An Artwork Conservator Restores a Portray of the Doomed Celebration Lady Isabella de’ Medici: See the Earlier than and After

Some peo­ple discuss to crops.

The Carnegie Muse­um of Artwork’s chief con­ser­va­tor Ellen Bax­ter talks to the paint­ings she’s restor­ing.

“It’s a must to … inform her she’s going to look love­ly,” she says, above, unfold­ing var­nish over a Sixteenth-cen­tu­ry por­trait of Isabel­la de’ Medici pri­or to begin­ing the labo­ri­ous technique of restor­ing years of wear and tear and tear by inpaint­ing with tiny brush­es, assist­ed with pipettes of var­nish and sol­vent.

Isabel­la had been wait­ing a very long time for such ten­der atten­tion, con­cealed beneath a 19^th-cen­tu­ry over­paint­ing depict­ing a dain­tier fea­tured lady reput­ed to be Eleanor of Tole­do, spouse of Cosi­mo I de’ Medici, the sec­ond Duke of Flo­rence.

Louise Lip­pin­cott, the CMA’s for­mer cura­tor of high quality arts, ran throughout the work within the museum’s base­ment stor­age. Data named the artist as Bronzi­no, courtroom painter to Cosi­mo I, however Lip­pin­cott, who thought the paint­ing “terrible”, introduced it to Ellen Bax­ter for a sec­ond opin­ion.

As Cristi­na Rou­valis writes in Carnegie Magazine­a­zine, Bax­ter is a “uncommon mixture of left- and right-brained tal­ent”, a painter with a bachelor’s diploma in artwork his­to­ry, minors in chem­istry and physics, and a grasp’s diploma in artwork con­ser­va­tion:

(She) seems at paint­ings dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­er peo­ple, too—not as flat, sta­t­ic objects, however as three-dimen­sion­al com­po­si­tions lay­ered like lasagna.

The minute she noticed the oil paint­ing pur­port­ed to be of Eleanor of Tole­do… Bax­ter knew some­factor wasn’t fairly proper. The face was too bland­ly pret­ty, “like a Vic­to­ri­an prepare dinner­ie tin field lid,” she says. Upon examination­in­ing the again of the paint­ing, she recognized—because of a trusty Google search—the stamp of Fran­cis Leed­ham, who labored on the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery in Lon­don within the mid-1800s as a “relin­er,” trans­fer­ring paint­ings from a wooden pan­el to can­vas mount. The painstak­ing course of includes scrap­ing and sand­ing away the pan­el from again to entrance after which glu­ing the paint­ed sur­face lay­er to a brand new can­vas.

An x‑ray con­firmed her hunch, reveal­ing additional lay­ers of paint on this “lasagna”.

Care­ful strip­ping of soiled var­nish and Vic­to­ri­an paint within the areas of the por­trait’s face and palms started to disclose the a lot stronger fea­tures of the girl who posed for the artist. (The Carnegie is financial institution­ing on Bronzino’s stu­dent, Alessan­dro Allori, or some­one in his cir­cle.)

Lip­pin­cott was additionally busi­ly sleuthing, discover­ing a Medici-com­mis­sioned copy of the paint­ing in Vien­na that matched the costume and hair actual­ly. Thus­ly did she study that the sub­ject was Eleanor of Toledo’s daugh­ter, Isabel­la de’ Medici, the apple of her father’s eye and a noto­ri­ous, ulti­mate­ly ill-fat­ed par­ty lady.

The His­to­ry Weblog paints an irre­sistible por­trait of this mav­er­ick princess:

Cosi­mo gave her an excep­tion­al quantity of free­dom for a noble­lady of her time. She ran her personal home­maintain, and after Eleanor’s demise in 1562, Isabel­la ran her father’s too. She threw well-known­ly rau­cous par­ties and spent lav­ish­ly. Her father at all times cov­ered her money owed and professional­tect­ed her from scruti­ny at the same time as rumors of her lovers and extra­es that will have doomed oth­er soci­ety ladies unfold far and large. Her favourite lover was mentioned to be Troi­lo Orsi­ni, her hus­band Paolo’s cousin.

Issues went down­hill quick for Isabel­la after her father’s demise in 1574. Her broth­er Francesco was now the Grand Duke, and he had no inter­est in indulging his sister’s pec­ca­dil­loes. We don’t know what hap­pened actual­ly, however in 1576 Isabel­la died on the Medici Vil­la of Cer­re­to Gui­di close to Empoli. The offi­cial sto­ry launched by Francesco was that his 34-year-old sis­ter dropped lifeless sud­den­ly whereas wash­ing her hair. The unof­fi­cial sto­ry is that she was stran­gled by her hus­band out of revenge for her adul­tery and/or to clear the best way for him to mar­ry his personal mis­tress Vit­to­ria Acco­ram­boni.

Bax­ter not­ed that the urn Isabel­la holds was not a part of the paint­ing to start with, although nei­ther was it one in all Leedham’s revi­sions. Its resem­blance to the urn that Mary Magazine­da­lene is usually depict­ed utilizing as she anoints Jesus’ ft led her and Lip­pin­cott to spec­u­late that it was added at Isabella’s request, in an try and redeem her picture.

“That is lit­er­al­ly the unhealthy lady see­ing the sunshine,” Lip­pin­cott instructed Rou­valis.

Regardless of her fond­ness for the sub­ject of the lib­er­at­ed paint­ing, and her con­sid­er­ready ability as an artist, Bax­ter resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to embell­ish past what she discovered:

I’m not the artist. I’m the con­ser­va­tor. It’s my job to restore dam­ages and loss­es, to not put myself within the paint­ing.

Observe: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our web site in 2023.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Artwork Con­ser­va­tors Restore Previous Paint­ings & Revive Their Orig­i­nal Col­ors

The Artwork of Restor­ing a 400-Yr-Previous Paint­ing: A 5-Minute Primer

Watch the Tate Mod­ern Restore Mark Rothko’s Van­dal­ized Paint­ing, Black on Maroon: 18 Months of Work Con­densed Into 17 Min­utes

A Restored Ver­meer Paint­ing Reveals a Por­trait of a Cupid Hid­den for Over 350 Years

How an Artwork Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Quick, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­males­tary

Watch the Renais­sance Paint­ing, The Bat­tle of San Romano, Get Introduced Beau­ti­ful­ly to Life in a Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Artwork of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the writer of Cre­ative, Not Well-known: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Well-known Activ­i­ty E book.