The Altarpiece
What Does it Mean to Restore a Prized Piece of Renaissance Art?
Schoolchildren explore the Altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo.
UAMA
The Altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo has weathered the passing of more than 530 years of war, natural disasters and journeys across the sea. This year, the 26 paintings that compose the altarpiece, or retablo, will begin a new journey: a major restoration estimated to take a decade to complete.
This monumental work of 15th-century Roman Catholic art from Ciudad Rodrigo, in the Salamanca province of Spain, has been on display at the University of Arizona Museum of Art since it was donated by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in the 1960s.
“Normally, altarpieces as large as this would have been split up and separated and sold to individuals,” says UAMA Director Olivia Miller ’05. “You have pieces of altarpieces scattered all across the world sometimes. But all 26 works [from this altarpiece] that did survive are all here in this museum.”
Miller says that to understand the present-day condition of the panels, one must first understand their history. Most were painted between 1480 and 1488, with at least three painted after 1493, by master artists Fernando Gallego and Maestro Bartolomé and their workshops. The works hung in the apse of the Cathedral of Santa María — rising as much as three stories above the altar — for decades. When the apse was remodeled, they were taken down and stored in the cloisters, never to be rehung in the church.
“By this time, it’s the 17th century. So there’s no air-conditioning, there’s no humidity controls,” says Miller. “So, they are in a room in the cloisters, subject to all kinds of weather and temperature fluctuations and humidity.”
Then, in the 18th century, the region experienced two large earthquakes. “We know that the cathedral sustained damage,” says Miller. “So we can assume that vibrations, if they were strong enough to disturb the cathedral, would have been strong enough to disrupt these paintings.”
However, most of the paintings survived those natural disasters, as well as the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th century. The cathedral was used as a lookout tower in a battle between Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, and the church was heavily bombed.
Most — but not all. Miller says that while we have 26 panels today, we know there would have originally been more because key scenes, such as Christ’s nativity, are missing. It is estimated that at least five panels are missing from the collection, some of which were likely destroyed during the Napoleonic Wars.
“They’ve been through a lot; they sustained a lot of damage,” says Miller. The planned conservation aims to restore them as much as possible, while also undoing some previous conservation treatments.
Miller says this is common as the field of conservation continues to advance. “As more technology becomes available to work with, we tend to discover that there were previous treatments that no longer hold up the way we thought they would,” Miller says.
For instance, one major part of the conservation project will be removing the paintings from their cradles — lattice-like structures attached to their backs once thought to help keep the work stable and on plane. Over the decades, this method has been found to do more damage than good.
Fernando Gallego, Francisco Gallego, and workshop, “The Last Judgment.” 1480-88, oil on panel. Gift of Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
The paintings will be shipped off in pairs for conservation treatment by experts at New York University as well as by private conservators, a process which will likely take 10 years to complete.
“It’s really rare for an altarpiece of this caliber and of this size to survive in the condition and completeness that it does, and so it’s certainly worth all of the effort to make sure that we carry them into the future,” Miller says.
“These paintings have been through so much in their history. We see this as the next chapter.”
Inside the Conservation Process
The large hole in this panel is likely the result of cannon shrapnel from the Peninsular War in the early 1800s, when the cathedral suffered heavy bombing. Earlier conservators decided not to repair the hole to preserve this element of the painting’s history.
“Ecce Homo.” 1480-88, oil on panel. Gift of Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Renaissance artists didn’t work in isolation: Master artists typically had large workshops so they could produce multiple paintings concurrently. In some of the altarpiece panels, color notations such as this “amarillo” (meaning “yellow”) are beginning to show through the paint — a phenomenon called “pentimento,” in which painted-over elements surface as the image ages. These notations offer insight into Gallego’s process: It’s likely that he sketched the figures and added color notations, then left his assistants to paint the figures. During conservation, none of the original paint will be painted over, and notations like this will remain visible.
Fernando and Workshop Gallego, “The Betrayal of Christ,” 1480-88, Oil on panel. Gift of Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
These frame-like black lines were part of a conservation effort that likely happened in the early 20th century to make the paintings look cohesive without their original frames, which were lost or destroyed in time. As part of the current conservation effort, each painting will be reframed in a custom frame; UAMA staff will also travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for training in how to create a Marvelseal envelope for each painting, which will create a microclimate inside its frame to help slow the natural degradation process.
Fernando Gallego, “Christ and the Samaritan Woman.” 1480-88, oil on panel. Gift of Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
For much of the altarpiece’s history, only Fernando Gallego was credited with the work, though it was apparent that a second artist had been involved. In 2006, experts using infrared reflectography were able to see through the layers of paint to the underdrawing below, where artists had sketched outlines and made revisions. By looking at the subtle stylistic differences in the paintings and underdrawings, art historians attributed some of the work to Maestro Bartolomé. For example, in this panel, the face of Eve has round rosebud lips and thick, round eyelids — a contrast to the way Gallego typically rendered female faces, but resonant with the work of Maestro Bartolomé. Other differences include the way the drapery forms, the way hands are shaped and the depiction of Christ’s halo. Together, these differences offer evidence for each painting’s authorship.
Maestro Bartolomé, “The Creation of Eve.” 1486-1500, oil on panel. Gift of Samuel H. Kress Foundation