The Italian Job - Part 1 of 2

this video is brought to you by babel the number one language learning app in the world with more than 10 million subscriptions worldwide it is rare to truly know why a painting was created and even if there was a reason it is often lost throughout history it is even more rare when a painting arrives with that reason painted directly on the canvas alasio ilpio de saba pro maximilio impe cathera fractal ouch not so good with the foreign languages there are you julian yeah i don't speak italian clearly jerk uh it's not italian it's latin and if you spoke some foreign languages you might know that buddy but don't worry buddy babel has your back university studies have shown that 15 hours of babble is equivalent to a semester of college spanish so head over to babel and start filling out their questionnaire which allows them to gather a little information about you and what language you want to learn and why and then unlike other apps that use machine learning algorithms and ai technology babel's lessons are built by 150 real language teachers and you can download those lessons so you can practice even when you don't have wi-fi and babel's lessons will show you what to expect they'll also help you set goals to keep you on track and excited and now with babel live you can add live classes to your existing subscription for an additional fee or just subscribe to them as a standalone product or not if you prefer to learn alone then you can use the app to practice wherever you are and with babel it's not just online classes and apps there are tons of ways to learn a new language like games podcasts and more so click the link in the description box to get up to 65 percent off and start learning a new language today [Music] hello hello can you see me yeah i can see you how are you excellent i'm doing great mcgregor uh how are you doing good thanks well thanks for joining me on camera here to talk about your painting i have cracked open the case i've taken a look at the painting i have some initial thoughts and observations and uh before we get to that i'd love to hear the history of this painting how you came across it and how it ended up in the state that it is one of my favorite things to do in my free time is to just browse every single online marketplace i can possibly find it's really entertaining for me and um occasionally sometimes you'll find something really spectacular and this was one of those times [Music] it started with a bronze bust that i saw listed and i contacted the guy because i automatically recognize this was something special it wasn't a reproduction it wasn't something that had been mass produced it was by an artist that worked directly for the queen so i automatically knew that i need to contact this guy immediately i sent him a message and we arranged a time to meet the next day and um he brought the bust and everything checked out on it i was kind of surprised everything checked out but it did and um after that we were talking and he explained to me that his parents had been antique steelers and after they passed away he had inherited all of their collection so he let me know that if i was interested i'd come out to the storage units and see what he had available so i agreed i got pretty excited i wasn't showing it but i was excited and um so the next day we drove like an hour and a half away and we pulled up at this storage unit it's out in the middle of nowhere we were kind of sketched out it was freezing cold outside middle of winter and um there are icicles melting and all of this art and interesting furniture and historical items it was all spread out inside getting water on it and it was just a mess it was kind of a lot to take in it was not at all the scene you'd want to see these paintings in we pull out this painting from the very dark corner and here's the painting that you now have with you and it's pretty amazing you know it's quite clearly old but i didn't know whether or not to believe that it was actually from 1450 when i saw that date you know because you just don't find a canvas work of art from 1450 in a storage unit in the middle of nowhere in colorado we kept looking he pulled it out for us to see it in the sunlight and he leaned it up against a table and while we were talking about it he just explained some history and he said that his parents always told him it was an old master's piece but he said that it was a flemish piece which i was immediately kind of skeptical of it doesn't look flemish to me but this painting was out of my reach completely there's no way i could possibly afford it but there were a few other paintings that i knew i could afford and i knew they were worth it so i went for those and then at the very end it was a perfectly calm day other than the melting snow in the freezing temperatures but a gust of wind came up and it swept that painting up and it crashed it down against a smaller table and it was one of the most gut-wrenching moments of my existence like it was truly painful i cannot explain the level of pain hearing that canvas rip and knowing the history that it had like i just decided that it has to be restored there's no other way like i will not let this painting get thrown away or lost or it has to be restored there's just no other way several days later i contacted him again and he had decided that he did want to sell it and um for a much more reasonable price thankfully for me and now that's kind of where we're at we'd really like to see this piece restored to its former glory and not have that history been it'd just be tragic to have it be lost so that's why we contacted you well to say that the damage um is significant is kind of an understatement there's a pretty complex tear that goes right through his face which is unfortunate uh we'd love to have the tear somewhere other than the face but it is what it is so let me tell you what i found about the painting this painting was uh glue lined to another piece of canvas and on the back of that lining there were several patches which indicates that this painting has been damaged at least twice before and has been through several rounds of conservation it's clearly suffering from an accumulation of surface grime and old varnish and under that varnish layer which is incredibly thick it is almost like syrup that was poured on the surface of the painting we have a beautiful palette of colors something other than brown which is really what the painting consists of today it has been through many rounds of conservation and all of that history is on the painting but all things considered i think that this painting is going to respond well to conservation it's incredibly dirty there are some structural issues that need to be addressed but can be addressed successfully and once everything is said and done i think we're going to have a very different painting than the one that i received mcgregor i have to ask you appear to be a fairly young man and probably an outlier in terms of most of my clientele so if i could how old are you and how did you get involved in the fine art business i'm 19 years old and i didn't really get into the fine arts business the fine arts business kind of found me you know it was definitely unexpected so i've always loved history and i've always been extremely drawn to it ever since i was little i would go to art museums with my parents and i never thought that i would actually be able to own a piece like this but now that i do it's extremely exciting and it's actually gotten me so interested in fine arts that i've decided to change my major to art history so that's what i'm pursuing now and it's just a very interesting and very exciting field that i really look forward to pursuing as my life goes on well thanks so much for joining me mcgregor i really appreciate you taking the time and thanks for trusting me with your painting it's going to be a fun project i suspect it's going to make me work a little bit harder for it than i think right now but i'm up for the challenge and i can't wait to see what i find and give back to you a painting that really deserves to be up on the wall and out of the storage shed absolutely we're so excited to have you working on it julian thank you all right mcgregor well i will keep you posted as i find things and uh hopefully we'll be talking soon so we've heard from the owner we've seen the painting and now let's get to the work and the first thing that needs to happen is i need to remove this painting from its frame and then get the painting off of the stretcher it's always surprising to me that a painting can be held in a frame with the whopping sum of three rusty nails i suppose they did their job but we'll do better later on pulling the frame and the painting apart in this case was pretty easy sometimes it is not i've found paintings glued stapled nailed screwed into their frames luckily in this case the three rusty nails gave way now if i'm looking at this painting i'm noticing that there is no tacking edge that's right the painting is simply glued to the stretcher which is a first for me i have seen paintings nailed and screwed to the stretchers but i have never seen one without a tacking edge just glued down so i need to remove this painting from the stretcher and luckily the adhesive that was used has deteriorated and well failed so it's fairly brittle and using a small thin palette knife i can work my way around the edges and lift up the canvas from the support i'll break the glue joint with the palette knife or scalpel and then as i lift the painting off it will separate from that stretcher in this case we're really lucky that this old glue has deteriorated imagine if this were epoxy well then i'd probably need power tools and while i love using power tools using a pallet knife and a scalpel is much easier and much safer both for me and the painting and so with the last flick of the palette knife the painting is separated now if it wasn't patently obvious this canvas is very old and very brittle so i have to take a little bit of extra care moving it notwithstanding this massive tear right along the sitter's face the other areas of the canvas are just as fragile and so i need to make sure that when i'm sliding it off of the support none of the canvas catches and creates an additional tear because not only would that be more work for me but i really really don't want to damage a painting it kind of goes against everything that conservators stand for now because it is so fragile and brittle i am not simply going to grab this painting and move it around i'm going to slide a piece of acid free foam core underneath it to provide a little bit of temporary support and stability when i do transport the painting to the back half of the studio generally i can pick up a canvas and move around with it relatively freely but you can see even as i try to lift it up onto this foam core it's just kind of crumbling under its own weight and that's just because the canvas is so torn so this foam core is going to provide a little bit of support as i move it to the back of the studio where i'm going to face the painting in preparation for removing the lining now i'm going to head over to my expandable spray booth room area and i've heated up the adhesive and i'm going to start applying it to the face of the painting i could use a roller and i will later on but in order to make sure that the canvas doesn't tear and that the roller doesn't grab any of the loose areas i'm just going to use a brush to apply the first layer of adhesive and then i'll take a large sheet of washi cozo that beautiful japanese mulberry paper that's incredibly strong incredibly thin and very flexible and lay it down into that adhesive and just kind of press it so that there's a good bond now this is a temporary solution this adhesive that i'm using is specifically for conservators and it is heat and solvent activated so i can use heat or solvent to soften it up and remove this adhesive later on and this is also a flexible adhesive i don't want something that's terribly brittle because the painting is going to flex as i handle it and if the adhesive were really brittle then the bond would break and the facing would become moot now i'm using this adhesive as opposed to a fish gelatin because the adhesive used to line the painting was rabbit skin glue and i'll need to expose that to moisture to remove it and if i used a fish gelatin adhesive when i expose the painting to moisture it would run the risk of lifting up that facing again rendering it moot so once the adhesive has had a day or two to dry i can begin removing the old lining and sleeves up of course because inevitably if i don't roll them up they get very dirty now it appears that this canvas is fairly brittle and it's just gonna peel right off i always hope that i can take the canvas off in one fell swoop kind of grab it by the corner and just peel it back as in some of the other videos i have sometimes however that's not the case and for this painting the canvas is just so deteriorated and so old that trying to slide the palette knife underneath it well it just tears and this is not a big problem i don't need to save this old lining canvas but it just means that i can't peel it back in one fell swoop even using the palette knife to try to slide under and lift up large sections is proving to not be an adequate solution in fact sometimes i can't even get the palette knife underneath the lining canvas so that means it's scalpel time and scraping lots and lots of scraping i am working now in small little one centimeter by one centimeter bits and slicing off the old lining canvas this is what i was hoping i wouldn't have to do because as you can see there is a lot of real estate for me to work with and it's going to take some time in fact this is going to take the better part of two days working all day to remove this canvas in small bits and i'll take breaks of course but there's no other way to do this so scrape away [Music] [Music] now after quite a bit of scraping i am on to well more scraping but this time i have to remove the rabbit skin glue from the back of the original canvas now i am using a gelled water solution here because rabbit skin glue is hygroscopic meaning that it absorbs ambient moisture or water when it comes in contact and so this gelled water will sit on the rabbit skin glue and allow that glue to swell become soft and then using a dull scalpel because in this case i don't want to cut any of the canvas the original canvas that is i will begin the process of removing this rabbit skin glue this is a little bit more rewarding than removing the canvas because this is the last bit of scraping i will need to do unfortunately there is a lot of rabbit skin glue on this painting and as you can see it is piling up pretty quickly now i can only go section by section and i'm working in about a six inch seven inch square section which is about the limits of the size that i can employ at one time and that's because i don't want the canvas to distort i don't want the gelled water solution to start to dry out and if i try to do too much at once i always feel like i'm rushing so working in small sections allows me to have control and allows me to affect the change that i want in a deliberate manner without running the risk of any nasty side effects which don't sound all that bad but if i can control the movement of this canvas if i can make everything predictable if i can eliminate unforeseens well that means that there is less for me to have to fix or clean up and i'll get a better understanding of precisely the limits of this painting and its materials so you can see that the rabbit skin glue is piling up and it is kind of gross this is not a lovely material to work with it sticks to everything it sticks to the gloves my arms my apron it's on the floor it's on my shoes and it's just kind of gross so be gone rabbit skin glue once the meditative or soul-crushing task of scraping is complete the painting can be transferred over to the hot table to receive a treatment to remove any waves ripples dents or other planar distortions the painting is exposed to a damp blotter paper it's enveloped with some pet film the table is heated up the air is sucked out and the combination of heat moisture and pressure relaxes the canvas and flattens it and once the table has reached the appropriate temperature it will be allowed to cool and then the painting will rest under new bladder papers until it is dry and acclimated after speaking with mcgregor and the art historian with whom we are working to research this painting we decided to take some samples and have them analyzed by a lab now the first sample i'm going to take is of the canvas i would normally use the tacking edge or some selvage but in this case we just don't have any extra canvas so i have to take a piece of the actual painting now this is an incredibly delicate process but by moistening the canvas i can soften the size which bonds the ground layer to the canvas once it's adequately soft i can start to peel back this canvas layer from the paint now the only thing that is holding this paint together is the washi cozo facing i have to be extremely careful here because if the paint crumbles well it's lost and while this corner of the painting already has significant paint loss that's why i chose this area i don't want to add to any of that but by working very slowly and peeling back and slicing back the canvas i can release it from the paint layer and then i will have my sample now ultimately the lab is going to have to process this sample to remove organic contaminants and the radiocarbon dating that we're going to do will tell us when this canvas was produced well actually what it will do is tell us when the cotton last exchanged carbon with the atmosphere but in order to send it to the lab i have to maintain a chain of custody so i'll photograph the sample with a color and ruler card i will label it and then it is sealed and off to the laboratory anything but this and they won't accept this sample so it's absolutely critical to maintain this chain of custody now of course i have removed a piece of canvas from the painting and if i don't replace it when i take the facing off the paint in that area will just crumble so i've gone to my stock of old canvases i have found one that is of the same or similar enough weave and weight the warp and the weft match and i'm going to cut it and create an inlay but before i do i need to make sure it fits and once i'm happy with the size trimming off a little bit here and there i also need to fray the edges because this freshly cut canvas is too crisp i need a softer edge once i've done that i can apply some adhesive to the actual paint layer and then i'll apply a little bit to the canvas patch and i will inlay it in to the recess once it's fitted i'll cover it with some blotter paper some release film and some weights to let it dry and this will take about a day now in addition to the canvas we're also taking a sample of this wooden stretcher now we have every reason to believe that this is not the original stretcher we know that this painting has been worked on at least two times before and if it is 471 years old probably more than two times but we still want to take advantage of this opportunity to get some information about this wood it will help us place more information into the history of this painting even if this stretcher isn't as old as the canvas it will give us a data point about when this conservation took place and so again i've documented the process of removing the samples ironically both with still photography and video here and i'm just taking a little piece of the wood well i'm actually taking a fairly large piece of the wood the lab requested a little bit more of the wood than of the canvas because apparently processing the wood requires more material the good news is that there is ample wood and once i have removed this piece i can create a little dutchman to fill it and just like with the canvas sample i'm going to bag these little chips of wood i'm going to then label the bag and then i'm going to place it right next to the sample location with my color card which also has a little ruler on it and i'm going to photograph it and it may seem excessive or redundant to do all of these steps i mean we're just sampling and testing some wood here but the lab requires this because they need to make sure that what i'm sending them is what i gathered and that there has been no bait and switch of course now we have a sample but we also have a gap and a structural compromise on the original support and into that gap a dutchman needs to be fit so because the original support is oak i'm going to use oak as well and after spreading a little bit of wood glue into the gap with a very scientific and space-age advanced approach i am ready to place the dutchman in and clamp it into place and this is going to take a day or so to dry and once it's dry i will come back with chisels and a plane and begin to shape it to the profile of the original support and then this stretcher will be as good as new nobody will ever see this dutchman and it will provide adequate structural support and now i can check on the repair of the canvas where i took the little sample and we can see that it fits it's smooth and flush and now i am ready to take the painting over to the back half of the studio and start preparing it for its interleaved lining i'm going to lay down a flat spun nylon gossamer onto the canvas i'm going to trim it so that it fits i'll trim it again later and then i'm going to apply the conservation adhesive to the back of the canvas now observant viewers will notice that this is the same adhesive that i use to face the painting which presents a unique question when i remove the facing will it compromise the adhesive bond on the back well the answer is kind of maybe but not really and it's not that big of a deal i know big dodge right julian but here's the thing when i remove the facing from the front only the areas where there are holes and tears will the solvent penetrate through and go to the back of the painting where there is also adhesive yes this will soften up that adhesive but i'm not going to actively remove it so it won't be disturbed that much in addition when i go to line this painting there's going to be adhesive on the pet film so double the adhesive so any that is lost or thinned out by the removal process of the facing that's happening here there will be plenty of adhesive so yes the adhesive on the back of the canvas may be thinned out during this removal process but it's not going to have any adverse effect on the lining process and because the adhesive is solvent based i can merely apply the solvent to the facing and let it sit and the adhesive releases from the face of the painting yes there is some residue and i will clean that off but again the painting needs to be cleaned anyways and the old varnish removed so anything that's on the surface is going to come off one way or the other with the facing removed i have assembled the lining sandwich transferred the painting to the hot table and now i'll simply line the painting once the canvas is brought up to temperature about 150 degrees fahrenheit i can turn the heat off let it cool take it out of the mylar envelope and then put it back together so join me for the next episode where i wrap up the work and put the painting well back together and maybe we'll hear from mcgregor just one more time

Channel: Baumgartner Restoration

Views: 415,514

Rating: 4.9567523 out of 5

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

Id: Mim1Yp6-0ok

Length: 30min 5sec (1805 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/lightningusagi]

I really liked this video. It's a lot different than the ones he's been doing lately, and I really appreciated hearing more about the painting itself. For the past 6 months or so, I've found myself skipping through his videos to get past weird voiceovers, but I actually sat through the whole one this time.