La Disputa

About 10 years ago, in 1998, Raphael’s painting, Madonna of the Goldfinch, disappeared off its wall at the Uffizi Gallery – for a decade long cleaning. This particular work had already undergone a series of restorations that began in 1548, when it first shattered into seventeen fragments during an ill-fated landslide. Still, because the restorations of years past were deemed unsuccessful, it was decided that the “wood sandwich” needed yet another restoration. The painting was thoroughly cleaned, revealing bright robes of crimson and cerulean on the Madonna, and a loss of hair and pectoral muscles on the Baby Jesus (the younger-looking boy in the painting). Also, Mary’s halo has somehow disappeared right off her newly-shampooed head. And Raphael suddenly became known as a “colorist”.

The problem with all this lovely coloration is that Raphael wasn’t exactly known for his palate of neon highlighters. He liked to model himself after the famed Leonardo da Vinci, and like his predecessor, was interested in realistic skin and landscape color. Giorgio Vasari*, who commended the work for its colors of “living flesh [rather] than of painted colours”, would probably pass out upon seeing this newly-minted Raphael. A child’s bedroom, on the other hand, would be brightened by it. In short, the painting became shiny (quite literally), new and completely unrecognizable.

Welcome to the world of restoration.
*a writer/artist who lived at the time this work was painted, considered to be the first Italian art historian

I walked into the Bargello on some tourist business, when I noticed Donatello’s David – splayed out like Aunt Jemima’s pancakes. Angered at seeing the symbol of Florence in horizontal position, I took out my camera and took one picture – when I noticed a woman hurrying towards me.

“You can’t take pictures of the art!! You’ll ruin it!”

I was more than a little put off. I answered indignantly, “What, you think my no-flash picture of this situation you got going here will ruin David more than the LASERS you have pointed at him?”

And thusly, I was escorted out of the Bargello.

Click to see the photo I did manage to take.

When thinking upon subjects that excite dynamic thought, art history rarely makes the cut. Instead, images evoked include elderly lecturers dressed in blankets, or a khaki-covered tour group yawning around the Mona Lisa. History is history, given to years of unchangeable facts accumulated in the stagnant ponds of “higher learning”.

Except when it’s not. College courses and even grade school history teachers have repeatedly demonstrated that the lesson changes as per lesson-giver. History changes with each telling, whether your Marxist-inclined professor in European History 101 is giving you his background course in Italian fascism or your eighth-grade social studies teacher flies over the Revolutionary War in favor of the Jim Crow Laws.

This subjugation of factual events to personal subjectivity may not necessarily be a bad thing. Telling the story your own way brings life to a subject that is definitively and technically done with. Relearning the same subject under different belief systems teach the multi-faceted perspective, which in turn teaches the early mind to not accept everything that it is told (how can it if the ‘facts’ are in contradiction). Instead, you are given a platform from which you may search for the truth on your own, or at the very least, reach your own conclusion after thinking about it. The mission of a good education system- to teach you to learn- : accomplished!

Yet, in art history, that has not been happening, because the facts told are in pleasant harmony; every professor teaches from the same book and mentions the same Popes. Nothing seems to be questioned. History is not being dug up and rewired upon the discovery of new facts. No opinions wrought (except perhaps on the aestheticism of a work – and even that after many technical disclaimers – “oh, how clever of Matisse to paint without lines…and brilliant use of bright colors… though I secretly hate all that red…”). Further study is not encouraged. (Perhaps tenureships are few and far between?)

Consider this; most of us at some point have heard about cave paintings. How amazing that Mr. Cro Magnon took a berry and painted a zoological masterpiece that we can view 32,000 years later. Now think about the paintings made 500 (da Vinci), 400 (Rembrandt) and even 100 (Monet) years ago. These works are deteriorating so much that governments/private owners are in a panic to restore them. Our technique is such that we can’t keep a painting in decent state for a century, yet a caveman was able to keep his work for 30 centuries. Is it a miracle?

Or maybe a “historian” who needed to find that buffalo on a wall.*

*I don’t want to presume on the truth of this statement, it is merely an exercise in thought.