The Metropolitan Museum of Art's ‘Spanish Ceiling’ Project: Interpretation and Conservation

Abstract

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) is renovating the Arts of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia galleries, a project requiring the conservation of the ‘Spanish Ceiling’, a 33 × 28 ft, sixteenth-century Moorish-influenced painted and gilded wood ceiling. This paper focuses on the history, construction, configuration and treatment of the ceiling. The ceiling was purchased for William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s, though never installed. In 1956 it was donated to the MMA and in the 1970s it was placed in the Islamic galleries until it was dismantled in 2004. An eighteen-month conservation project began in 2007 and included provenance and manufacturing research, scientific analysis, conservation and digital mapping of the ceiling's modifications and condition. These studies revealed information about the ceiling's origin, materials and restorations. A significant discovery was that the ceiling had been completely altered and enlarged, leading to the investigation of its possible original configuration.