Word: annigoni
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Dates: during 1956-1956
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...Portrait Painter Pietro Annigoni, who touched off the ruckus, most modern restorers are no more civilized than scalp-lifting red Indians. "The war did not destroy a greater number of works of art [than they]," said he. "I do not doubt the meticulous care employed by these renovators, nor their chemical skill, but I am terrified by the contemplation of these qualities in such hands as theirs...
Mortal Wounds. "What is interesting" about a masterpiece, Painter Annigoni argued, is always "the surface as the master left it, aged, alas! as all things age, but with the magic of the glazes preserved, and with those final accents which confer unity, balance, atmosphere, expression-in fact all the most important and moving qualities in a work of art. But after these terrible cleanings, little of all this remains . . . Falling upon their victim, [the scientific restorers] commence work on one corner, and soon proclaim a 'miracle'; for, behold, brilliant colors begin to appear. Unfortunately what they have found...
...Annigoni's letter drew a fervent "amen" from Bernard Berenson, dean (91) of Renaissance art experts: "It says everything I have been wanting to say for many years past about the iniquity of the way Italian pictures particularly are being skinned alive by restorers." Other letters pointed out various masterpieces in London's National Gallery which may have ceased to be masterpieces through too much cleaning. Among them: pictures by Giovanni Bellini, Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Velásquez, and even Leonardo's great Virgin of the Rocks. Leonardo's figures, wrote one angry correspondent...