A New Dawn: The Restoration of L'Aurora Part 1

support for this video comes from skillshare which offers thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people on topics including illustration design photography video freelancing and more [Music] every once in a while a piece arrives at the studio that's in such a sad state so damaged and so desperately in need of conservation that i can't help but smile and it's not because i take enjoyment in seeing these pieces damaged but it's because i'm honored and humbled and really excited to be afforded the opportunity to conserve and restore these pieces and return them to their former glory and that's exactly the case with this copy of guido reni's masterpiece aurora the original is a fresco painted in the garden house next to the palazzo palavencini ros pigliosi in italy and the original is gigantic and this painting isn't exactly small now unfortunately we don't know who the artist is the signature if ever there was one is gone the lower several inches of the painting had been exposed to some serious water damage and much of the paint layer has flaked off you can see there are massive holes and tears and punctures and creases and well just about every type of damage you can see on a piece of painting there's even some old conservation work that needs to come off and on top of that the painting is filthy and covered with house paint that's splattered on it from somebody's ill-fated attempt to paint their own house now it goes without saying that this painting is going to be a magnum opus of conservation work there is so much that needs to be done and i've had this painting in my studio for a long time over a year in fact while the client decided what to do with it but now they've given the go-ahead and so i am ready to get started now when dealing with a conservation of this scope and scale it's important to spend some time with the piece and understand what needs to be done before any of the real work can begin and one thing that i'm doing right now is dampening some absorbent cotton blotter papers with water and i'm going to press some of the areas of the canvas where the canvas is really distorted there are some areas where this canvas has rolled and folded underneath itself and i need to address those locally right now because they're going to present problems later on if i don't do that and so by sandwiching these areas with the bladder paper and putting a weight on them and leaving them for a day or so i can soften the canvas and return it to a little bit more of a flat state than it is currently now this isn't the only treatment i'm going to be doing to flatten the canvas but this is kind of a pre-treatment and so i'm going to isolate all of these areas that need it and then i can move on to the next step in the pre-treatment treatment and that's going to be removing some of the built up grime from behind the canvas where the stretcher bar was now normally i just flip the painting over and use a brush or a vacuum to do this but this painting is so delicate and so uh vulnerable that i can't do that if i were to flip this painting over when i returned it and flipped it back over there would be a lot less paint left on the surface now the way that i'm going to address the planar distortions or the waves and the ripples and the creases in the canvas is on my hot table and i'm going to be doing what's called a vapor treatment so i'm dampening a couple of absorbent cotton blotter papers the same ones i used to press out the tears and the deviations in the canvas earlier and i'm going to transfer this painting over and place it on those blotter papers i have to be really careful again because if i sneeze while handling this painting half the paint could pop right off now this is going to do a couple of things aside from just relaxing the painting and getting all of these waves and ripples down much like you would iron a shirt it's also going to reactivate the size and the size is something that the artist puts on the canvas before putting the ground layer on and then the paint and in this case the size is a rabbit skin glue and rabbit skin glue is hygroscopic and that means that it will absorb ambient water and so this rabbit skin glue size is going to absorb some of that water and it's going to become soft and the heat and the moisture is going to make it tacky again and the pressure that's going to be applied by the vacuum pump is going to force some of these areas of lifting paint back down into this soft size and when it cools we're hoping that it's going to dry and that those areas of paint will be re-bonded to the canvas now i've put the mylar film over the painting and i have installed the through port vacuum extraction hoses i've hooked them up to the vacuum pump and i'm turning on the heat now i don't need a ton of heat for this i'm not looking to melt anything i just want to warm up the painting in addition i don't need a ton of vacuum pressure because i'm not looking to mount anything or crush anything i just want to make sure that there's even consistent pressure downward on those areas of lifting paint and so this vacuum pump is going to go up to about 30 mercury inches and then i'm going to start to turn it down because that's just way too much pressure so i'll twist the little knob and i will close the vacuum port until i reach oh i think probably about five mercury inches because again i just need a little bit of pressure now there's no rule book for this this is not something that you can look up in a textbook there's no guide you just kind of have to learn this through doing and i found that five mercury inches is a really great point now i'm going to go over the painting with a little brayer and roll out some of those areas i'm not using a lot of pressure here i'm just looking to add a little bit of downward force because this is a large painting i want to make sure that the vacuum pump is able to extract all of the air and going over it manually helps me ensure that that's the case so once the painting has reached temperature i'll turn off the heat and i'll allow it to cool for about an hour or so and when the temperature comes down to ambient room temperature which is about 72 degrees in my studio i'll remove it from the mylar film and the hot table and i'll transfer the painting over to another table because at this point the canvas has still got a little residual moisture in it from the treatment and if i don't take corrective action now as that moisture evaporates and the canvas shrinks well this painting is going to distort all over again and that would be frankly pretty terrible so i'm taking care to remove it from the blotter paper because sometimes the sizing sticks a little bit and once i've got it completely detached i'll pull out that blotter paper it's my best magician's trick and i will cover the painting with some mylar and a piece of felt and then i'll sandwich it in between another sheet of drywall or gypsum board and i'll add some weight to it and this technique that i'm employing here wasn't anything that i learned from any other conservator or from any conservation journals or white papers or anything in school this i learned from an artist with whom i interned and he was a printmaker and this was his technique of keeping damp papers flat so that they didn't distort and become unusable for his printmaking and as a conservator i am always on the lookout for new tips tricks materials and techniques to keep me on top of my game i mean it's really important that i am always in a state of constant learning and frankly i kind of think it's important for everybody to always be learning and really there's no better place to continue learning than with skillshare and their online community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity skillshare offers creative classes designed for real life and all the chaos and circumstances that come with it these lessons can help you stay inspired express yourself and introduce you to a community of millions of like-minded people and since you clearly like art i'd love to suggest how to talk about art a beginner's guide from artsy and jordana zeldin i mean frankly i'd like it if some of my clients would watch that the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a two-month free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity alright you guys and gals are smarter and more empowered now so we can get back to the conservation so it's been a couple of days and i can remove all of those weights from this painting and i can check to see how it looks now i'm lucky in that it has performed exactly how i wanted well not lucky i mean i've done this plenty of times before so i know what to expect but it's always nice to see that your best intentions have come to fruition now again i'm still being very very careful with this painting because even though i've reactivated that size and helped bond some of that precarious paint back down to the canvas this painting is still really delicate and so i just want to be careful here now at this stage i can face the painting and that's where i'm going to be using washi cozo or japanese mulberry paper and in this case i'm using a water-based fish glue and the reason i'm using water-based fish glue is really two-fold one any of that fish glue that gets onto the raw canvas will not disturb the original size because they're both water-based and both protein-based they'll kind of mix nicely and play well with each other but also one of the next steps that i'm going to be doing is an adhesive impregnation to bond any existing paint film that's still loose back down to the canvas and that adhesive is a petroleum solvent-based adhesive and so i want to make sure that whatever glue or adhesive i use to face the painting isn't going to be affected by solvent or heat and that's why i'm using a water-based fish glue so i'll lay these pieces of washi cozo down on the painting and i will make sure that i've got good purchase now again the treatment that i did before to flatten the canvas has bonded a lot of this paint back down so it's not as precarious as it was and this may seem excessive or unnecessary but precaution is the name of the game here because i don't want to lose any more paint film than that has already been lost so this is going to dry for a couple of hours and then i can apply the adhesive to the back of the canvas now this adhesive needs to be thinned out so that it has a a good penetrating quality and it needs to be heated up now once it's heated up i can apply it with a roller to the back of the canvas and this adhesive can be applied with brush it can even be sprayed on but for this particular treatment i have found that a roller works best to get a nice even distribution of adhesive now the canvas is going to absorb this adhesive and it's going to penetrate down through all of the weave of the canvas through all the nooks and crannies and voids where the paint film has detached and i'm going to let this adhesive dry and when it's dry i will then take it over to the hot table and begin the impregnation process and the impregnation process sounds complicated and kind of weird but it's really a method whereby i can use heat to reactivate this adhesive and pressure to force it up and around and through any voids and so back on the hot table extract the air turn the heat up use a brayer and make sure that all of that adhesive is getting into all of the gaps in the voids so with the adhesive impregnation complete i can now begin the process of removing the facing and that's done by exposing both the washi cozo and the fish gelatin glue to a little bit of warm water and giving it time to swell and soften now once it's had sufficient amount of time to soften and starts to release its bond i can come back and using a palette knife or a scalpel or just about anything begin to peel back this paper now i always hope that it comes off in nice big clean sheets so i can save time but more often than not it doesn't particularly when i'm using a water-based adhesive and the paper has broken down a bit so there's no easy way to do it no fast way it's just a lot of peeling but this is one of those points where it is absolutely clear that using two different adhesives was essential and worked wonderfully because if the same adhesive was used for the facing as for the impregnation then when i exposed the face of the painting to the solvent to soften that adhesive it would also soften the adhesive used for the impregnation and then that treatment would kind of fail it would be all for naught so by using two different adhesives i can ensure that i can remove this facing without compromising the impregnation and one of the ancillary benefits of using a water-based fish gelatin adhesive and this washi cozo is that some of the surface grime is going to be removed when i peel back this paper not all of it but enough that it helps the next step of cleaning go a little bit faster and if there was any question about the efficacy of the impregnation you can see that i'm peeling back this uh facing paper and no paint is coming off not even in the areas where it was so damaged and so perilous that if i blew on it it would blow right off the painting so that was a really good impregnation and that is essential to making sure that this painting is stable and that i can continue to treat it going forward and now on to the cleaning process and without a doubt this is one that i have been looking forward to for a very long time because i have a sneaking suspicion that underneath all of this old discolored varnish there is a really beautiful painting and so using a cotton swab with a little bit of solvents i can start to break down that old natural resin varnish and reveal the true colors and this is what the artist wanted us to see these really glorious bright vibrant colors that are full of life and they've been obscured by this old dirty surface grime and discolored varnish but once we get them off we can start to see just how beautiful of a painting this is and so right now i'm gonna go step away and get a glass of water don't worry it's a long video and i will be back but i thought you guys might like to just enjoy this process with a little bit more atmosphere so i'm going to leave you here for a little bit and i'll leave you a little bit of bach to keep you company so [Music] enjoy [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so so [Music] so [Music] so so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] all right i'm back and tell me i wasn't right about how glorious that painting is gonna look huh but of course we are still a long ways off from getting this painting wall ready and the next step is to start to address these voids where the canvas is just missing now there are some spots where little pieces of canvas came in in a ziploc baggie and i was able to salvage those but in areas where they're completely gone i will turn to my selection of canvas that i've collected over the years and i'll find one that has a similar weight and weave and color if possible and i will cut out a little inlay and i'll place that into the gap and i'll secure it in place temporarily so that when i do the next steps it stays where i need it to now there are a lot of voids on this painting so there is a lot of time spent with these scissors cutting out little patches and this is one of those things where i wish there was an easier way to do it but unfortunately it really isn't so it's nice to have these on a slow day now i mentioned that they need to be secured into place and i'm using a book binding tape this is acid free acrylic ph neutral linen free and this is something that is just temporarily going to hold these inlays in place so that as i transfer the painting and handle it they don't get misaligned or get lost for that matter now at this point i can turn my attention to the structural issues that this painting has and there are too many holes and tears and creases and other compromises in the canvas for me to fix locally and to expect that this is going to hold up for the long term so i'm going to do an interleaved lining and that's where a new piece of canvas is adhered to the back of the painting to the original canvas with a rigid substrate in between the two and i'm going to be using the same adhesive that i did for the impregnation but this time it's a little bit thicker and i'm going to roll it onto the back of the painting but i've added this flat spun nylon gossamer and this is going to help compensate for the difference between the rough texture of the canvas and the smooth texture of the pet film that i'll be using for the interleave it's going to just make sure that there's a lot of good purchase and the pe2 film does two things it helps structurally stabilize the painting and it also prevents any movement that the painting would otherwise be subject to with humidity changes so once it's all dry i can start to remove that book binders tape and it's not very complicated but you can see how important it was because it kept all of those little patches those inlays in place while i was handling the painting i'm also going to trim off any excess nylon gossamer just to keep it tidy and so that it doesn't get in the way and then when i'm done with that i can put the sandwich together the new canvas the adhesive film the pet film and the original canvas with the flat spun nylon gossamer and i can transfer it over to my hot table where the lining process is actually executed so i'll turn the table up to temperature i will turn the vacuum pump on and extract all of the air and make sure that i've got good even consistent downward pressure i'll check it i'll roll over it a couple of times just to make sure that everything is getting good contact and then i'll let it sit and once it's reached temperature i'll turn the heat off and i will remove the vacuum pump and take the painting out of the sandwich and if everything has gone right and spoiler alert everything has gone right then this painting will be bonded back down to that new canvas and it will be as stable as it has been pretty much since it was painted and now i can turn my attention to filling in some of these voids and really putting the image back together but before i can get to the retouching process which is where the image will really start to come together i have to prep the painting because there are so many losses here it's just not ready for retouching and the first thing that i'm going to do is prime the areas where i cut those little inlays because if i don't do this the fill in medium that i'm going to add later on will just flake off and that would be a really big problem because then the painting would end up back in my studio and i'm pretty sure the client wouldn't be very happy so i'll apply this primer i'll let it dry and then i'll start to fill in the voids now the fill-in material i'm using is water-based and removable but it is also flexible and it doesn't shrink or crack as it dries which is really important it also does a really good job of filling gaps but some of these gaps are pretty epic and so i'll probably have to come back two or three times to fill them back in that is apply a little bit and then let it dry and then apply a little bit more and it's important that i fill in all of these gaps with this putty because as you can see there's just nothing there and it's not like i can go to a little bin of paint chips that i have lying around and pick some out that match in color or texture and glue them down and this is important because if i don't take this step and i were to try to just retouch on top of the missing areas well you would see that pretty clearly and it would look pretty bad so you can see just how much overfill i've done on this painting and now i'm going to have to go through and remove the excess filling material because again i just want the areas where the paint is missing to have the fill in medium and i'm going to be using a piece of very very lightly dampened felt to rub over the surface and the felt doesn't hold much water it doesn't really hold on to it at all in fact what ends up happening is the filling material takes on the water and then the felt will pick up the excess material as it rolls over the surface and this isn't something that's taught in any books or that i've ever read about in fact this is a technique that i'm copying from a master plasterer who i saw working and so what i said about always being learning and always on the lookout and trying to constantly move forward well this proof is right here so stay tuned because next episode we are going to see how this painting comes together and that's going to be really really fun

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 1,993,897

Keywords: Baumgartner, Julian, restoration, ASMR, paintings, cleaning, scraping, repair, Art, fine art, conservation, painting restoration, old art, painting, painting conservation, oil painting, new again, restore, Guido Reni

Id: xEQseEvD_iI

Length: 33min 8sec (1988 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/pierreor]

User A’s comment about the man’s questionable restoration practices

[-] User B who’s hearing it for the first time

[-] User C who offers the lengthy explanation that discredits the criticism

[-] [-] User D thanking User C for his comment.

User E commenting about 𝐵𝑒𝓁𝑔𝒾𝒶𝓃 𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓃

[u/jostler57]

This guy really knows his audience haha -- at around 15:30 he says he's going to stop talking and let us listen to the cleaning process sounds and play some light classical music to accompany it.

Very relaxing!

[u/thetopstep]

New rule, if it's a multi-part episode don't post it until all parts are available. I NEED CLOSURE!!!

[u/Sorenai_]

damn cleaning the face was something magical! so satisfying

[u/FishyNik6]

I love love love Baumgartner.

His videos are one of my favourites to watch while falling asleep.

To be honest anything hands on with a calming narration is just gold to my ears.

[u/Ironfishy]

Love his videos! This is looking to be amazing.

[u/BigHaircutPrime]

Love Baumgartner videos. His patience is absolutely incredible. I'm very curious to know how much he charges for this kind of work, and how the clients feel about the videos. I'm sure he offers them a rebate if the process can be documented, and at the same time it's a win-win because the client can't say he did a sloppy job.

[u/prodgodq2]

I don't have much interest in painting, but I'm fascinated in the restoration process and the amount of planning, knowledge and skill that's required to make it happen. His videos are also expertly done.