Àlex Masalles The Museu Nacional has a large collection of drawings, prints, paintings, medals and sculptures by Ismael Smith, a Catalan artist of the first half of the 20th century. In September 2014 the museum’s new display of Modern Art entailed the restoration of some hitherto unpublished works by the sculptor. They are three plaster…
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Paz Marquès The fragment of mural painting from Sant Pere del Burgal is currently in the process of being restored. We have been working on this piece for years, studying its place with respect to the apse, the nature of the pigments, the surface materials … always with the idea of being able to insert…
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Paz Marquès Here at the Museu Nacional, in the restoration and preventive conservation workshop we have a spectacular, fairly large fragment of mural painting, measuring 2.4 x 3.03 metres, that until a few years ago was in the museum’s reserves. Place of origin This fragment, like the paintings that we have exhibited in the museum,…
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Mireia Mestre Few would guess from which institution comes the Romanesque woodcarving of Saint John the Evangelist that is currently exhibited as a guest work at the Museum Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. An important art collector, the provost from Vilafranca Manuel Trens, a priest who was also director of the Museum Diocesà de Barcelona, donated…
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Hercules Searching for the Hesperides by Aleix Clapés looks splendid once again in the Palau Güell It has been over a century since Aleix Clapés took charge of the pictorial decoration of the Palau Güell, designed by Antoni Gaudí, to paint three versions, of different sizes, but practically identical, of Hercules Searching for the Hesperides, one of…
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The use of incisions by the artist As we saw in the previous post, once the panel had been prepared with the different layers of plaster, the artist made the preparatory sketch. He began with sticks of charcoal and, when it was done, he half erased it with a feather; he then went over the entire drawing…
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Cheese, milk, gelatin and flour could be some of the ingredients placed on the desks in Franco Steffanoni’s restoration workshop. We are not talking about a cook here, but a restorer who works with works of art –to be precise, with material patrimonial assets (for nobody can deny that culinary dishes are works of art…
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Anna Carreras i Àngels Comella It is difficult to imagine, nowadays what a classical or medieval work of art looked like when it had just been finished. You only need to think about the controversy caused by the cleaning of the paintings of the Sistine Chapel, which allowed us to see the colours themselves of…
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The church of Sant Climent de Taüll, situated in the valley of Boí (Alta Ribagorça) and declared a world heritage site of Humanity by UNESCO in the year 2000, has offered since 2013 an innovative presentation of its Romanesque paintings, by means of a virtual mapping video that recreates, within the greater apse and the…
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Restorers, but also architects, engineers, physicists and chemists, conservators of collections, politicians, members of the church and managers, participated in the latest congress about European cathedrals which is held annually in Pisa and that, in its fourth Edition, was dedicated to the conservation of pictorial heritage. Organised by the Opera della Primaziale Pisana, the emphasis…
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