RESTORATION, in matters of fine art, the putting of a building, a work of sculpture, a painting or other work of art into what is thought to have been its original perfect con dition. There is, however, a secondary mean ing which is often used in a way to cause con fusion: this is the preparation of drawings showing what, in the opinion of the drafts man or his director, would be the appearance of the building or other work of art if restored according to the above definition. The term (conjectural restoration° is applied to these drawings, though all restoration is more or less conjectural, but the adjective is used in these cases because the drawings often represent much more complete and precise, and much less thoroughly verified statements concerning the original state of the work of art than those which are actually carried out.
To treat first of these suggestions for restoration embodied in drawings: Among the most useful in the way of architecture are some by Sibil, who continued the work of Letarouilly in his folio v.ork on the Vatican in Rome, and those by the well-known author and architect, Viollet-le-Duc, especially in the plates to
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and in three or four large lithographs for display on the walls of schools and the like. These are based upon a very exact knowledge of the processes of build ing. There are some of singular interest in the work on the discoveries at Pergamon, by Pontremoli and Collignon (
Restoration of buildings, when carried out in reality, is extremely open to error of the most mischievous sort, because it is never safe to assume that the last word has been spoken in the matter of demonstration of the building's original condition. As the years advance, for
instance in 1920, we could not for a moment accept the archieological knowledge of our predecessors, say of 1860, and yet in the years following the middle of the 19th century nearly all the most important mediaeval buildings of Europe were restored, and too often in a rad ical way. In too many cases the original char acter of the building is destroyed altogether, as in the famous instance of the church of Saint Front at Perigueux, and in the case of the Fon daco dei Turchi at Venice, now the Museo Civico; but in .a vastly greater number of cases the restoration has been conscientious and in way judicious, but has still destroyed much that would be, had it been spared, the best possible evidence for the original study of the structure. It will be noted that the ambition of the official or committee in charge of a great building, religious or secular, is nearly always to have it as complete and elegant as may be; that this ambition is more than repeated in the architect whose reputation and pecuniary gain are closely connected with the great and costly undertaking; and finally that these ambitions find an echo in the opinions of the general pub lic, who, of course, like to see the famous monu ment of their city put into first-rate order and kept as clean and perfect and bright-colored as the new buildings near. To this is added the actual demand for safety. Thus, in the case of the Ducal Palace at Venice, of which the restorations were carried on between 1881 and 1884, a conscientious desire to preserve the famous building intact was present in the mind of the controlling intelligence; but the great capitals of the lowermost arcade upon which the whole weight of wall reposes were in many cases found to be so split that they were un safe. It may well have been thought with per fect honesty that the preservation of the build ing required their removal; they were removed and placed with all care in a hall of the build ing, while newly cut capitals were put in their place. Saint new_ was more harshly treated, for the exquisite marbles with which the ex terior was sheathed were carried off and re placed by slabs of a vastly inferior quality and color, a certain smoothness and a certain ap pearance of finish being thus obtained at the expense of the chromatic beauty of the original work. Nothing need be said of the mosaics, because they are always in a state of change, repairs and restorations going on all the time: but the change in the great floor of the church by which the singular waves and hollows which had marked it for so many years were all graded and the floor smoothed out into a glossy, modern pavement, excited at the time the great est indignation on the part of many, but can hardly call for criticism, there being so much doubt as to the true cause of the old inequalities.