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Cleaned out Obviously it is desirable to see any work of art as the artist intended. Nothing then gets in the way of the most honest possible response and with historical works we may immerse ourselves in the unique interpretation of the story and perhaps appreciate the seductive beauty of the style. Unfortunately, a relationship of such purity between artist and viewer is increasingly rare. With so many works now we must make allowances for the damage to condition wrought by time and, increasingly to my eye, for the depredations of those who ironically call themselves ‘restorers’. Following its cleaning during the 1990s the fresco of The Tribute Money in Santa Maria del Carmine, painted by Masaccio in 1426, has had to be downgraded from a work in which an unimpeded response was possible to one in which its artistic and historical significance – which I’ll attempt to describe later – can now only be imagined because cleaners have wrecked it. It now gives scarcely a hint as to why it, and the other frescoes by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, was so crucially important to any developed understanding of what the Renaissance meant in painting and why so many quattrocento artists flocked to pay homage to it. It was while drawing this work, don’t forget, that the young Michelangelo had his nose crushed by Pietro Torrigiano whose own drawing the great man had mocked. Yes, The Tribute Money was no less a radical departure from the past than that the greatest queued to draw its simple, noble, intelligent figures; indeed those same qualities which astounded and moved this keen student 30 years ago to return daily to see it in its best possible light. It was as though all the veils of International Gothic frippery had been lifted to reveal the solidity and gravity of real life underneath. To look at it now in its “cleaned”, “improved” condition is not just to be saddened but distressed for the novel brilliance of the early Renaissance is less apparent now that the Brancacci Chapel has been restored. Before explaining more fully I want to go back even further, to Pisa, and visit a remarkable drawing in a city of many remarkable things, mostly sculptures. The work in question illustrates the modus operandi of artists from all periods, and is a lesson from which restorers would do well to learn. There is a large fresco depicting the Last Judgement in the Campo Santo in Pisa, a building badly damaged by bombing in the Second World War. This painting has been “saved” by removing it from the wall and, it seems (though I can’t now remember clearly enough to be certain), is in a more ruinous condition now it’s been “stabilised” than it was before. It features an especially ferocious depiction of Hell, which takes up three quarters of the painting whereas in the customary iconography of this event it would receive equal billing with Heaven. Plainly its unbalanced focus on the wages of sin was intended as a political statement. To Pisans of 1365, at which date the fresco was completed, it sounded a warning, an exhortation to virtuous behaviour. The fresco is thought to be by Francesco Traini, who was a bold draughtsman though, on the face of it, not that original a painter, and has been the cause of much art historical speculation. One interpretation has it that in the aftermath of the Black Death in 1347, which was widely interpreted by clerics as God’s revenge for galloping godlessness, Traini’s painting warns of the heavy price that would be paid if such loose conduct continued. When Traini’s fresco was removed from the wall, the emphatic outlines of the sinopie, or underdrawing, were exposed on the foundation layer of plaster. Infuriatingly, this is not on show next to or even near the fresco itself but hangs a couple of minutes walk away in a different building. There are few enough trecento drawings and this is certainly one of the finest I’ve seen. Knowing that his work would be covered never to see again the light of day, the artist was daring and took liberties, and perhaps was even cavalier in his choice of details. The drawing is bold and assertive and in many passages, some of them large areas, differs markedly from the painting. As a work of art it has to be said that the rather neglected drawing is far more rewarding and readable than is the heavily marketed painting in front of which gawping swarms of shuffling Japanese stand in turn for their photographs to be taken before a backdrop of Lucifer’s fanged rictus. We can be sure that the preparatory drawing, being formative, is by the master alone whereas the painting of such an extensive picture might in parts have been farmed out to assistants and without doubt have been subjected to six centuries of repaint and patching up. Interestingly, the drawing is far more detailed than was required for a mere guideline. The artist elaborated with enjoyment, giving form and body where perfunctory outlines would have sufficed. Characterisation is also subtler in the drawing, more naturalistic and observed, whereas in the painting descriptions are the stuff of comic books and gestures cartoon-like. In the painting the message is more important than the form. To cite one of many possible changes made between the drawing and the painting, there is in the centre left of the drawing an elegant angel dragging a screaming woman from a grave by her hair, for it is Judgement Day (above). He points her peremptorily in the direction of demons who are stuffing the bodies of lost souls into the crocodile mouth of a gigantic serpent. Her grimace is one of real fear and shock too at her sudden, rude awakening from the big sleep. In the painting (opposite) the woman has been substituted by a stock, post-Giotto monk who is being shown the one-way-street to eternal torment by an ineptly painted archangel Michael. This shouldn’t surprise us. With few exceptions (Stanley Spencer was one) artists change their work at all stages of its execution. Though they may give the impression of certainty in their finished work, this is a deceptive disguise – painters are just as uncertain as the rest of us and usually must work hard to make it look effortless. Pictures started in front of a motif are sure to be tweaked in the studio in the hope of achieving improvement. This fiddling will play a more critical part the trickier the medium – and fresco is especially unforgiving. With the exception of those colours which can only be painted secco, that is with the plaster dry, the rest are put on while the surface is wet and absorbent. The touch of the brush is indelible, the only remedy for mistakes being to scrape off and start again. Traini and Masaccio had to work and think quickly. I refuse to believe they got it right first time every time. Even Michelangelo didn’t when he painted the Sistine ceiling – we know he added finishing touches when the plaster was dry. After their frescoes were finished Traini and Masaccio must also have applied corrections, those unifying touches which brought the whole together and made it something enticing to the eye by force of its artistry – those touches and adjustments which transformed it into a work of art. There is no reason to believe that the changes which took place after the plaster had dried might not be as significant as those made between the sinopie and the painting. I don’t doubt that The Tribute Money was produced in precisely this way. Unfortunately, there are armies of State-employed restorers, in Italy and elsewhere, who have to be kept employed. To my way of looking, evidence suggests that when they do their work they clean off corrections and modifications in the mistaken belief that they are either dirt or repaint. Thirty years ago Masaccio’s Tribute Money was quite different to anything else of its time that this student had seen. It was a work which was an assertion of radical intent by a painter still callow – around 25 years old. Masaccio was a young Turk nailing new colours to the mast and telling us that times had changed irrevocably. He was surely friendly with the older Brunelleschi and Donatello, both of whom had spent time in Rome studying the sculpture, architecture and building techniques of the Empire. These were a trio of vanguardists working shoulder to shoulder in a small city buying into a new mood and style based on respect for a classical art they believed to be of Roman invention. Being younger than his colleagues, who no longer had anything to prove, Masaccio was doubtless impetuous to demonstrate his commitment to this intellectual ferment. In place of decoration he brought simplicity, geometry, gravity. Unlike the figures populating recent Florentine art which floated about like dirigibles, his people firmly held their ground as if carved from wood, their very solidity reinforced by unshakeable beliefs. Their individual minds could be understood and their faith read in their set faces and gestures. They were enveloped by the air they breathed in rooms and landscapes that were extensions of our own real ones. Of course, Masaccio must have had linear perspective personally explained to him by Brunelleschi who had rediscovered its rules. Masaccio too had seen Roman sculptures that were, even as he was working, coming out of the ground at an impressive rate as prosperous towns expanded and new building foundations were excavated. In the end, Masaccio’s vocabulary of figurative form had Rome stamped all over it. It was his membership card to the Renaissance club. I imagine him trying hard to impress Brunelleschi, a father figure of immense knowledge and rational, problem-solving ability whose cathedral dome was taking shape as Masaccio painted. Look at the central group of The Tribute Money: the three principal figures, Jesus, Peter and the tax collector, are all variants of the Apollo Belvedere. Indeed, from the back the tax collector is a dead ringer for Leochares’s archer. Most of Masaccio’s contemporaries would not have been aware of such a precedent but his humanist friends would have recognised immediately that here was a realism fed by awareness of the past. Even when the influence of the antique is not obvious, it was still classical art which gave the likes of Masaccio the confidence and ambition to think anew. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that it is usually unconvincingly speculative to say that this artist saw this classical sculpture and copied it. Art historians are paid to link things in this way. The more sensible approach is to conclude that by looking so extensively at classical sculpture a painter like Masaccio became imbued with the ethos of classical form. He had certainly been in Pisa where, in the fairly recent past, a large quantity of sarcophagi from a Roman cemetery had been unearthed. It barely needs pointing out that his Adam and Eve in the scene of the Expulsion from Paradise in the Brancacci Chapel are unthinkable without Roman sculpture. However, it is fashionable for art historians to underplay the significance of Roman art in the development of the early Renaissance. In my view it can’t be emphasised enough. Masaccio was positively drunk on the weight and form of Roman sculpture. So the integrity and commitment of his figures’ actions, and their precise placing on the earth, is the essence of Masaccio. Coming hard on the heels of the repetitive types and clones deployed by Gothic painters, here was a deep thinker, a respecter of the differences between individuals, someone for whom dead convention would never do. It is 1426 in an unfashionable church on the wrong side of the Arno and a painter too green and headstrong to be entrusted with anything major is starting modern painting. Whereas once it did, The Tribute Money no longer illustrates this great moment. Before, you knew by looking alone that Masaccio had initiated a revolution but now you have to take it on trust. Thirty years ago I didn’t see the inadequacies and inconsistencies of The Tribute Money because they weren’t there. It was damaged, yes, but the integrity of the whole painting and the integrity of Masaccio’s spirit and will – those qualities by which one felt one knew him – still spoke loudly and clearly. Now the cleaners have done their work, relief and contrast have disappeared rendering figures less substantial than they were – some of them now all but levitate. What mystifies me about cleaners who claim that only dirt has been removed is that if this were true the contrast of what remained would be unaffected. It would have to be: dirt falling equally should be removed equally so why is relief and contrast lost? I believe, because my eyes tell me so, that shadows emphasising relief and solidity, which may have been applied in the final, secco touches of beefing up, were removed as so much soot. They must have been. What other possible explanation can there be for such a loss of contrast? That Masaccio wasn’t who he was supposed to be? That Michelangelo and Vasari didn’t know what they were talking about? The cleaning also destroyed colour balances that were probably tweaked when the fresco was dry and when the colours could be seen at their true pitch – for wet colours read differently. Some colours now shoot forward whereas before they stayed put. Did Michelangelo come there to admire and learn because he was prepared to overlook flat figures and colours which leapt out in front of those they were supposed to be behind? Of course he didn’t. He came there for the Masaccio we all used to know. What baffles me in all of this is our passivity. We let people who claim to know what they are doing comprehensively fuck things up. Those of us who consider Masaccio and Michelangelo to be living friends just sit by whilst what makes their work unique is irreparably wiped off. All those critics who have lauded the restoration of the Brancacci Chapel should hang their heads in shame because they are charlatans and because their easily won praise is used by the cleaning lobby to justify ruining more and more works which are best left alone. If only conservators were actually conservative. David Lee | |||||
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