The Start of an Italian Restoration Workshop

So the main reason I wanted to study abroad, besides seeing Italy, was the Florence and Southern Italy Restoration Workshop. I became interested in conservation and restoration of art when I shadowed a conservator at my local museum, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. This class has been really interesting and I think it will be really beneficial to have this experience.

The intructor, Lorenzo Casamenti was very intelligent and he has worked on restoring famous pieces all over Florence and Italy. I was very grateful to be learning from him and his assistant, Lisa. I don't know all of the technical terms for restoration, but I hope to explain what I've been doing in the class the past few weeks. The first week we cleaned several 16th and 17th century paintings.  Churches used to be lit up with many candles, so paintings were often covered with a layer of wax and soot from the candles. A famous example of this would probably be Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. In other cases, varnish has aged and discolored over time altering the colors in the painting. Lorenzo first showed us how to remove the varnish with a mixture of turpentine and acetone using cotton swabs. It was important to remove the varnish with the flow of the painting, not in blocky swipes. After the varnish was removed we cleaned the painting under the varnish with a soap cream. As I've always been taught never to touch a painting or famous artwork, this was kind of nerve-racking as it seemed crazy to be washing a painting with soap.

While cleaning one painting we discovered there was an original painting under the church painting which was a fun surprise. We stopped working on it because Lorenzo said he'd have to ask the owner if they wanted the original restored or to keep the painting on top. After we discovered the under painting, he showed us an "x-ray" of a military portrait that had a religious motif of Mary and Jesus underneath. As a painter, I've painted over some of my earlier works but I guess I never would have thought old, famous paintings like the Mona Lisa would have had something underneath.

If you look closely you can see a figure in the bottom right corner

We also learned how to identify the approximate age of a painting by looking at the canvas. A canvas that is beige or darker in color and has an open weave, is typically older. The tighter the weave of the canvas, the newer the painting.