Sebastiano del Piombo, The Raising of Lazarus

The practice of conserving an unstable painting on panel by transferring it from its original decayed, worm-eaten, cracked, or distorted wood support to canvas or a new panel has been practised since the 18th century. It has now been largely superseded by improved methods of wood conservation. The practice evolved in

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adm ...

and

Cremona Cremona (, also ; ; lmo, label= Cremunés, Cremùna; egl, Carmona) is a city and ''comune'' in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po river in the middle of the ''Pianura Padana'' ( Po Valley). It is the capital of the ...

in 1711–1725 and reached France by the middle of the 18th century. It was especially widely practiced in the second half of the 19th century. Similar techniques are used to transfer

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plast ...

s. Oil paintings on

canvas Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, shelters, as a support for oil painting and for other items for which sturdiness is required, as well as in such fashion objects as handbag ...

often receive additional support or are transferred to a new backing.

Methods

The process is described by Henry Mogford in his '' Handbook for the Preservation of Pictures''. Smooth sheets of paper were pasted over the painted surface of the panel, and a layer of

muslin Muslin () is a cotton fabric of plain weave. It is made in a wide range of weights from delicate sheers to coarse sheeting. It gets its name from the city of Mosul, Iraq, where it was first manufactured. Muslin of uncommonly delicate hands ...

over that. The panel was then fixed, face down, to a table, and the wood planed away from the back until it was "as thin as a plane may safely go", and the remainder scraped off with a sharp instrument such as a razor. The ground of the painting was then removed by solvents or scraping, until nothing remained but a thin skin of colour, pasted over with paper and held together by the muslin. A prepared canvas was then attached to the back of the paint layer, using the same method as was used for lining pictures. When the glue had dried, the paper and muslin were removed by careful damping. The leading workshop carrying out the process in Paris in the eighteenth century was that of Jean-Louis Hacquin (d. 1783), who transferred many works in the French royal collection. Transfers from the workshop have sometimes been found to have a layer of pieces of silk, or of sheets of paper between the paint layer and the new canvas. The workshop was continued after Hacquin's death by his son, François-Toussaint Hacquin (1756–1832), who transferred many paintings taken to France from Italy during the Napoleonic period. Another method, used by Hacquin's contemporary, Jean-Michel Picault, dissolved the ground layer chemically, apparently with fumes of

nitrous oxide Nitrous oxide (dinitrogen oxide or dinitrogen monoxide), commonly known as laughing gas, nitrous, or nos, is a chemical compound, an oxide of nitrogen with the formula . At room temperature, it is a colourless non-flammable gas, and ha ...

, allowing the panel to be removed intact from the paint. A later restorer, Marie-Jacob Godefroid is recorded as having achieved similar results by the use of steam. A less dramatic "partial transfer" tended to be used in Germany and Austria, in which a thin layer of the original wood was retained, and glued onto a new panel.Dardes and Rothe p.222

References

Sources

Citations

{{Cultural Conservation-Restoration , state=expanded Conservation and restoration of paintings Painting materials