Over time, paintings lose their luster and canvasses become unstable. If you have an original painting, wear and tear can significantly decrease its value while restoration by our experts will preserve its worth. Here are 450 million good reasons to invest in having your paintings restored.
What Is the Fine Art Restoration Process?
Fine art restoration involves any effort by experts to repair, restore, stabilize or preserve valuables such as paintings, sculptures, etchings, antiques, and architecture. Fine art restoration can also include repairing materials damaged by floods, insects, fires, natural decay, or frame disintegration.
How Does Fine Art Restoration Increase the Value of a Painting?
Fine art requires an immense amount of personal care. From the moment a painting is created, it starts an aging process without the proper care. Paintings are also notorious for accumulating dust, dirt, and debris. The disintegration of the painting´s materials is also a normally occurring process.
The fine art restoration process restores the value of a painting because it only affects certain aspects of an artist´s original work or intended artistic style. Fine art restorers are highly educated and skilled in art history, period materials, and chemistry, which helps us interpret artistic intent.
Salvator Mundi´s Restoration
In the 1500s, King Louis XII commissioned Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci to paint the Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World). Over the last few decades, the painting passed from owner to owner. In 2005, it was purchased by Alexander Parish at an estate sale for a mere $1,000.
Parish had the painting fully restored and then had it authenticated by fine art experts. This rare find caught the attention of the world and soon was offered the chance at auction to own it. How much did this restored $1,000 painting go for? It was purchased for a record-setting $450.3 million.
As the Salvator Mundi was an oil painting, environmental factors like dust, light, and humidity affected its condition. The frame was dated much later than the 16th-century and Christ´s face had been restored, causing a noticeable thicker application in certain areas. The panel was also restored.
A previous restorer had also tried to resurface the painting by trimming it. With an infrared lens, Parish also found a trace below the hand´s surface, so it helped in authenticating it as being the original since all known replicas had only what was currently seen and not what was hidden.
Still, the painting was in a horrible state, which affected its current market value. Not only was it falling apart, but it had worm damage in its wood frame. Over six months, the frame was restored. Then, a more experienced restorer began to work on the painting itself, which reinvigorated it.
After stripping away previous restoration mishaps, the restorer needed to find the right balance between the painting´s scratches and the subject´s features. There was also a murkiness in the backdrop that had to be corrected. Using other Da Vinci paintings, the restoration was successful.
Just like the Salvator Mundi, the fine art restoration of oil paintings requires meticulous attention to detail. To learn more, call 617-995-0022 or visit https://www.facebook.com/ManziAppraisers/.
