means of two saws, one of which acted perpendicularly; and the other, horizontally: the work of the two saws being terminated, the pannel was found to be reduced to the thickness of 4-1/2 lines. The artist then made use of a plane of a convex form on its breadth: with this instrument he planed the pannel in an oblique direction, in order to take off very short shavings, and to avoid the grain of the wood: by these means he reduced the pannel to 2/3 of a line in thickness. He then took a flat plane with a toothed iron, whose effect is much like that of a rasp which reduces wood into dust: in this manner he contrived to leave the pannel no thicker than a sheet of paper."