I

 representing the aesthetic and intellectual sensibilities

oftheir creators, the world’s great paintings serve as rich historical

documents. The close contact with these works of art that conserva-

tors and curators have long enjoyed allows access to their most hidden

parts and, consequently, to a better understanding of the materials and

working practices that are the underpinnings of artistic expression. For

paintings are more than the manifestation of an idea or a creative impulse;

they are also a composite of ordinary materials, such as wood, glue, can-

vas, metal, and pigments of various sorts, that have been put to a wonder-

ful purpose.

Wood has served for centuries as a support for painting, largely

because of its strength and availability. Paralleling the long history of

wood as a painting substrate is an almost equally long history of attempts

to control its behavior. An early recognition of the tendency of all wood

species to deform under certain conditions has led generations of wood-

workers to devise techniques, both varied and ingenious, to control

the movement of wooden supports and its consequent damage to the

paint layer.

However, even the most ingenious efforts on the part of panel

makers to create strong painting supports were often overcome by the

inherent properties of wood. In response to such problems, time has wit-

nessed the development ofvarious approaches—some now considered

quite radical and intrusive—to the treatment of structural problems in

panel paintings. Nowadays a more restrained approach is taken, informed

by the ethical principles that guide the conservation profession, as well as

by both the scientific knowledge and the tradition of craftsmanship that

continue to nourish it.

It is important to understand the changes in thinking and practice

that mark the evolution in the structural conservation of panel paintings.

Many people skilled in the craft and traditions of panel repair and stabi-

lization, however, have encountered few opportunities to pass their meth-

ods on to others beyond their immediate circle. Without a serious effort

todocument and present these methods to a wide professional audience,

many of these approaches to the structural conservation of panels, and

the rationales behind them, would be lost forever.

One of the editors of this publication, Andrea Rothe, recognized

the need to make this type of information more accessible. This realiza-

tion led to a series of discussions by staffofthe J. Paul Getty Museum and

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Preface