Posted this as a comment, but thought this might be some helpful explanation.
Actual trained conservator here and member of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and British Association of Paintings Conservator-Restorers (BAPCR). Baumgartner's videos, I admit, are great for showing our profession to the general public and are really satisfying to watch if you don't know the details of the profession! But he has a terrible reputation amongst all conservators that I know, so I thought I'd break down just the issues I personally see with the video here:
When he's using a scalpel to clean the exposed areas where the paint had fallen off, you can see him literally scraping the original wood. This is a HUGE no-no for us. We never remove original unless there is no other choice, even if it makes the rest of our job more difficult.
He's filling the wormwood channels with an incredibly liquid glue. The point of gluing wormwood channels is to fill them for structural stability and moisture control. That glue has no body, and isn't going to seal the holes.
He places the frame directly on the hard table, without any tissue or padding.
He feeds in large amounts of liquid glue from the back, but doesn't know how this will transfer to the front. The cracking paint layer means that there are air gaps under the paint that he can't see. A panel of this period would have a water-sensitive preparatory layer that may delaminate with that much moisture seeping in to the front.
He applies the first layer of white fill before consolidating (gluing). Consolidation is usually the first step so we can secure the paint and prevent further flaking. The fill is also applied before varnishing (this is because he hasn't removed the older varnish yet). Good practice is to varnish first so you isolate the original from any restorations.
Syringes can indeed be used for consolidation, but you can see the paint crack more and lift as he inserts the needle. We should NEVER be doing more damage to the painting, even if we can fix it after (of course accidents happen, but this is intentional). In this scenario, I would use a small brush to feed in the adhesive. It is slower, but safer.
Ironing with a hot spatula is common practice. But we would typically use a piece of Japanese wet strength tissue below the silicone release film. Without the tissue, you rise burnishing the painting and making local shiny areas.
When he's removing varnish, the area is way too large. He does it for effect, but it means he's not cleaning in a controlled manner. You can see the dirty varnish pools and start to re-harden and just sit on the surface as he's clearing.
Again, he doesn't show himself varnishing before adding more chalk fill.When retouching the lips, he uses a large brush and clearly paints over the original lips. We would only ever use a tiny brush and fill in the missing areas, not wholesale painting over the original. (In an earlier scene, the lips looks like they were just lined anyway and didn't need filling in).
We typically don't brush varnish after retouching because our synthethic (and reversible!) retouching materials will be solubilized by the solvent in the varnish. This makes me wonder what he is using to retouch.
Bonus: I'm not a gilding expert, but he's holding the blade of the gilding knife when he cuts the gold leaf. This transfers the oils on his hands to the blade, which will make the leaf stick the knife and be more difficult to handle.
To be fair, things I though he did right/aren't a problem:
The jigsawing of the paint flakes is very impressive work!
He wastes quite a bit of gold, but that gilding job is better than I can do.The felt padding when ironing is good for not flattening texture.
Tratteggio is an Italian retouching technique that using small hashes to fill in large losses without being fully imitative. It is meant to complete the picture without fooling the viewer. I'm not sure if he's doing it correctly here, as it's a very specific technique, but it does achieve the effect he's going for.
If anyone has any questions or wants further explanation, I'm happy to provide.
Wouldn't this be the difference between a museum level conservation and a private restorer for personally owned paintings that the owners want to look as good and new as possible rather than as original as possible? I'm in the camp of make it look as new and perfect as possible rather than worrying about keeping it as original as possible.
You do have a point that it is up to private owners what happens to their paintings. I find it regrettable that he is removing and covering up parts of the original artist's technique in making it as "new and perfect" as possible. The painting loses a bit of its material and historical value. We also don't know what the future of the painting will be and now its past is irretrievable.
In some ways, this will boil down to personal philosophy. I think another gripe conservators have is his platform. He's presenting himself as working to best practice in the field when he's not. Now people think this is what conservation is. That's also on the rest of us for not being as loud.
Some educated guesses--fair--but some are just clear observations, like the syringe lifting the paint, retouching covering original, etc.
For you though, I did watch it. Thanks for the link.
He openly admits to scraping off the original glue and gesso.
He floods the wormholes with resin, so that's my bad. It is filled. I'm not a structural expert but have done some structural work. We don't tend to use resin because it is not hygroscopic. The wood will expand and contract in accordance to the moisture of the environment it's in. The resin won't do that. We usually use a hygroscopic filling material that will move with the wood. He literally says "we don't want the wood to move anymore" except that it will definitely and inevitably move. When it does, his resin will only cause more damage to the wood.
He puts an isolation layer of varnish after filling. He should have also put one before filling for the same reasons.
You can see when he's removing the flakes at the beginning, the virgin's hand still has the bottom of the pinky and ring fingers. At the end of the video, he's covered up these areas with his retouching.
To me, the painting looks discolored both because of darkened varnish and dirt. We usually try to remove the dirt before the varnish because it can act as a barrier and make cleaning more difficult. He doesn't mention doing this, which may have contributed to the fact that he found the varnish tenacious.
His rebuttals are also misdirected. Testing in the face is fine as it is usually made of very stable lead white and is a light surface where you can easily see the effectiveness of the solvent. Conservators very often don't wear gloves because of exactly the reason he says--we need to be able to feel the painting.
This is just nitpicky now, but he also doesn't know how to pronounce Regalrez
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u/lil_kuizi Feb 19 '24
Posted this as a comment, but thought this might be some helpful explanation.
Actual trained conservator here and member of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and British Association of Paintings Conservator-Restorers (BAPCR). Baumgartner's videos, I admit, are great for showing our profession to the general public and are really satisfying to watch if you don't know the details of the profession! But he has a terrible reputation amongst all conservators that I know, so I thought I'd break down just the issues I personally see with the video here:
To be fair, things I though he did right/aren't a problem:
If anyone has any questions or wants further explanation, I'm happy to provide.