Deterioration Of Paintings Research Articles

The Deterioration of Oil Paintings 1

OIL paintings are subject to various kinds of changes, which may be considered as diseases, requiring different treatment according to their different nature. A science needs to be formed, a pathology and therapeutics of oil paintings. The pathology would have to describe and explain those diseases and their progress, and to develop the methods by which a correct diagnosis could be arrived at in each individual case. The therapeutics would teach the remedies which might be applied either to cure or to alleviate the disease, or at least to stop its progress. A hygiene would follow, which would have to teach how to avoid pernicious influences, and which, besides, while giving precepts for the technical process of painting, would have to forestall those constitutional diseases which, even in cases where no noxious influences can be traced, are the causes of decay, after a comparatively short period of existence. As medical science is above all things based on anatomy and physiology, so the exact knowledge of the structure of a picture would have to be acquired previously to any study of its disease. Unfortunately, direct investigation alone can procure no such exact knowledge; on the contrary, we are obliged to enter upon a minute historical investigation of the material as well as of the technical methods adopted by artists of different schools and different periods.