AIC's 51st Annual Meeting

Interdisciplinarity has always been a key feature of the conservation field. Exchanging knowledge from different perspectives is essential to better understand a cultural object. Institutional partnerships may also be enriching through the exchange between professionals with different backgrounds and expertise.

São Paulo Museum of Art Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) has a large collection of European Art, and one of the museum's roles is to preserve and research this collection. In recent years, MASP has invested in conservation projects in which specialists on a given material or artist are invited to work with the conservation staff to discuss technical and ethical matters that arise during treatments.

In 2022, a project was organized in partnership with Frans Hals Museum to study and treat three paintings by Frans Hals in MASP’s collection: the portraits of Captain Andries van Hoorn (1638), Maria Pietersdochter Olycan (1638) and an unidentified ‘Seated Officer’ (1631). The Physics Departments of the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ) and of University of São Paulo (IFUSP) were also involved.

The aim of this collaboration was to perform well-founded treatments of the paintings, which presented aesthetical issues such as oxidized varnishes and altered inpainting that were disturbing their reading. For that, technical and stylistic aspects and the documental history of the paintings were assessed.

IFRJ and IFUSP performed visible light, raking light, induced ultraviolet luminescence, infrared reflectography, and radiography imaging, as well as Macroscopic X-Ray Fluorescence scanning (MAXRF) and X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) measurements. Their involvement in the discussions was essential regarding pigment identification and interpretation of past interventions.

Frans Hals Museum was an active partner in all phases of the project. In the first stage, concerning preliminary technical and historical research, MASP’s conservation team had online meetings with FHM specialists, who shared their expertise on the artist’s practices, technique, and stylistic evolution. The second phase consisted in organizing a scientific committee including professionals from different Dutch institutions with experience in Frans Hals’ works, in which the results of the preliminary study were presented. Issues such as the previous addition of a coat-of-arms in one of the paintings, large amounts of overpainting and changes of original dimensions were discussed. The third phase of the project consisted in the conservation treatment of the paintings. The conservator of FHM spent a month in São Paulo participating in the conservation treatment along with MASP’s conservators. Her involvement was essential during the process, to better understand Hals' handling of paint and evaluation of damages. This proved especially important during removal of varnish layers, recognition and interpretation of overpaint, and during retouching.

A conservation treatment concerns not only technical aspects but also - and sometimes mainly - ethical decisions influenced by diverse cultural approaches. In that matter, the interinstitutional exchange was essential in the understanding of the paintings and in the decision-making process. The awareness of the cultural, social, and historical importance of dialogue when treating an artwork creates more conscious and collaborative conservation decisions.