Masterpiece to be restored and we can all watch the restorers
REMBRANDT VAN Rijn’s Golden Age masterpiece will undergo its first restoration in 40 years in a project that will be open to the public and viewable online.
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum general director Taco Dibbits said that from July the huge Golden Age masterpiece will be encased in a specially built glass chamber as it first undergoes a thorough varnish-to-canvas examination using a precise microscope and other modern techniques.
The findings will guide the subsequent restoration.
“The restoration techniques we now have are so advanced that we will safeguard the painting for future generations,” he said.
The work, which last underwent a restoration 40 years ago, is starting to show blanching in parts of the canvas.
“We want to understand what that change is so that we can restore it as well as possible,” Mr Dibbits told reporters at a presentation of the planned restoration.
The painting of a citizens’ militia completed in 1642 has suffered in the past.
During the Second World War Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, it was hidden along with other valuable artworks in a cave in the southern city of Maastricht.
In 1975 a man slashed it with a knife, leaving 12 scars in the canvas, and in 1990 an attacker sprayed acid on the canvas damaging the varnish.
Mr Dibbits said the painting has been retouched many other times in the past and that the later additions are starting to fade.
The next restoration should change all that.
“I think it will look much better,” Mr Dibbits said.
“If you stand close to it, it will appear far more detailed. So it will be very special to see, but the restoration process itself will also be very special.”
In the past, restorations have often been carried out behind closed doors, but museums now are starting to open up the process to the public. “belongs to us all”, Mr Dibbits said.