I saw a group of students huddled before a painting. Their noses were almost, but
not quite, touching the panel and the soon-to-be practicing conservators were eagerly
scanning the surface. Out of curiosity I approached the group and asked them what
the problem was. They started commenting on the craquelure, the pigments used,
retouches, etc. It was all technically quite sound. I asked them if they would mind
stepping back about four feet. Somewhat reluctantly they complied, and then I asked
them what they saw. There was silence. I repeated the question. One of the students
finally ventured, “A painting.” “Of what?” I asked. “An angel on a hill.” Exactly.
The panel in question was Flemish, some school piece of Thierry Bouts perhaps.
A delicate, svelte angel in a white, billowing gown holding a sword aloft stood
triumphant on top of an emerald-green hillock. A magical, jeweller’s landscape with
winding, dusty roads, Brussels Sprout-like trees, pilgrims and horsemen threading
their way through the sun-drenched countryside, and a many-turreted castle receded
into an azurite infinity beyond the hillock. This meant nothing to them as far as
I could tell. The students had not started their examination by considering the
painting as a work of art, but as an object, a thing, with ailments. There was no
sympathetic attention and they may just as well have been looking over a used car.
If students are not taught first to experience works of art as objects capable of
providing us with aesthetic pleasure, they will never be able to apply their technical
knowledge and craftsmanship in such a way that the integrity of the work and its
tradition are totally respected.—. . , “ : ‘ ’”T
at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, has completed the conservation treat-
ment of the Gubbio studiolo,after more than a decade ofwork.^1
This essay provides a summary report of some technical aspects of the
conservation treatment of the intarsia support panels.^2 The studiolo is a
splendid example of a Renaissance study; it was built between about 1477
and 1483 for Federico da Montefeltro’s ducal palace in Gubbio, Italy.
Federico da Montefeltro (1422–82), duke of Urbino, was a wealthy and
important patron of the sciences and the arts in the fifteenth century. He
commissioned numerous works of art for his palaces, including many
intarsia works and two studioli:one for his main ducal palace in Urbino,
which still exists in situ, and the other for his palace in Gubbio (Remington
1941; Winternitz 1942; Cheles 1991; Bagatin 1992; Raggio 1992). The479Antoine M. Wilmering
A Renaissance Studiolo from the
Ducal Palace in Gubbio
Technical Aspects of the Conservation Treatment