Image Reintegration

1990 Words4 Pages

Introduction Although filling and in-painting are separate procedures, they may be considered as highly related processes. They both contribute to the overall integrity of a treated painting. A simple definition for filling, in terms of painting conservation, is the process of ‘the sealing of damage to a picture layer by inserting a filler, that consists of smoothed down or structured substance’ (Nicolaus, 1999, p.235), whereas a filler is a ‘material used to replace missing areas of loss, usually in ground layer’ (The Fine Arts Conservancy, 2006). In addition, in-painting – usually called retouching as an alternative term – may be defined as ‘a restoration process to cosmetically re-establish colour and/or detail to losses in the paint layer; generally accomplished with pigment in an appropriate binding medium applied by brush’ (ibid). Nevertheless, one may find noticeable limitation for the use of the term in-painting in most of the literature while retouching is, so far, very common. Historical notes In respect of painting conservation, the process of filling and in-painting/retouching has not started to be carried out only recently. For instance, according to Conti (2007, p.187) ‘five large fifteenth-century canvases’ have been conserved ‘in the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista’ by an italian restorer called Giuseppe Bertani, who wrote on 1 June 1784 a note on his procedure for treatment where he clearly mentioned filling as a step undertaken and surprisingly mentioned that in-painting was more favourable than over-painting (retouching ) explaining his predilection for ‘employing the brush only where it is strictly necessary’. This early awareness of what is now called minimal intervention in relating to both fillin... ... middle of paper ... ...://www.jstor.org/stable/1505006 (Accessed: 28 January 2010).  Saunders, D. (2000) ‘Retouching: colour vision and optical considerations’, in Retouching & Filling. London: Association of British Picture Restorers, pp. 3-9.  Staniforth, S. (1985) ‘Retouching and Colour Matching: The Restorer and Metamerism’, Studies in Conservation, 30 (3), pp. 101-111 JSTOR [Online]. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1505925 (Accessed: 27 September 2009).  Tetlow, A. (2007) ‘Retouching Complex Surfaces’, The Picture Restorer, 32 (Autumn), pp. 5-10.  Unknown author. (1830) Recreations in science. Google books [Online]. Available at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Z9JnypuNwW0C&dq=recreations+science&source=gbs_navlinks_s (Accessed: 15 February 2010).  Wehlte, K. (1975) The materials and techniques of painting. Translated by Dix, U. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold

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