Restoration

A work of art, just like any human being, may be blessed with a happy fate, or plagued by hardship. As circumstances change, fame can give way to neglect, and luck become misfortune. In such a way, the painting that entered the Tretyakov Gallery collection in ip with the title “Prince Vladimir Baptized in Chersonesus” (1829) had a complicated Its condition and overall quality made some experts doubt that it was indeed the work of Andrei Ivanov (1775-1848), the distinguished professor who was a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts and the teacher of artists such as Alexander Ivanov (his son, who remains best known for “ Appearance of Christ Before the and Karl Bryullov, whose “Last Day of Pompeii” brought European recognition for the Russian school of painting.

The Igor Grabar All-Russian Research and Restoration Centre (“Grabar’s workshops” or “the Centre”) has marked its 90th anniversary. For art restoration in Russia, 90 years represent a whole era, an epoch. Reviewing the history of the development of the workshop one can trace the entire history of Russian art restoration and renovation. The celebration of this milestone anniversary provides a good reason for taking stock and summarizing what has been done, and how over these years the field of art renovation in Russia has developed. Better known as “Grabar’s workshops”, this institution since its inception until today has been the site of major state-sponsored restoration projects. The Centre is named after the famous artist, art historian and public figure Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar, the trail-blazer and founder of scholarship-based methods of art restoration in Russia. He introduced such methods as pre-restoration examination of the artefact, photo recording and documenting of all restoration procedures, and group decision-making in the process of cleaning works from later additions. Grabar was the driving force behind the creation, in the 1920s, of the Russian art restoration school, that comprises a set of techniques and practices that are unique and have no match in Europe, and continuously develop using research findings from different areas of culture.