In Girl with a Flute, how is the Restorations discussed?
The painting has undergone restorations, which have received critiques from art historians and art conservationists.In his 1995 book Johannes Vermeer, Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. wrote: Although the discolored varnish and old repaint that distorted the image were removed during the painting's restoration in 1995, even now extensive abrasion of the paint surface hinders a conclusive assessment of artistic quality. The blue glaze that once covered the back or the chair, for example, has now mostly disappeared, leaving visible only the reddish-brown underpaint. Nevertheless, the restoration and related technical examinations have provided a fuller understanding of both the complex compositional alterations and the sequence of paint layers that comprise this image, information essential for any informed judgment of attribution.
Some of the modern restorations have received criticism, most vocally from Michael Daley of ArtWatch UK. In December 1995 he wrote to The Times: "The many dramatic changes evident in paintings cleaned for the Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington constitute yet another art restoration debacle. ... Neither the catalogue nor reviews of the exhibition mention that the Young Girl with a Flute has lost four fifths of her necklace."
In 2001, presenting photographs of the painting from 1941, 1958, 1994, and 1995, Daley wrote: In the first [restoration] ... a great loss of material and shading occurred; an eyebrow disappeared; and the necklace was substantially thinned. After the next cleaning ... the restorer lost the central section of the necklace and painted-out the surviving remnant on the right to minimise the glaring injury. The restorer also painted out an earlier striped disfigurement on the sitter’s left cheek, which action left the lit side of the face flatter and less tonally modulated than in 1941. When exhibited in a major Vermeer anniversary exhibition, no Vermeer scholar commented on its cumulative losses and alterations. The two dark stripes on the right-hand, lit side of the hat ... have disappeared.
In the spring of 2022, a thesis for the University of Delaware on art conservation noted, "Within conservation treatments, restoration has proved to have a more damaging effect on material culture if not executed correctly. ... The news of [the 2012 botched 'restoration' of the Ecce Homo fresco of Christ in Borja, Spain] surfaced hundreds of reports of failed restorations such as ... Vermeer's Girl with a Flute."In January 2023, Daley wrote to The Guardian stating:If Girl With a Flute at Washington's National Gallery of Art ever was a Vermeer, successive picture restorers have made sure that it no longer is so. In 1940, it was judged a Vermeer on its "utmost delicacy of glaze and stipple".
You report that the paint has now been found (after two restorations by the museum) to be "heavy-handed" in a way that "pooled and almost dripped". Distinct features on the painting were lost or weakened in each restoration. Before the first, the girl had a solid necklace, dark eyebrows and a strongly lit and shaded face. Those features were greatly weakened and the necklace was left much thinner with a small break in the first restoration. In the second, ahead of the previous travelling Vermeer blockbuster exhibitions of 1995-96, published photographs showed that all the features were further weakened and the necklace had lost its central section. After that cleaning, the remains of the necklace were almost, but not entirely, painted out by the restorer.ArtWatch first complained of these restorations in 1995 and, in 2001, we published photographs showing the succession of injuries. So far as we know, none of the art historians now squabbling over the attribution have discussed the restoration injuries.
University of Delaware Ecce Homo National Gallery of Art Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. right Johannes Vermeer ArtWatch UK The Guardian The Times