that picture, he carefully preserved the existing mobile upper crossbar with
iron pins—which was either an original or a very old restoration (Bergeon
1976:62)—and copied it to construct the lower crossbar.^34
After 1957 there was no longer a cabinetmaker at the Louvre
who specialized in painted panels. At that point, compelled by necessity
with the purchase in 1956 of Sassetta’s triptych of the Virgin and two
saints,^35 and with the purchase of the Calvaireby J. Lieferinxe in 1962,^36
Germain Bazin sent these two pictures to Rome to be restored at the
Istituto Centrale del Restauro, where particularly Angelini and then later
Bellafemina, both restorers of wooden supports, had achieved an interna-
tionally recognized mastery. By 1965 Germain Bazin had come to recog-
nize the need for a cabinetmaker specializing in wood supports at the
Louvre and a specialized studio devoted to the restoration of panel paint-
ings. The consequences of this realization will be presented below.Transfer
French artisans, particularly those working in the Hacquin-Joyerot and
Kiewert-Rostain dynasties, became extremely skilled in the technique of
transfer, which was practiced for a long time in France. The technique had
already been practiced for several decades by the time Jean-Louis Hacquin
established his studio.^37 It had originated in Italy, where it developed simul-
taneously in Cremona and Naples between 1711 and 1725. It was intro-
duced into Lorraine by Léopold Roxin in 1740 and into France by Robert
Picault between 1747 and 1750 (Emile-Mâle 1982a, 1982b, 1987). Considered
perhaps the major development of the eighteenth century, transfer was
widely seen as a genuine universal panacea. The replacement of the original
support by another, “ideal” one was intended to remedy all the structural
problems associated with wooden supports—curving, splitting, worm tun-
nels, and cleavage of the paint layer.
Robert Picault’s particular technique of a “sparing” transfer, in
which the paint layer is separated from the wooden support, saves the sup-
port at the cost of some uncertainties and dangers.^38 On one occasion,
Picault gave a dazzling display of his expertise to the king and his whole
court as theyfiled past Andrea del Sarto’s La Charité,admiring both the
painting and, next to it, its support of old, “rotten” boards. In spite of this,
no one had much faith in the technique, and it disappeared. Picault was
then dismissed as a charlatan (Emile-Mâle 1982b).
After Picault, it was Jean-Louis Hacquin, and, especially, his son
François-Toussaint Hacquin, who advanced the other technique of trans-
fer, which is better for the paint layer but destructive of the support.^39
Although the legitimacy of transfer was not questioned for nearly
two centuries, the nature of the new support had always given rise to very
interesting misgivings, particularly with respect to the choice of material.
In a 1799 reporton restorations for paintings, Picault wrote that the new
support should be the same as the original (copper or wood) support “to
conserve the purity of the design, the honesty of the stroke and their
enamels [sic] which the grain of canvas takes away from them.”^40 However,
canvas was the support recommended by Robert Picault in 1750 and Jean-
Louis Hacquin in 1780 for Andrea del Sarto’s La Charité,and by François-
Toussaint Hacquin for Raphael’s La Madone de Foligno(transferred in 1801)Techniques Used in the
Studios Prior to 1965268 Bergeon, Emile-Mâle, Huot, and Baÿ