Some Considerations on Recent Approaches to Cleaning, Conservation, and Display of Ancient Marble Sculptures from Historical Collections

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on the need for a comprehensively conscious conservation approach when dealing with ancient stone sculptures coming from historical collections, that is to say those antiquities that were collected from the Renaissance onwards and were thus sometimes radically modified due to restorations accomplished between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. In the last decades, after the abandonment of the destructive approach of ent-restaurierung (de-restoration) widely practiced during the twentieth century, the preservation of marble accretions has gradually acquired a recognized historical significance, but still today inadequate attention seems to be paid concerning cleaning and surface issues. As demonstrated both by written sources and material evidence, cleaning used to be a crucial and extensive component of historical conservation treatments, often resulting in a dramatic alteration of the ancient piece. Patination and surface applications were part of the historical treatments. As shown by the recent conservation and exhibition of the Torlonia marbles, newly performed treatments aiming at preserving the rich and multi-layered history that sculptures acquired over time should be more careful in considering such aspects, both in terms of treatments and in the exhibition of objects.