Art World
Brilliant or Botched? 6 Uncanny Art Restorations That Will Make You Look Twice
Art restoration can transform ancient artworks, but things can go awry.
It Takes an Army…
Terracotta Army Restoration Team (2023). Photo by Wang Yuguo / Xinhua via Getty Images.
When you see photos of the Terracotta Army statues, it’s hard to imagine that when they were unearthed they were all in dozens—if not hundreds—of pieces. But they were.
The ancient models were made from clay during the 3rd century B.C.E. for the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of a unified China. Qin Shi Huang had searched for an “elixir of life” all throughout his reign, and this army of models—each with a unique face and body, possibly modelled after real soldiers—was one step in his plan for immortality.
The statues were discovered in March 1974 by farmers in Xian who were digging a well. The Chinese government then went to the site to officially investigate the area and found three vaults including 8,000 life-size model warriors in a variety of disrepair. The damage was to be expected given the shifts in the earth and the exposure to damp, as well as extreme heat that these sculptures withstood for over 2,200 years. Restoration of even the best preserved statues take several months, and the repair of one general took more than two years.
Arms and heads, it appears, were particularly likely to detach from the statues. Shen Maosheng—a scholar from a pit excavation team at the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum Site Museum—said in an article for Global Times this year that “when the main body was ready, the artisans would later attach the arms and head to it.”
Restoring a Whole City…
Pompei Restoration (2018). Photo by Marco Cantile / LightRocket via Getty Images.
The ruins of the city of Pompeii were first unearthed in 1599, having been smothered in volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius for 15 centuries. It’s mind-boggling, then, how tourists can now visit the site and view seemingly untouched buildings where the delicately painted frescos on the walls seem like they were painted a few years ago.
Restorations to Pompeii have taken place over several centuries, and archaeologists were actually lent a helping hand by the volcanic ash, which helped keep moisture out of the site and preserved the city’s buildings. But the work is never done. Director General of National Museums, Massimo Osanna told reporters in 2020 that “when you excavate in Pompeii there are always surprises.” Take the recent find of a fast-food restaurant (okay, it was not that modern, though, as it may have served rodents), or another fresco of food that looks a lot like pizza. Other finds show the darker sides of society, including how the lower classes were treated.
More Trending Stories:
Art Critic Jerry Saltz Gets Into an Online Skirmish With A.I. Superstar Refik Anadol
The Old Masters of Comedy: See the Hidden Jokes in 5 Dutch Artworks
A Royal Portrait by Diego Velázquez Heads to Auction for the First Time in Half a Century
How Do You Make $191,000 From a $4 Painting? You Don’t
In Her L.A. Debut, South Korean Artist Guimi You Taps Into the Sublimity of Everyday Life
Two Rare Paintings by Sienese Master Pietro Lorenzetti Come to Light After a Century in Obscurity
There is rarely a dull moment in the world of art restorations. Last month, we saw how a restoration team “dissolved” the 19th-century lip filler given to a 17th-century portrait of British noblewoman Diana Cecil. But as we well know, while major restorations like this may make the headlines, not all restorations are such a success.
The internet exploded in 2012 when it found out about the restoration of Elías García Martinez’s Ecce Homo (1930) by an 82-year-old amateur artist, which left the portrait nicknamed “Monkey Jesus.” The list of bad restorations by no means ends there. However, it’s not all doom and gloom in the art restoration department, and TikTok users are going wild for satisfying videos showing the removal of yellowed varnish from paintings.
So, we want to celebrate some of the best art restorations we’ve seen, as well as have a laugh at some of the worst.
Botched
Michelangelo’s Figures Take a Nap…
Restorer in front of a fresco painting in the Sistine Chapel. Photo: Vittoriano Rastelli/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
In 1981, the Vatican announced plans to restore Michelangelo’s world famous frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. This involved removing the grime that had built up on top of the al fresco paintings, but the restoration team removed more than they bargained for when they also erased several figures’ eyes. One of the most evident instances was the restoration of the face of the figure in the Jesse spandrel, whose eyes are still missing to this day.
Museums have since been warned about the use of aggressive solvents to clean the surface of paintings, with Dr. Philipp Gutfreund of the Institut Laue-Langevin—a neutron science facility in Grenoble—telling the Telegraph that there is a “lack of fundamental knowledge” among art restorers about how these chemicals work. Harsh chemicals can penetrate down into the paintings they are being used to clean, permanently damaging them in the process.
Well, the figures do look peaceful if you imagine that they’re just having a little snooze…
Hirst Gets Mistaken for Trash…
Damien Hirst (2022). Photo by Jeff Spicer / Getty Images.
The Collins Dictionary defines “restoration” as “the act of restoring or state of being restored, as to a former or original condition.” So, while this entry on our list may seem like the exact opposite of a restoration, the following artwork was ultimately returned to its “original condition”: it’s an artwork made of trash and that is where it landed up.
Back in 2001, Damien Hirst organized the leftover bottles, cups, and ashtrays from the Eyestorm Gallery’s launch party for his exhibition “Painting-By-Numbers” to create a new, impromptu artwork. However, when cleaner Emmanuel Asare arrived the next morning, he didn’t delay in throwing it all away into trash bags. This definitely doesn’t feel like Asare’s fault, and Hirst himself said it was “very funny.” After all, Asare was just returning it to where it came from.
Art’s Sassiest Sheep…
Van Eyck Brothers, The Ghent Altarpiece (1432). Photo by John Thys / AFP via Getty Images.
We couldn’t decide whether this was a restoration fail or a huge win. The Ghent Altarpiece—also known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, attributed to brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck—shows a sheep representing Jesus bleeding into a grail and wearing a halo. In 2020, a second phase of a restoration of the altarpiece that began in 2012 took a weird turn and revealed a face no one was expecting.
The sheep now appears to be pouting and “smizing” (smiling with your eyes, à la Tyra Banks). This is the original face of the eponymous sheep, and visitors can see the catwalk-ready lamb at Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, for which the altarpiece was commissioned in the 1420s. Okay, maybe it is a win. We kind of love it.
Brilliant
A Lost Dickens Gets a Wash…
Margaret Gillies, Portrait of Charles Dickens (1843). Photo via Getty Images.
This portrait of a then 31-year-old Charles Dickens, which dates to 1843, was found next to a metal toy lobster and an old recorder inside a box in South Africa in 2017. The artist said she had “lost sight of it” in a statement in 1886. So while no one is quite sure how the portrait made the journey across the world, when it was found, it was in a sorry state.
The watercolor was painted by British artist Margaret Gillies in 1843, the same year that Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol—the work which would send the then financially-struggling Dickens’ reputation into orbit. When it was found, it had a thick layer of mold across its surface that obscured Dickens entirely. The new owner of the portrait reached out to the Philip Mould Gallery (name of no relation to the fungus problem) in London in 2018 for advice about the restoration and, more than 170 years later, it has been restored to its former glory. It has since been purchased by London’s Charles Dickens Museum.
Article topics