"This essential part of the restoration of works of painting, requires, in those who are charged with it, a very delicate eye, in order to know how to accord the new tints with the old, a profound knowledge of the proceedings employed by masters, and a long experience, in order to foresee, in the choice and use of colours, what changes time may effect in the new tints, and consequently prevent the discordance which would be the result of those changes.
"The art of restoring paintings likewise requires the most scrupulous nicety to cover no other than the damaged parts, and an extraordinary address to match the work of the restoration with that of the master, and, as it were, replace the first priming in all its integrity, concealing the work to such a degree that even unexperienced eye cannot distinguish what comes from the hand of the artist from what belongs to that of the master.
"It is, above all, in a work of the importance of that of which we are speaking, that the friends of the arts have a right to require, in its restoration, all the care of prudence and the exertion of the first talents. We feel a real satisfaction in acquainting you with the happy result of the discriminating wisdom of the Administration of the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS; who, after having directed and superintended the first part of the restoration, employed in the second, that of the painting (which we call pittoresque) Citizen ROESER, whose abilities in this line were long known to them, and whose repeated success had justified their confidence."
After having assured the Institute that they consider the pittoresque part of the restoration of the Madonna di Foligno as pure as it was possible to be desired, the Commissioners proceed to call their attention to some discordance in the original design and colouring of this chef d'œuvre, and to make on it some critical observations. This they do in order to prevent any doubts which might arise in the mind of observers, and lead them to imagine that the restoration had, in any manner, impaired the work of RAPHAEL.
They next congratulate themselves on having at length seen this masterpiece of the immortal RAPHAEL restored to life, shining in all its lustre, and through such means, that there ought no longer to remain any fear respecting the recurrence of those accidents whose ravages threatened to snatch it for ever from general admiration.
They afterwards terminate their Report in the following words:
"The Administration of the CENTRAL MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, who have, by their knowledge, improved the art of restoration, will, no doubt, neglect nothing to preserve that art in all its integrity; and, notwithstanding repeated success, they will not permit the application of it but to pictures so injured, that there are more advantages in subjecting them to a few risks inseparable from delicate and numerous operations, than in abandoning them to the destruction by which they are threatened. The invitation which the Administration of the Museum gave to the National Institute to attend the restoration of the Madonna di Foligno by RAPHAEL, is to us a sure pledge that the enlightened men of whom it is composed felt that they owed an account of their vigilance to all the connoisseurs in Europe."
[Footnote 1]: It may not be amiss to observe that RAPHAEL employed the impasto colour but in few of his pictures, of which the Transfiguration is one wherein it is the most conspicuous: his other productions are painted with great transparency, the colours being laid on a white ground; which rendered still more difficult the operation above-mentioned. Note of the Author. [Return to text]
[LETTER XXXI.]
Paris, December 10, 1801.