Restoration

RESTORATION. - I. IN ARCHITECTURE. - This is the term used to define those direct interventions on the structures and essential decorative elements of a building aimed at their conservation or at returning them, as far as possible, to their original condition.

The concept of architectural restoration, particularly as regards its limits, has been changing over the course of time along with the very concept of the architectural work of art. In any case, as early as 1893, Camillo Boito, a distinguished scholar of problems of architectural history and criticism, codifying in two dialogues the norms useful for a restoration, stated: better to consolidate than to repair, better to repair than to restore, in which it is implicit that the term restoration is confined to that of reinstatement, understood in the etymological sense. The maxim enunciated by Boito is based on very clear principles: a) an architectural work of art, like any other pictorial or sculptural work of art, tolerates no additions, integrations, completions, modifications, or in any case tampering by anyone, without losing or seeing its original value compromised. b) Any restoration always implies a work of criticism, that is, of intuition of the work of art itself and knowledge of its individual values. To restore therefore means principally to conserve.

However, given and considered that, also on account of the destructions caused by the recent war, the aforementioned fundamental principles of restoration have had to be applied with various modifications, determined by the fact that the buildings in need of care were organisms still alive and operating in the complex life of the community, and therefore could not be left in the state of more or less picturesque ruins, here follows a classification of the different types of restoration. This classification, however, is set forth after having clarified how, in the great majority of cases, the different criteria of work have often had to be adopted simultaneously even in one and the same restoration. For only rarely has the case arisen of monuments that needed to be consolidated and not reintegrated or reassembled, or that did not require new adaptations or rearrangements in some part of them. In any case, when carrying out an architectural r., one distinguishes operations of consolidation, of reintegration, of reassembly, of adaptation or rearrangement.

1. The r. of consolidation consists in the pure and simple strengthening of the structures of a building. This can be done by gradually replacing or otherwise strengthening the walls or the load-bearing elements of the fabric. A characteristic example is that of the thirteenth-century church of S. Lorenzo in Naples, in which all the ancient pillars of the construction that threatened ruin were patiently hollowed out one by one, and inside them was placed a reinforced-concrete support anchored at the bottom to the duly strengthened foundations and at the top to a ring beam, likewise of reinforced concrete, on which the weight of the roofs rests. In this way the entire architectural organism of the church of S. Lorenzo is today as it were clamped and supported by an invisible framework that guarantees its absolute stability.

2. R. of reintegration

These have been the most frequent among those imposed by wartime events. They generally involve r. in buildings only in some part demolished or damaged but in others still intact or nearly so. In these buildings the imperative principle of not creating falsifications, and of not disturbing the whole with works discordant with the old, has often severely tested the intelligence and sensitivity of the restorer. The task is to harmonize the new parts with the old, while yet distinguishing them from the old. This can be achieved by various systems, ranging from the use of different materials to the use of a different technique, to that of the clear dating incised in the new elements necessarily inserted. The r. carried out, for example, at the Palazzo Vitelleschi in Tarquinia, at S. Domenico in Bologna, at the Eremitani in Padua, at the church of S. Maria delle Grazie in Viterbo, at the minor basilica of the Osservanza in Siena, are characteristic testimonies of this. As is also an example the r. of the basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le mura in Rome, where in truth in the portico there is a characteristic example of r. of reassembly.

3. R. of reassembly are indeed defined as those determined by the opportunity and the possibility of reassembling a building with the same elements, the same ancient stones repositioned in their original place. This has been possible especially in certain isolated structures or of small size or inserted almost as self-contained within larger buildings. Thus precisely in the portico of S. Lorenzo in Rome, in many buildings of Pompeii, in the left side of the church of S. Maria della Catena and in the porticoed courtyard of the Palazzo Abbatelli in Palermo, in the Mastrogiudice and Piccolomini chapels of the church of Monteoliveto in Naples, in the Bramantesque portico near S. Ambrogio in Milan, in the temple of Augustus in Pola, etc.

However, one may also define as r. of reassembly that of the gigantic structures of the facade and the sides of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. Structures whose stones, loosened but not brought down by the explosions, were patiently, systematically numbered, surveyed, photographed and then taken apart one by one, like the gears of a machine, and then reassembled so that they might again take the place they had occupied before the disaster. All this was done, despite the immensity of the mass, with a method and a technical perfection that, given the scale and at the same time the delicacy of the work, is nothing short of prodigious. A work of this kind, however, had already been accomplished 130 years earlier by Valadier for the restoration of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum.

4. Restoration of adaptation and rearrangement are instead those carried out on buildings or parts of buildings that for many reasons have lost their original character and for which it would be illogical to attempt to make them recover their original appearance. Who today would think of restoring Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome by trying to give it back the appearance it had when it was erected to be the mausoleum of the emperor Hadrian? Likewise today no one thinks of restoring the beautiful S. Chiara in Naples to bring it back to the admirable appearance to which the Neapolitans had brought it over centuries and centuries of work, art, love and devotion. Of the ancient S. Chiara, devoured by the flames set to it by an incendiary shell fragment on 4 August 1943, the fourteenth-century structures are today being consolidated and covered with a great trussed roof. The restored building will have an appearance very different from the old one, from when it was all resplendent with gold and vivid colors. From it will emanate an entirely new feeling, not however devoid of a tragic beauty of its own.

Emilio Lavagnino

II. IN PAINTING

Now far removed from the pernicious so-called restoration of completion, so much in vogue in past centuries, today we have finally come to consider pictorial restoration predominantly in a conservative and consolidating sense, without alterations and without additions. Therefore, for painted works, the aim is always, as far as possible, the restitution in pristinum of the work to be restored.

The first task of this restitution in paintings is cleaning, dangerous and difficult even when it is not intended to involve the removal of added parts. And certainly great help is offered for this by new scientific discoveries, first among them radiography, which makes it possible to find one's way in the use of reagents for cleaning, which may be numerous, and among which one must choose those that appear most suitable from the chemical-physical examination of the painting. Without enumerating them, it will merely be observed that the most used are substances based on turpentine which, evaporating rapidly, avoid the subsequent and slow corrosive action that cannot fail to occur in the use of alkaline substances (soda and potash). Once the cleaning has been carried out, a new problem arises: that of consolidating the surfaces and of "filling" the gaps that will have become evident. Excluded is completion, which could only falsify the artist's work (which, precisely because it is a work of art, is always an individual creation and therefore does not permit substitutions); the methods now in use are that of marking the contours of the destroyed areas with muted lines in order to render only the original rhythm of the composition (Polyptych of St. Gregory by Antonello in the National Museum of Messina), or the other, in use at the Central Institute of Restoration in Rome, consisting in filling in the missing parts with watercolor color taken up with a system of hatching which, while satisfying the eye, can moreover always be easily removed when a different taste in restoration should determine that one proceed otherwise.

But yet another problem often demands subtle expedients and imposing work: that of the reinforcement, the straightening, or even the reconstruction of old painted panels. One of the most common operations in the restoration of old paintings on panel, which are easily warped, is that of parquetting, consisting in bringing the panel back into a flat position in a definitive manner. This is a happy invention of recent times and stands in contrast to the fixed crossbars glued in the past onto the back of the panel, themselves a cause of contortions and splits: the new system, instead, consisting in leaving the crossbars perpendicular to the wood's fibers free to slide, allows the wood to move (for indeed it moves only in that direction), almost to "breathe," without prejudice to the stability of the panel.

For paintings on canvas, on the other hand, relining is often necessary, that is, the lining, with new canvas, of the old one, by means of special expedients and glues which, permeating the original canvas, also have the purpose of reinforcing the painting in its very adhesion between ground and color. Nor is the case rare of the transfer of a painting from panel to canvas: an operation that is also extremely delicate and for which one proceeds in a manner very similar to that used for the transfer of frescoes, that is, by progressively destroying the old panel from the back, after having glued onto the painted surface canvases that ensure the stability of the painting during the operation.

As for frescoes, it is well known that if already in antiquity the relocation of frescoed works on walls was sometimes undertaken, this happened by transporting the fresco together with the entire wall: whereas today one proceeds with this operation either by detaching the painting and only the plaster, by means of long blades that cut the latter from the wall, or by strappo. For this latter operation, canvases are glued onto the painting and then these are "torn" from the wall: the painted surface will remain glued to the canvases, on the back of which one can thus work, preparing it to be mounted on a frame; after which the canvases applied to the front of the fresco, which served for the strappo, can be removed.

III. IN SCULPTURE

The restoration for conservation and consolidation of sculpted works consists in eliminating the causes that bring about their deterioration. Among these, those arising from atmospheric agents should chiefly be remembered, and for marble statues that have become friable, provision is made to halt the disintegration of the material, for example, by means of baths based on silicates; for wooden statues, on the other hand, it will often be necessary to eliminate the woodworm (and this holds also for paintings on panel). But in addition to these operations aimed at eliminating the causes of deterioration, one finds oneself, for sculptures too, having to confront the problem of restoration for liberation, which are known, for example, the Renaissance "completions" or, worse, the Baroque "variations" of ancient statues. But today one has unfortunately ended up having to tolerate the additions which, once removed, would have left nothing but stumps perfectly cut and polished by the old restorers in order to fit the additions in question to them. Pure and simple conservation of the work of art, therefore, also for sculpture, even if at times the need for an integration is felt, within the limits permitted by the respect that the work of art imposes. And mention is made of a recent experiment by the Istituto del r. with which, for example, the completion was carried out with different material of a bronze trapezophorus, marking the restored parts with thin vertical and parallel incisions, "which do not alter the continuity of the surface of the work, while nonetheless determining in an indisputable manner the restored areas" (Cagiano de Azevedo): that is, the hatching system used for paintings was transferred to sculpture. In any case it is always good practice to turn for the necessary restorations to the competent technical bodies, whose work generally offers every guarantee. In conclusion, it can be stated that the restorer's activity must always be guided by a critical evaluative judgment of the work of art. The restorer must ensure that in the restored work of art what is new is distinguishable from the old. He must never attempt falsification. In this case too, what is false is condemnable. - See plates XLI-XLII.

Gilberto Ronci