A Titian masterpiece is getting a touch up thanks to Bank of America’s (BOA) annual art conservation programme which has helped save more than 15,000 objects in 40 countries since its launch in 2010. The Titian overhaul is one of 18 projects supported by BOA conservation project grants this year.
The restoration of Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-23), housed at the National Gallery in London, begins next month when major construction work starts in the research centre, requiring the removal of some pieces from display. The painting, which illustrates a story by the Roman poets Ovid and Catullus, is one of the most famous works at the National Gallery.
The conservation process will involve placing the painting on a new fabric support following a 1960s restoration when the work was attached to a solid backing. In the coming months, the gallery’s conservators will subsequently remove the canvas from its secondary support and restore any paint loss or deterioration, according to a BOA statement.
The ongoing conservation of Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch (1642), a masterpiece of the Dutch Golden Age displayed at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is also backed by BOA this year.
The extensive restoration, which began in 2019, is now entering a new phase which involves removing ageing varnish layers and overpainting by earlier restorers. The work is being conserved in a specially designed glass chamber in view of the public.
Meanwhile a BOA grant will enable 269 cast bronze palms displayed in the Salle d’Attique of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to be vacuum dusted and coated in protective wax, a process overseen by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux. The palms, which honour fallen soldiers, were left at the commemorative monument by veterans’ associations.
In Japan, Gaki Zōshi (Scroll of Hungry Ghosts) at the Tokyo National Museum, an illustrated handscroll depicting spirits condemned to eternal hunger, will be stabilised and its colours restored following long-term deterioration (there is the “risk that the image may be lost entirely”, says the BOA statement).
Other BOA conservation projects this year include the repair of Henri Matisse’s La Négresse paper collage (1952) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and the surface cleaning and stabilisation of 52 paintings by the 19th-century Peruvian painter Francisco Laso de los Ríos housed at the Museo de Arte de Lima. The Surrealist sculpture Juggler (1946) by Alice Rahon at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which is too unstable to be displayed, will also be fixed.
Application guidelines say that prospective organisations must “report findings to Bank of America following conservation”. Advisory panel members include Laura Rivers, paintings conservator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Nick Dorman, chief conservator at Seattle Art Museum. A spokesperson for the BOA grants declined to provide the full funding figure.
