AIC's 43rd Annual Meeting

This paper will focus on losses, their values and their meanings. Do losses provide a negative interference in a work of art? If not, are we assigning to losses a historical and aesthetic value and physical qualities that coexist with the intrinsic quality in a work of art? Lacunae are visual memories linked to the object. But if we perceive damages as negative interference, how can we objectively evaluate the amount of integration we should undertake on a work of art in order to respect its identity and history? As the work of art survives throughout the centuries it will be subjected to the physical superimposition of historical moments that conservation treatments will attempt to eliminate, reduce or enhance. The size, location, and number of losses or abrasions determine the type and level of intervention. Damages may also allow for a recovered reading of a work of art or they can become meaningful memories that provide a different understanding and a different level of art experience. The approaches to loss compensation have been widely discussed over the past decades offering a wide range of aesthetic and practical solutions. When discussing the treatment of lacunae, Italian theories have emphasized the historical and aesthetic values of a work of art to which the fundamental principles of visible inpainting techniques, developed in the XX century, are linked. Though the reasoning behind visible inpainting is to respect the historical and aesthetic identities of a work of art, it also allows for a discrete remembrance of the lacunae by not concealing them completely. While the fundamental principles that guide the integration of losses have been defined, the level of integration, which may or may not be directly proportionate to the conservation state of the work of art, is driven by subjective decisions. Though a clear definition of the different types of losses can help define the framework, the final appearance of an art object, even when following basic theoretical and practical rules, is a projection of the aesthetic taste of both conservator and curator, of the practical ability of a conservator, and more in general of the institution that owns the work. This paper will engage and discuss these queries with an emphasis on paintings, though works of various natures will also be considered.