Voces del Prado

The Adoration of the Shepherds by Mengs. An unsatisfying restoration

George Bisacca, Restorer, 1985-What's on

The Adoration of the Shepherds was a very sort of unsatisfying treatment, because it was a near impossible situation, because this is quite a large painting, and it’s made of wooden boards that are placed horizontally instead of vertically. The original selection of the material, the wood itself, was a very poor quality. It was full of knots and bad cuts of wood so that each board warped and twisted and cracked. So many problems that developed for the painting could not be improved aesthetically. You could’ve improved it structurally so that all the cracks were properly joined, and you could make a good surface level transition for the paint; but all of this warps and twists, they’re just part of the structure. There’s nothing you can do because it was low quality material to begin with. Even though we did an enormous amount of work on that, and it’s very stable, but it’s difficult to see it. It has to be lit in a very particularly way so that you’re not aware of these surface deformations.