AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

The recent conservation treatment of a fifteenth-century Spanish altarpiece at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University provided an opportunity to explore aspects of collaboration past and present. In this talk we will share recent research on the materials, techniques, and workshop practices of the Saint John the Baptist altarpiece (ca. 1415-20), a fragmentarily preserved retable attributed to the Aragonese painter Blasco de Grañén and now in the collection of the San Diego Museum of Art. The surviving panels of what was once a larger structure include a monumental central depiction of John the Baptist flanked by four scenes from the saint’s life. The treatment of the painting presented the opportunity for its examination, which was carried out using an array of techniques including binocular microscopy, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), infrared reflectography, x-radiography, cross-sections, scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDX), and Raman spectroscopy. Physical and stylistic aspects suggested aspects of cooperation within the Zaragosa workshop and offered information on the retable’s original construction and its conservation history. Salient features of the painting’s facture include its freely incised preparatory drawing and its innovative use of metal leaf in the rendering of textiles. It shows both similarities and differences with contemporary art in Spain and Italy. Through this research, we contribute to the still-understudied field of fifteenth-century Spanish and especially Aragonese painting; though a few publications have appeared recently, there is little information on the methods of many important workshops, nor on the commonalities and variations in the period’s artistic practice.

The treatment and technical study of the five panels was carried out within the Kress Program in Paintings Conservation at the Conservation Center by four students and one instructor and under the guidance of additional colleagues. The project provided an opportunity to work together as a group to examine and treat a large composite object; to coordinate, in both cleaning and retouching, the unified presentation of an array of panels in different conditions; and to collaborate in scientific investigation and writing. The talk will hence also reflect upon that experience within an educational context. It will sketch the division of research by subject and summarize the discussions and challenges that arose through the processes of restoration and scholarship. The desideratum of collaboration brought a heightened awareness of the painting’s original materials and our own conservation methods, as this fragmentary object presented many variations in condition and even in response to the same treatment steps. With its numerous, coordinated moving parts and apprenticeship-like structure, this project created a kind of modern analogue to the traditional workshop in which the retable was made.