Episode 30 - A Subject of Controversy, Part 1: The Consecration
Sep 9, 2026 · 29 min · 9 segments
What is the story of one painting whose cleaning was objected to?
Sep 9, 2026 · 29 min · 9 segments
What is the story of one painting whose cleaning was objected to?
Last time, I described the very basics of varnish removal, the conservation treatment step commonly called cleaning.
And I mentioned that I don't like that word, the word cleaning, that is, in part because it has positive connotations.
And every so often, disagreement over cleaning erupts into a full-blown cleaning controversy.
That started in 1980 and went through at least 1994, though truthfully, it hasn't really ended.
Often when I first meet someone and tell them what I do, I still get asked about it.
What do I think of that treatment? Did the conservators damage the painting? So first thing to note is that that ceiling is a fresco rather than an oil painting.
And frescoes, true frescoes, or what would be called one fresco, have a totally different structure than the kind of paintings I focus on in this podcast.
They're part of the architecture, painted on wet plaster with just pigment in water.
With the Sistine Chapel sealing treatment, they basically used water, like with surface cleaning and oil painting, but removing not only dirt, but also a layer of animal glue, which, as you may remember, is soluble in water, that had been applied as a type of varnish long after the work had been completed.
There was so much dirt and glue on the Sistine Chapel ceiling that the cleaning dramatically changed the way the frescoes looked.
The colors were much brighter and the contrast between lights and darks much stronger.
Most people thought the ceiling now looked much better, but not everyone thought that was the way it was supposed to look.
Some people thought that at least some of that glue and some painted parts, painted by Michelangelo with an organic binder on top of the Buon Fresco, had been inadvertently removed.
Does cleaning, that is, the permanent removal of material, remove only the unwanted material? Or can it also remove wanted material, original material that was put there by the artist with an intended aesthetic effect? that's not as straightforward as it seems.
And that's something I'll explore in an upcoming episode, along with issues of taste, how we want and expect things to look.
How much of what we see and how we think of that is influenced not only by when and where we live and the conditions in which we see something, but also by who we are.
To explore all of that, I want to look at an earlier controversy, one from the middle of the 19th century, and specifically related to oil paintings.
Last time, I described the very basics of varnish removal, the conservation treatment step commonly called cleaning.
And I mentioned that I don't like that word, the word cleaning, that is, in part because it has positive connotations.
And every so often, disagreement over cleaning erupts into a full-blown cleaning controversy.
That started in 1980 and went through at least 1994, though truthfully, it hasn't really ended.
Often when I first meet someone and tell them what I do, I still get asked about it.
What do I think of that treatment? Did the conservators damage the painting? So first thing to note is that that ceiling is a fresco rather than an oil painting.
And frescoes, true frescoes, or what would be called one fresco, have a totally different structure than the kind of paintings I focus on in this podcast.
They're part of the architecture, painted on wet plaster with just pigment in water.
With the Sistine Chapel sealing treatment, they basically used water, like with surface cleaning and oil painting, but removing not only dirt, but also a layer of animal glue, which, as you may remember, is soluble in water, that had been applied as a type of varnish long after the work had been completed.
There was so much dirt and glue on the Sistine Chapel ceiling that the cleaning dramatically changed the way the frescoes looked.
The colors were much brighter and the contrast between lights and darks much stronger.
Most people thought the ceiling now looked much better, but not everyone thought that was the way it was supposed to look.
Some people thought that at least some of that glue and some painted parts, painted by Michelangelo with an organic binder on top of the Buon Fresco, had been inadvertently removed.
Does cleaning, that is, the permanent removal of material, remove only the unwanted material? Or can it also remove wanted material, original material that was put there by the artist with an intended aesthetic effect? that's not as straightforward as it seems.
And that's something I'll explore in an upcoming episode, along with issues of taste, how we want and expect things to look.
How much of what we see and how we think of that is influenced not only by when and where we live and the conditions in which we see something, but also by who we are.
To explore all of that, I want to look at an earlier controversy, one from the middle of the 19th century, and specifically related to oil paintings.
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