Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)

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2. Agostino Barbarigo Doge hands over a banner (condition after restoration)

that is they can be soaked. They have excellently endured cleaning. The synthetic glues we use to date behave different, and the life-time of paintings we treat with them can be, and probably is, shorter.

The frescoes remounted on canvas and mounted on stretchers were exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts. The original canvas support could not be in a very good condition at the stretching, since another piece of canvas, a lining was glued on top. As time passed, the canvases sagged.

PROCESS AND ASPECTS OF RESTORATION

The Museum of Fine Arts ordered the reconstruction of the wall paintings in 1998. Its aim was, beside cleaning, conservation and aesthetic reconstruction, a possible approach to the original appearance of the paintings.

CONDITION OF THE PAINTINGS AT THE START

A few years earlier, students of restoration of the Academy of Fine Arts in Flungary cleaned the paintings under Péter Menráth director’s supervision. The wall painting collection of the Museum of Fine Arts was so dirty that the items could not be enjoyed and studied. Cleaning was made with fatty alcohol sulphate diluted in water or simply with water and they succeeded in removing the majority of the impurities.

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