THEORY OF RESTORATION NARDINI EDITORE ‘ ISTITUTO ¢ © CENTRALE PER IL RESTAUROMH) NN oliraaBat 00 Author of the first and still best known Teoria de/ restauro, Cesare Brandi lent intellectual dignity to restoration work, which until that time had been an empirical, artisan-type activity. Given that the protection and restoration of works of art is a moral obligation for any member of civilised society and so its highest level must be recognised, restoration then becomes ‘criticism in action’. It is even more important because it is practised directly on the work of art, whose material integrity must be respected, as that is the only way to protect the artistic values of figurative objects that are inseparably linked to the materials of which they are made. As it is an activity of criticism, restoration must be conducted in an interdisciplinary context, and every professional (scientific expert, conservator-restorer, art historian) will play an equal role, albeit with the operational coordination of a specialist in any given work of art — the historian. The Teoria is an integral part of Brandi’ aesthetic production, which is laid out in the four Dialoghi di Elicona (Carmine, Arcadio, Eliante, Celso), in Segno e immagine, Le due vie, Struttura e architettura, and Teoria generale della critica. To date, it has been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, Greek, Romanian, and Bohemian. PCM eR MOR LC sc Central Institute for Restoration in Rome for 20 years, then going on in DC USC uO Os eu ORE RUC Ue Rome University, starting in 1967. DO RLU CoE L RCS ety on criticism and art history, aesthetics, art itineraries and protection of CeCe Cm CE ORC CuOR CREO Ce ue ALT LS ae mer a) CRC URC CCR Ce Pm ORT. His reflection arises in the highest tra of European thought, from Plato to Kant and Hegel, up to Husserl, Heidegger, Bergson and Sartre, PoC) PEEL RC CUCL Cusco My PO eM CU em ORCL ‘one of the most original aesthetics of the twentieth century.ARTE E RESTAUROCesare Brandi Theory of Restoration edited by Giuseppe Basile translated by Cynthia Rockwell presentations by Giuliano Urbani Nicholas Stanley-Price Caterina Bon Valsassina with texts by Giuseppe Basile Paul Philippot Giulio Carlo Argan Cesare Brandi ISTITUTO CENTRALE PER IL RESTAURO NARDINI EDITORE"ARTE E RESTAURO Editor of the collection Andrea Galeazzi Cesare Brandi, Theory of Restoration Original title: Teoria del restanro © 1977, 2000 Giulio Einaudi editore The English edition © 2005 Nanorst Errore Piazza della Repubblica, 2 50123 Firenze - Italy T +39 055 2385528 wwwnardinieditore.it www.nardinirestauro.it info@nardinieditore.it © 2005 - Texts and images by IOR - Istituto Centrale per il Restauro Piazza San Francesco di Paola, 9 00184 Roma - Italy T +39 06 48896293, wwwierbeniculturaltit icr@arti benicultural.it ISBN 88-404-4089-5 ‘Translated by Cynthia Rockwell Revision by Dorothy Belt Paul Philippot’s original French text has been translated by Philip Rand Editorial Consultant Joan Marie Reifsnyder With the collaboration of Marta Thorp Graphics by Francesco Bertini Technical co-ordination by Paola Bianchi Printed by Nuova Grafica Fiorentina Cover photograh: Siena, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. Duccio pt BUONINSE Detail of fabric covering the throne (with ‘tratteggio’ reintegration). NA, Majesty.eportation of the ‘made in Italy’ brand, through the promotion of one of the greatest cultural, civic and also economic resources of the Bel Paese ~ its historico-artistic heritage — has been from the outset one of the key points in the program at the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities. As everyone knows, this heritage is rich not only in monuments, museums, paintings and archaeological sites, but also in an extensive ‘technical’ culture composed of knowledge that has been shaped and stratified in the course of centuries in order to best study, protect and conserve precisely that heritage of cultural ‘property’ and works of all kinds, Out of all this expertise, one facet of the greatest demand at the international level is certainly that of historical, technical, scientific and technological support in the field of conservation and restoration, as verifed daily in both Naly and the entire world. Over the years, the Ministry has, in fact, become - increasingly -— a privileged resource in the field of restoration and conservation. On the operational level, it can rely on prestigious central intitutes, such as the Istituto Centrale per il Reslawro in Rome, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, and the Istituto Centrale per la patologia del libro in Rome, all of which are included in the new organisation of the Ministry under the Department for Research, Innovation and Organisation, directed by Prof. Giuseppe Proietti. Together, those institutions have recently earned Italy major worldwide recognition from UNESCO: a role as the country of the ‘Blue Helmets’ of culture in the general coordination of all efforts to support the countries whose historical and cultural heritage has been damaged by warfare and natural disasters. Therefore, I received with great pleasure the invitation of the Director of the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro to present the English translation of Cesare Brandi’s Teoria del restauro, as it is a further step in the wider affirmation of concepts and principles that are by now the basis of ltaly’s know-how, ina sector that makes us both enviable and the recipients of continuous appeals for help and advice. It is our precise duty — as well as our own strong commitment — to respond with our best to an ever greater number of cases. Giuliano Urbani Minister of Cultural Heritage and ActivitiesLi gives me great pleasure to write this preface to the first full translation. into English of Cesare Brandi’s seminal work ‘Theory of Restoration’. In making available this text to an English-speaking audience, the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome has made an exceptional contribution to promoting a wider understanding of cultural conservation. Moreover, it is entirely appropriate that this Institute has taken the initiative, founded and directed as it was by Cesare Brandi. THE TRANSLATION OF ‘TEORIA DEL RESTAURO’ Why is the publication of this text in English such an important milestone? And why has it taken over forty years for these essays to be translated into English, since they were first collected and published in Italy in 1963? The answers have to be sought in a variety of circumstances which themselves form part of the history of conservation-restoration. A reason that is often given is the difficult language in which Brandi expressed his reflections on the nature of restoration. This is certainly true — even native Italian speakers are challenged by his forms of expression and subtlety of argument. But complexity of language has not impeded the translation of other philosophical texts that have been recognised to be seminal. Another reason may lie in the origin of the text itself. Rather than being the carefully developed statement of a theory, the ‘Teoria del Restauro’ is in fact a collected work, being a combination of essays previously published by Brandi and new texts based on his lectures to students during the first twenty years of the Istituto at Rome. The reader has to exercise his or her own judgment as to how best to read it. Whatever the reason, it is only in recent years that translations into several other languages have appeared. In fact, a translation into Spanish of ‘Teoria del Restauro’ has been available since 1971, but a French version did not appear until 2001 (a Romanian version was published in 1996,a Bohemian one in 2000, a Greek one in 2001, and a Portuguese one in 2004). In fact, francophones had already been introduced long ago to Brandi’s thinking on art history and restoration, thanks to ils interpretation in his own lecturing and writing by Paul Phitippot.' Generations of students at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and at ICCROM, where Philippot served as Assistant Director and then Director (1959-1971), were fortunate to have their teacher's interpretations of Brandi’s thinking form part of his own fundamental contributions to art history and restoration theory. As early as 1966 anglophones could enjoy a long introduction to Brandi theory of restoration published in the English edition of the Encyclopaedia of8 Cesane BraNbi, THBory oF RESTORATION World Art? Perhaps viewed as more of a resource for art historians (or for the non-specialist public) than for conservators, this encyclopaedia essay seems to have been rarely cited in the conservation literature. It was not until thirty years later that English readers were reminded of the seminal importance of Brandi’s writings by Alessandra Melucco of the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro, drawing upon selected texts from the ‘Teoria del Restauro’ translated into English at the initiative of the Getty Conservation Institute.® Now with the availability of this new translation of the whole work, English- speakers can appreciate fully what contemporary conservation-restoration theory owes to Brandi. Complementing those translations into other languages, the English version is especially important because of the dominance at present of the English language in the teaching and practice of conservation worldwide. It serves, in addition to the many native speakers, all those for whom English is a second or third language (in global terms, now outnumbering the native speakers). IMPORTANCE OF BRANDI'S ‘THEORY OF RESTORATION’ Why is the appearance now of this text in English important specifically for promoting the conservation of cultural heritage? I would argue for three reasons especially, one related to the history of thought, another to the history of restoration, and a third to current concerns with cultural diversity. As to the history of thought, it is important to recall that Brandi’s development af a theory of restoration stemmed from his studies of philosophy as an art critic. In particular, his emphasis of the need for a critical approach to restoration derives from his experience of philosophical critiques. In turn, his own writings on aesthetics are now recognised in recent Italian publications on philosophy for their contribution to the subject. As to the history of restoration, in the ‘Teoria del Restauro’ we find discussed so many of those concepts that still exert their fascination in conservation debates today: the principle of reversibility of a treatment, the integration of lacunae, the respect for the effects of time on an object, the idea of patina, th concept of falsification, the scope for reconstruction of incomplete works of art, and so on and so forth. Not all of Brandi’s formulations have found full acceptance in subsequent discussions — for instance, for some critics, Brandi’s strong emphasis on aesthetics seems to assign an undue importance to the personal taste or aesthetic preferences of the conservator-restorer. Be that as it may, needless to say, it is only through the dissemination of texts such as the ‘Teoria del Restauro” that a discipline can develop a core body of theory and can think eventually of laying claim to professional codes of practice. Of course, the theory's concepts must be constantly re-visited and criticised afresh; but this process is normal in the growth of a discipline. Whatever their subsequent reception, it is undeniable that the intellectual ancestry of many current dilemmas in conservation can be traced back to Brandi’s formulations. It would be unnecessarily provocative to refer to the assertion by (I believe) Wittgenstein that the history of Western philosophy could be considered as a series of footnotes to Plato, Bul overstating the case forPRESENTATIONS 9 Brandi’s contribution through analogy can nevertheless help stimulate debate. As to its cultural impact, it has to be asked to what extent Brandi’s theory of restoration is relevant worldwide? Now that approaches to conservation of cultural heritage are informed by a much better appreciation of cultural diversity across the world, how important or relevant is a theory of restoration developed in Italy in the 1950s"? This very question was the theme of a conference organised in 2003 by the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro ~ one of three recent conferences in Italy dedicated to the legacy of Cesare Brandi, testifying to a resurgence of interest in his work and its impact. The published papers from this conference will provide rich material for assessing the application in other cultures of an Italian conservation practice with its origins in the principles of the ‘Teoria del Restauro’. Nor would the current attention being paid to intangible values come as a surprise to one for whom the message contained within an object is what is to be conserved along with the object’s material expression. Japan is one of those countries rightly credited with conservation policies that integrate tangible and intangible values, within a conservation philosophy very similar to Western ones. And in fact a translation into Japanese of the ‘Teoria del Restauro’ is under discussion. Meanwhile, in Africa, the Ecole du Patrimoine Africain, which was established in Benin in 1999, serves all the francophone and lusophone countries of sub-Saharan Africa in promoting the conservation of African cultural heritage. In September 2004 it re-dedicated its information centre as ‘Le Centre de Documentation Cesare Brandi’. ue The appearance of this English-language version of Cesare Brandi’s seminal work on conservation-restoration is indeed a milestone. The initiative of the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in making it possible, and the achievements of the translators in undertaking a famously difficult task, deserve our heartfelt thanks. May it inspire and provoke all those who take up the challenge of understanding and conserving culture in all its diversity. Nicholas Stanley-Price Director-General of ICCROM Notes ' Philippot, P, Pénétrer Vart, restaurer Yoeuvre: une vision humaniste. Hommage en forme de florilege, ed. C. Périer-D'leteren and B. D'Hainant-Zveny, Kortijk: Groeninghe EDS (1990). * Brandi, C., ‘Restoration and conservation: general problems, in Encyclopaedia of World Art, vol. 12, McGraw-Hill, New York, Toronto, London (1966), pp. 179-184 + Stanley-Price, N., Talley, M.K. and Melucco Vaccaro, A. (ed.), Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage: Readings in Conservation, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles (1996). ‘Lam grateful to my colleagues Rosalia Varoli Piazza and Valerie Magar for helpful comments on a first draft of this preface.The fult English translation of Cesare Brandi’s Theory of Restoration has been long in coming, and the Istituto Centrale per il Restawro (ICR) had a duty to have it published — not so much and not only to spread the theoretical thought of its founder at the international level, but also to make the principles contained in the Theory available (and thereby of use) to the broadest possible audience. Lowe to Giuseppe Basile - one of Brandi’s former students and a ‘militant veteran at the ICR for more than twenty years — the credit for providing the stimulus for the English edition as part of a systematic program of translations of the Theory in various languages. He has been a. tireless facilitator and promoter, especially in recent years. The Director-General of ICCROM, Nicholas Stanley-Price, has splendidly addressed the issue of the first, partial English translations (1966, 1996) elsewhere in this volume. It is now my task to attempt to outline the politico- cultural significance of the current translation. Borrowing from the art historian and methodologist, George Kubler! the concept of favourable access’ to a given historical process, we can certainly affirm that the ‘access to history’ provided by the English translation of Brandis ‘Theory of Restoration could not be better timed than at the present moment. Just look at the facts. Requests for the ICR's presence abroad in the conservation field, involving manifold aspects of scientific advice, direct treatment, and training of conservator-restorers, has grown exponentially in the past ten years. Meanwhile, the demand for similar support has dwindled at the national level during the same period. What does this mean? It does not mean — as a superficial interpretation of the facts might suggest ~ that Brandi’s Theory is old or dated, etc. It means precisely the opposite: it shows that the cultural project of Argan and Brandi that led in 1939 to the founding of the ICR and its advanced restoration school and in 1968 to publication of the Theory, was successfully implemented. Indeed, one can confidently state that the culture of restoration and attention to conservation problems, as laid out by Brandi, have by now been metabolised and are part of Italy's operational DNA ~ not only of the branches of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities (most of the architects, art historians, archaeologists and conservator-restorers who work in this area for superintendencies and museums), but also those in the regions, local agencies and church bodies. This widespread and ever- growing awareness, unimaginable in 1939, demonstrates how the ‘seed’ sown by Brandi more than sixty years ago has taken root and continues to bear fruit. At the same time, the geographical confines of the Istituto’s range of action2 ‘Cesare: BraNbI, THEORY OF RESTORATION have expanded to cover the entire world: from China to Argentina, from Egypt to Iraq, from Portugal to Germany, from India to Afghanistan, from Malta to the Kosovo. Whenever a team of the Istituto’s technicians works abroad, the first, key problem consists of finding an approach to the culture of the host country and, in view of that culture and the problems of conservation and/or training involved, transmitting the concepts and principles of restoration codified. by Brandi in his Theory in whatever way is appropriate. It is for this reason that the English translation presented here is so important, together with those in Spanish,? French? and Portuguese published in recent years,’ because it will help to spread Italy’s theoretical grounding and know-how in restoration throughout the main geo-political areas of the world. Certainly, Brandi’s highly cultivated Italian, dense with philosophical, literary and epistemological references (difficult even for many Italians) is particularly challenging to translate into any language, but especially into English, which is structurally so different from Italian. The Theory is full of traps and pitfalls, of possible misunderstandings and distortions of virtually every word in such a complex teat. This factor was probably the main impediment in the past to translation: it took courage on the translator's part and it also needed the pressure of a growing demand. The latter factor, in my opinion, helped to unblock the situation and give us the energy to tackle the effort, seizing a particularly favourable historical moment. Nonetheless, not having an English translation of the Theory did not stop either Brandi himself when he was director, or his successors, from involving the Istituto Centrale on the international level. Just think of the notorious cleaning controversy regarding the energetic cleaning of the Parthenon marbles at the British Museum, as well as some paintings at the National Gallery in London. Or look at Brandi’s accounts of travel to China, India or Persia and you can draw a portrait of a curious person — curious about life, curious about the world, open and cosmopolitan. This facet was captured, perhaps more than any other, by one of the first foreign students at the Istituto, Théo Antoine Hermanés, a Swiss who wanted to study restoration in Italy. During the oral part of the admission examination, he asked whether he could respond in French, and Brandi agreed as if it were perfectly normal. I conclude with an exhortation by Hermanes: ‘I think ... that the task of Cesare Brandi’s students and of all Italians interested in his studies is to favour, by all possible means, the translation of his works so that his thought will be diffused outside Italy, (where) the restoration problem is virtually a daily topic of conversation, but this is not the case in the rest of Europe."* And, one might add, not in the rest of the world either. Meeting the ever-increasing demand. to carry the conservation-restoration debate to the international arena is the objective of this publication, which has been enhanced (among other things) by the illustrations from the first Italian edition of the Teoria del Restauro, which were published by De Luca in 1963 but not included in the pocket-book editions by Einaudi. In conclusion, I would like to thank all those who have contributed to the volume, both within the ICR ‘family’ and outside it: Nicholas Stanley-Price and Paul Phitippot, who agreed to contribute prefaces; Andrea Galeazzi of the Nardini Editore publishing house, who helped from the outset with a1B. complicated undertaking and its legal issues; Rosalia Varoli Piazza for advice and assistance; Jukka Jokilehto; and Vittorio Rubtu for all his moral and material support. Final thanks go to Cynthia Rockwell and Dorothy Bell, respectively translator and reviser — ‘secret masters of the difference of languages’ They deserve the credit for managing to ferry’ Brandi’s thought into the most widespread language in the world. Caterina Bon Valsassina Director of the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro Notes ' Kubler, G., The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, Yale University Press (1979), p. 14. * Brandi, C., Teoria de la restauracién, Trad. Maria Angeles Toajas Roger, Madrid (1988); Madrid (1999). ' Brandi, C., Théorie de la resturation, Trad. Colette Déroche, Centre des Monuments Nationan, Paris (2001). * Brandi, C,, Teoria da Restauragdo, Trad. Beatriz Mugayar Kuhl, presentation Giovanni Carbonara, rev. Renana Maria Parreira Cordeiro, Brazil (2004). Further translations of the Teoria del restauro have been published in Romanian (1996), Bohemian (2000) and Greek (2001). 5A, Hermanes, ‘Tra insegnamento e realti pratica, in Cesare Brandi’, in Teoria ed esperienza dell'arte, Conference proceedings, 12-14 November 1998, Milan (2001), pp. 29-82, especially p. 82. © The quote is from Maurice Blanchot (Tradurre, 1971) in L. Venuti, Linvisibilita del traduttore, translation by Marina Guglielmi, Rome (1999), p. 387.INDEX PRESENTATIONS Giuliano Urbani .. .. ie. D. Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities Nicholas Stanley-Price Director-General of 1ccrom Caterina Bon Valsassina .. . . a Director of the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro Editor's Note iz Translator’ Comments. . 18 A Few Words about a Maestro, Cesare Brandi .......0..0000.4 > 19 Giuseppe Basile ‘The Phenomenology of Artistic Creation according to Cesare Brandi .........» 27 Paul Philippot THEORY OF RESTORATION Biographical Notes ....... voce eeteeeeetereeeeeeee® 45 1. The Concept of Restoration... sss... veseveeey AT 2, The Material of a Work of Art . peep cd cace > BL 3. The Potential Oneness of a Work of Art ..... bebe ue eae > 5B 4, Time in Relation to the Work of Art and Restoration .............0......9 61 5. Restoration with Regard to the Historical Case > 65 6. Restoration with Regard to the Aesthetic Case 7. The Spatiality of a Work of Art. 8. Preventive Restoration . . . tawresmednes APPENDIX 1. Falsification vevveeee be veeeteeeeeteeeseeeead 87 2, Postscript to the ‘Treatment of Lacunae be veete teste esse eee? 90) 3. Principles for the Restoration of Monuments ceeveeeee > 94 4. Restoration of Ancient Paintings ..................... » 96‘Cesare BRaNbI, Tupory oF Restoration 5. The Cleaning of Pictures in Relation to Patina, Varnish and Glazes 6, ‘Some Factual Observations on Varnishes and Glazes’ ........... 7. The Removal or Retention of Frames as a Restoration Issue PLATES SUPPLEMENTARY READING The Creation of the Istituto Centrale del Restauro (Report to the Meeting of Superintendents, July 1938) Giulio Carlo Argan Cultural Education in the School of Restoration (1940) . Cesare Brandi Bibliographical Note .. 00.60.0000 eve eevee eevee eect eee eeeeeeee p.101 » 109 - 123 ..» 129 ~~ le . 9179 - > 185EDITOR’S NOTE The editors intention here is to repropose the original edition of the Teoria det restauro, the version published in Rome in 1963 by ‘Edizioni di storia e letteratura’, not for an abstract love of philology but in the conviction that English-speaking readers of the work should not be offered a ‘historicised’ version and even less a truncated tool, which is what the 1977 Einaudi edition became (and, in its wake, all the other foreign language editions published so far), ‘The 61 photographs in the first edition are crucial to Brandi’s discourse, and the text contains careful references to them throughout: as a result, they had to be reinstated. In the course of recovering the original, the Biographical Note also appeared, However incomplete, itis also the only published autobiographical information known to date. ‘The only point of divergence with the first edition is the bibliography, which is here reduced to a minimum whereas there it was complete, but already excessive in the overall economy of the volume. Moreover, it was considered appropriate to add some other essays, for the sole purpose of enhancing comprehension of the work by readers who would find it difficult, if not impossible, to approach Brandi’s other works, notably those on aestheties, which still have not been translated into English, Some of these essays, that of Philippot in particular, help to convey Brandi’s ideas on artistic creation, of which the concept of restoration — as is well known —is the necessary complement and completion. Although this Belgian scholar, the former director of ICCROM, examines only two aspects of the issues covered in Brandi’s most complex and challenging work, Teoria generale della critica [General Theory of Criticism], this factor — in my opinion — does not impair the usefulness of the essay published here, for at least three different reasons: first, there was never an intention to relate Brandi’s aesthetic ideas, as they are not pertinent to the purposes of this volume; second, the Teoria det restauro was developed between the late 1940s and the beginning of the 50s, with the last inclusion in 1961, well before the publication of the Teoria generale (74); finally, the extraordinary capacity of Brandi’s thought to adapt to ever new stimuli is known to all - it changed and was enriched yet remained substantially coherent with positions developed in earlier theoretical works, especially in Carmine o detla pitiura ('45) and in Celso o della poesia (57), ‘The other two articles - that by Argan on the creation of the ICR and that by Brandi on cultural instruction in the restoration school ~ are no less useful in giving a sense of another, well-known characteristic, which is also quite exceptional, i.e., the continuous functional interplay between theoretical options and operational requirements, with the added benefit of being able to feed the results into didactic purposes, To put it another way, there is a continuous loop between theory, practice and education that has made the ICR experience the most advanced in the field so far, andl ot only in Italy. Indeed, the ICR merited a position among the (13) ‘Creative groups in Europe from 1850 to 1950" (which is the sub-title of the volume L’emozione e la regola, Bari, 1989), together — to name just a few - with the Institut Pasteur of Paris, the Bloomsbury Group, the Wiener Werkstaette, the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, the Biology School of Cambridge and the “Manhattan Project’ at Los Alamos.TRANSLATOR’S COMMENTS Without a doubt, Cesare Brandi’s Theory of Restoration is a challenging text, even for native alian speakers. Translating it into English involved endless hours of concentration and much mulling over tricky words. Just to give one example, a number of options were considered for the word istanza, bearing in mind Brandi’s studies in law (where istanza is a ‘petition’ or ‘request’) and his penchant for legal analogies. He also occasionally used punto di vista (point of view) in the sane context, so I began with ‘perspective,’ which seemed to capture the feeling that Brandi was seeing things from the standpoint of the work of art. That word, however, did not seem quite forceful enough, so the editorial committee first experimented with ‘claim’ and then settled on ‘case’ ~ as in making a case for something, which also conveys the legal overtones. All these terms have their merits, but none are totally satisfactory in expressing Brand's advocacy for mute works of art, almost as if he were pleading for them in a higher court beyond our comprehension. Any translator walks a tightrope between rendering the author's thought too literally or taking too many liberties to make it flow. Here, the work was complicated by Brandis many exquisite asides and qualifiers. I began to have a sense of a mind racing in ten different directions at once, eager to communicate but often sidetracked by other related ideas that popped up. In the translation, many of these digressions have been put in parentheses so as to maintain the focus on the primary issue under discussion. After intensive contact with his prose, I have ultimately come away wishing I had had the opportunity to know such a brilliant and stimulating person. Have I, like a hostage, been brainwashed by Brandis way of thinking? Brandi has often been quoted (sometimes out of context) as the authority behind various treatment approaches. Perhaps having a more extensive overview of what he said will help to clarify such issues. Moreover, it is interesting to see that some concerns are as current today as they were in Brandi's day. Others have since evolved in various ways, as Nicholas Stanley-Price has observed so well in his preface to the volume, Once the first draft was ready, the initial solitary effort fortunately became more of a group process. Lam indebted to various people who then read and discussed the text. First among these is Dorothy Bell, who carefully revised the entire manuscript and helped to make it eminently more readable. Other valuable input came from Bruce Balmer, Jukka Jokilehto, Gianni Ponti and Peter Rockwell. Giuseppe Basile of the ICR — himself a dedicated follower of Brandis ~ was particularly instrumental in clarifying numerous concepts, as well as being the prime mover behind the entire project.A FEW WORDS ABOUT A MAESTRO, CESARE BRANDI* One of the most important aspects of Cesare Brandi’s personality was his unflagging curiousity about the diverse aspects of artistic activity. Brandi was deeply convinced that art, in its various forms, was the highest expression of human creativity - and in fact one can say that his entire life was dedicated to art, toward which he developed a particularly acute sensibility quite early in life. He himself began to paint as a youth, and it was actually a childhood friend, the great archaeologist Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, who recounts seeing him tramping through the hills around Siena with an easel on his back, looking for a stretch of lake where he could capture particular luminous effects. He also wrote numerous lyrics,! which were appreciated by some of the major Italian poets of the time, Eugenio Montale in particular, toward whom he nurtured great esteem and friendship. At a certain point, however, he must have realised that he had to focus on some activities at the expense of others and that, in particular, he had to narrow his commitment to the task of identifying, studying and then defending and safeguarding the products of artistic creation that were objectively at greater risk — those that were composed of the same constituent materials (commonly called artifacts of figurative art) that had attained the highest results over centuries and millenia? In this way he succeeded, on the one hand, in assuring himself the opportunity to continue using an unequalled and continuous experience of art; on the other hand, however, he intended to react in a concrete way to what he considered to be a solemn duty for anyone who cared about the fate of human civilisation. Indeed, he was convinced that live experience of works of art was as necessary to civilised living as other cultural and (more generally) spiritual expressions. As a result, one must make every feasible effort to guarantee everyone — posterity as well — the right to a unique and totally personal experience, which cannot be transmitted to others: direct contact with a work of art. In Brandis view, to be truly valid this experience cannot be reported, related or conveyed by any surrogate, as in the case of other artifacts whose value is purely documentary or historical. For example, in the development of Western civilisation the so-called ‘Pythagorean table’ was as important as any artistic product, but there was no need for it to be concretised in a particular physical object in order to play its role. One could make an analogous observation about the Rosetta Stone, with its incomparable value as a tool for understanding Egyptian civilisation: it is certainly unnecessary to go to London to see it in person, given that the inscription can be more effectively20 Cesare Brant, TuzoRy oF RESTORATION studied in a copy, preferably a virtual one. Yet, to the contrary, not even the words of Marcel Proust could replace the direct experience of Vermeer’s View of Delft, just as no copy (pictorial, mechanical or virtual) could give us the same sensations as, for example, the personal perception of the azure mountains in the lighter blue of the sky in the landscape depicted behind Christ in Leonardo's Last Supper. Even when the same person is involved, the experience of a work of art cannot be said to occur once and for all. Indeed, the contrary is true, for one can revisit the same work of art infinite times and it will always be a new and different experience For this reason, for Brandi, the recognition of a work of art can only be followed by implementation of all the initiatives required to preserve the work's authentic material nature, which is also the best guarantee of preserving its formal values — that is, the values that characterise it as a work of art and distinguish it from all the other types of objects used in daily life.® These values, according to Brandi, cannot be abstractly defined, for instance by linking the recognition of an artifact as a work of art to its belonging to a style, a school, an historical period, an artistic vision or even to the same hand.! These values must be deduced from the work itself, naturally using the tools of approach and understanding perfected by the discipline of the history of art, which already in Brandis day ~ in Italy and Europe ~ had a well-consolidated tradition. It is hardly necessary to add that in the cultural climate that prevailed during his education, it was unthinkable to do without value judgements. Not that this means that he relied on a sort of ‘empathetic’ judgement: it would have been inconsistent with his own thinking if, after having objected to the notion of the ‘spontaneity’ of artistic endeavour (a notion that was popular in Italy because it lay behind the aesthetic theory of the most influential philosopher of the period, Benedetto Croce), he then maintained that the experience of art was literally within everyone's grasp. Even the recognition of a work of art can require a long time, just like the process of its production, and it is only in an ideal sense, not a phenomenal and practical one, that a work of art reveals itself as such to consciousness in an ‘instant’ and like a ‘bolt of lightning’ How complex and often certainly non-linear (just think of ‘pentimenti’ in painting or ‘variants’ in poetry, music or architecture) is the process that leads from the constitution of the object to the formulation of the image (see Philippot’s essay in this volume). In the same way, the process of recognising a given product of human activity as a work of art can be complicated and even contradictory. There is certainly no lack of examples — one need only consider that the greatness of Piero della Francesca was only adequately appreciated less than half a century ago. While it is true that nobody can exceed the limitations of their own time and the sensibility and culture by which it is marked, it would be equally unacceptable not to use all the tools available to study a work properly in all its manifold aspects. Without a base of solid knowledge, one cannot pretend to guarantee the safeguard of any work of art, with its dual nature as material artifact and spiritual product. This is why studies and tests are performed to define the constituent materials of the object and its condition (including prior treatments), and also why research is carried out to better define the work from the cultural standpoint.® Yet, all this cannot and should not let us forget that the ultimate purpose is to define the formal characteristics of the work - by this I mean whatever distinguishesA Few Worns aBour a Mazstno, CESARE BRANDI 21 it in its individuality, beyond any determination of time, place or culture: not that the latter information is irrelevant but because it does not get at the essence of what makes a work of art unique and unrepeatable. ‘To discover that Giotto was able to profit directly from recent advances in the study of optics (as found in the works of Roger Bacon and John Peckam in addition to Witelo) for the purposes of the revolutionary spatial approach (which was already close to ‘perspective’) he used in the cycle in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua would no doubt increase our admiration for his intellectual prowess. Still, the importance of the artistic results he achieved would certainly not be diminished if it were to be demonstrated — as is more likely — that he had to go through a ‘cultural intermediary’, someone who could read and understand those works and then convey the information effectively to a person such as Giotto who was probably not particularly ‘cultured’ (in today’s sense of the term). ‘The identification of the formal values of a work thus represents the main purpose of the history of art, understood, however, as an activity of criticism of specific artistic realities: it is a sort of continuous recognition, potentially unlimited in time and space, of how artistic creativity was expressed where conditions so permitted. Moreover, this is the deepest meaning of his travel books, and sets them radically apart from any other products in that teeming branch of literature. Starting with his first book, Viaggio nella Grecia antica (1954) [A Trip through Ancient Greece], it clearly emerges that he was basically driven by a ceaseless urge to discover instances where art had had the opportunity to come into its own: whether in Delphi or Tang painting, in the Garden of Katsura as in Palmyra, Karnak, Acerenza [Puglia], Mothya or Leptis Magna, Xian, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Novogorod or Lisbon. It is in this sense that art, for Brandi, is universal; and it is in this sense that it belongs to humanity — without distinction as to race, language, religious belief, political persuasion or anything else. ‘That is why he was outraged in the same way by any attitude he felt was incompatible with the respect and care that were owed to works of art, regardless of whether they were the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum in London or the church of San Domenico in Siena, his birthplace. A work of art, as such, belongs to everyone, apart from the individual who actually ‘owns’ the physical object concerned: it is thus everyone's task (Brandi stresses this repeatedly) to protect it. Naturally, not everyone can do that in the same way: it will depend on each person's own role and social responsibility.” Brandi is convinced that it is the basic obligation of a person of culture to make every effort to ensure that appreciation of, and thus interest in, the work of art is widespread. He identifies the first, fundamental tool to reach this end - even before the more specific and well-known treatment of conservation and restoration — as knowledge, which on the one hand is specialised activity in order to identify, study and illustrate the works (whether they are little known, totally obscure or famous); on the other hand, there is the work of awareness-raising among non-specialists, trying to provide them with the tools to establish an ever more adequate rapport. with the work of art. In this regard, one need only recall that the first public event at the Istituto Centrale del Restauro, just a year after its founding, involved an exhibition of restored works of art (Mostra dei dipinti di Antonello da Messina, Roma, 1942). Part of the22 Cesare BraNbi, TH#ORY oF RESTORATION, purpose was certainly to show that the new institution was already able to function despite the typical difficulties of wartime, but it also demonstrated what a real restoration treatment should be, ie., a treatment based on full respect of the work’s authenticity rather than a capacity to ‘adjust’, complete or beautify, with results that often turned the work into a forgery of itself. One radical innovation of the exhibition was to reveal the principles, methods and techniques employed, for at the time it was common practice to keep all that secret. The procedures and products used were the tricks of the trade. (Take the case of the most important Italian restorer of the period, Mauro Pelliccioli, whose reticence in this area lost him the job, a few years later, of restoring the Scrovegni Chapel.) That this was not an incidental choice but a deeply rooted conviction is demonstrated by the fact that, even when the Istituto was being planned, he envisaged a room for exhibiting the works of art as they were gradually restored, as well as a periodical publication about the Istituto’s activities.* Yet, as is known, the Istituto itself was born from the need to respond truly effectively — on the operative level — to the need to care for works of art and monuments in the most decisive way. Indeed, it was quite clear to those two very young employees of the Ministry of National Education ~ Brandi and Giulio Carlo Argan — that there would be no point in working to highlight the works (and monuments) of art if they were not guaranteed survival through proper legal instruments. Moreover, they were lucidly aware that even such measures would be insufficient if there were no way to avoid the risks involved in treatments that were still based on empirical and often artisan-type approaches to the physical conservation of the works, and worse still, that lacked a respect for the complex values (historical and more especially formal) they contained. That position arose from the virtually sacred consideration of the products of artistic creation that have survived to our day. It is not by chance that Brandi resorts to the Kantian concept of ‘moral imperative’ in order to indicate the attitude required for protection of works of art, intending to refer to a freely assumed obligation but one that cannot and must not be avoided, at the cost of self-exclusion from any civilised discourse, Moreover, it is a ‘disinterested!’ obligation, in the sense that it cannot be influenced by any other factor, but is fully repaid by the very fact of being accomplished. Such an elevated conception of the role of the works (and buildings) of art of the past for the purposes of civilised life brought with it (inevitably, I would say), a great sense of civic responsibility, and the most telling example of that was an act that encapsulates the convictions of a lifetime: he bequeathed to the state his villa at Vignano, outside the gates of Siena, with its entire contents of paintings, drawings, prints, statuary, books and furnishings. Naturally, his dedication to public enjoyment of works of art is not limited to this episode, important as it is, but permeates all his activity, especially in his role as a member of the ‘Consiglio Superiore di Antichita ¢ Belle Arti (Superior Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts] and his tireless work in mobilising the press to speak out against anything that might damage the dignity of the works or even, often, their physical integrity. Although he considered private ownership of works of art as ‘immoral’ (and no doubt he must have been thinking of certain situations where collections wereA Few Worbs apour a Manstno, Cesare BRANDI unaccountably closed in the face of a growing demand for access), he was even more outraged by the growing offences to works of art, monuments, historic centres, the coastline (with unregulated building), the clandestine trade in objects from museums and archaeological sites, and environmental disasters due to improper use of the land. His views were expressed in scathing articles over the years, recently collected (2001) in a volume entitled Ml patrimonio insidiato. Scritti sulla tutela del paesaggio ¢ dellarte, as well as by his lifetime militancy in the Italia Nostra‘ Association. Indeed, Brandi did not fail to notice the deep link, by now almost innate, that in a country such as ours has always united the various expressions of human activity, to such an extent that it has become common parlance, even if only metaphorical, to speak of a landscape as if it were a work of art.!! ‘This characteristic does not apply only to Italy; indeed it can be found somewhat throughout the Old Continent and more in general in many countries with ancient civilisations (at least where there have not been traumatic interruptions due to physical, political, religious or other causes). In our country, however, for reasons that cannot be further explored here, this interpenetration between anthropomorphised nature and man-made products! has come about more closely than elsewhere and has persisted substantially unchanged, at least up to the turn of the twentieth century. None of this intrinsic connection between the various products of artistic activity would have escaped Brandi, Only in recent years, and for essentially commercial reasons, have they been subdivided and classified as monumental or minor buildings, major arts and industrial arts, or by prior existence of historical or marginal significance. Nonetheless, their appreciation has derived more from an estimate of their market value than from their historico-documentary or aesthetic interest. As Brandi could not do everything at once, he had to focus on an area of works of particular significance. He chose those that were at greatest risk but also those where it was possible to find the highest degree of aesthetic value combined with historical stratification, i.e., those works — generally paintings or sculpture — that were unanimously held to be ‘masterpieces’. Certainly, he understood that the press impact would be heightened if he focused on a universally famous work such as Giotto’s Francescan cycle in Assisi. Yet, that was secondary to showing how one can obtain incomparably better results by respecting the two cases (aesthetic and historical), ina period when the various restoration ‘sorcerers’ at large respected neither the one nor the other. Brandi was certain that that was the right approach to restoring a work of art because it responded to the work's intrinsic structure: obviously, there can be no work of art without aesthetic validity, but equally no work of the past can exist without a history, given that everything that once was is in history — even when it might seem that the work resembles itself so closely that it has no history. Indeed, for Brandi, a work of art enters history at the very moment the artist considers it finished, whereupon it starts a journey that can be filled with events or perhaps not ~ but still immersed in time, if only at the level of deterioration or physical decay of the materials of which the work is made (at least until the principle of entropy is disproved). This was the proper approach because it was soundly critical (and not, as is often banally repeated, because it is a sort of middle ground between the two extreme24 Cesare Branbi, Tapory oF RestoraTion positions represented by Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc). It is confirmed by the adaptability demonstrated in situations that Brandi could not even foresee (for example, tackling the restoration of artistic objects that differ notably from those of the European tradition, such as certain wall paintings or bronze sculptures from the Far East) Brandi himself was well aware of the potential of the cultural apparatus that was developed during his tenure as director of the ICR, under the irrepeatable circumstances represented by war damage and the associated need to resolve (often in a short time) the many problems that sprang up (an example for all is the reintegration of lacunae in the bomb-damaged frescoes of the Cappella Mazzatosta in S. Maria della Verita at Viterbo) (Plate IV). We have confirmation of this through some vital aspects: the places he reserved (5 out of 15) for foreign restoration students (in addition to scholarship holders), his indefatigable activity as a lecturer abroad to convey the results of the Istituto’s work, the missions he and the ICR’s technical and scientific staff undertook abroad (as well as in Italy) to give advice and carry out restoration." Lying behind it all was the conviction that, for an activity as worthy and inescapable as the safeguard of works of art, an ironclad rule must be applied: those who know the most have a duty to put their knowledge and experience at the service of others who need it, in any corner of the globe. Moreover, this intimate conviction that he should make himself available (perhaps with a neophyte’s excess of zeal) was at the root of the well-known controversy with the National Gallery of London: he found it incomprehensible that ‘personal attacks and obstinacy’ could prevail over the need to cooperate for the welfare of the works, when he himself on several occasions had hoped that the fledgling Istituto would have the support of established foreign laboratories. For instance, he made a point of expressing his own indebtedness to the laboratory of the Fogg Art Museum in relation to the use of artificial resins." As one can see, this attitude was the exact opposite of what one would expect, and I am alluding (more or less obliquely) to ‘ethnocentricity’. If anything, his attitude was ‘cosmopolitan’ in the highest sense of the term. It was far from the meaning that the concept of ‘globalisation’ has increasingly assumed, as a relatively steady but irreversible trend towards uniformity and thus the inevitable loss of original specificity. Indeed, for Brandi, the secret of true artistic experience and the consequent action of safeguard and care, lies in knowing how to ‘listen’ to the work, in knowing how to read it and understand its most intrinsic and characteristic features in order to respect and conserve them.!® If these features are exquisitely formal ones, it can only benefit the works, because they contribute strongly to shielding works from extrinsic considerations (religious, political or ideological, in any case), the effects of which are increasingly often a negative sign: the recent example of the Buddhas of Bamiyan is a case in point. * This essay was not intended to be either a profile or (even less so), a portrait of Cesare Brandi, one of the most eminent European intellectuals of the twentieth century: it would be presumptuous and also inappropriate in this context, if only for considerations of space. It is intended to be a further contribution toward better comprehension of the Theory, especially among non-lalian readers, together with Philippot’s‘A Few WorDs apour a Mapstno, Cesare BRANDI 25 essay in this volume on the Phenomenology of Artistic Creation’. The latter is an indispensable preface to the Theory (unequalled to date) for those who are unwilling or unable to go directly to Brandi’s works, or to the aesthetic experts who have studied what Brandi meant by artistic creation. In particular, the essay is intended to demonstrate the role that art played in Brandi’s life, for it is in that perspective that one can see his activity as a coherent whole. His activity was multiform, highly complex, sometimes even (at least apparently) disjointed. Yet it found its own point of convergence and connection precisely in the valuation of artistic activity as the supreme expression of human creativity, with experience of art as its necessary complement. From this he drew the strength and determination for his activity as a scholar in the field of art history, as a university professor, as a travel writer, as a highly refined interpreter of works or artistic events in general, as a tireless investigator of the forms whereby artistic creation és manifested. It also informed his work as a technical civil servant in the state administration for cultural heritage, as an uncompromising spokesman for the rights of that heritage, giving no quarter (and using all the tools available to an intellectual), as a lateral thinker open to anything that might be useful in practical application to buttress an intuition or a theoretical deduction (such as the celebrated finding on reintegration of lacunae). This was his challenge: through art, the fullness of being would spring from the negativity of existence. Giuseppe Basile Notes ! Poesie, 1935; Voce sola, 1939; Elegie, 1942 ® At the same time, there was the perception — lucid even though full of regret of the inadequacy of the results he had obtained in his own creative activity. ® Asis known, Brandi did not consider ‘utility’ an intrinsic property of a work of art, though this does not mean that some works of art cannot also possess such a value: only that they do not need to be ‘restored’ but only repaired, reperfected or simply conserved, ‘It should be recalled that Brandi considered the problem of the nature and definition of ‘art’ as irresolvable and therefore irrelevant, at least for the purposes of experiencing and protecting works of art. * It is useful to see how Brandi immediately identified the need for interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of restoration, while still reserving the lead role for the ‘art historian’ (i.e., a specialist in the field to which the work of art belonged and thus an archaeologist, architect, archivist, ethnographer, etc. © This is what Brandi calls the ‘figurative story of the image’. It is well known that he with immense effort and ~ to my knowledge — without precedent, attempted not only to define the internal keys of formal reading and interpretation that were characteristic of various artistic expressions (poetry, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, cinema, music, etc.), but also and especially to identify in which works these parameters were employed in a new way. That is to say, they took a leap in quality that justified their greater importance with respect to others that had not benefitted from that intuition or in which the intuition for innovation did not succeed in solidifying into a new artistic reality,26 ‘Cesare: Branpr, THEORY OF RESTORATION 7 [would also add, depending on their professional training. This is because, though it is true that ‘plinarity must reign in restoration, it is equally true that within the group, every sional plays a role that cannot be interchanged. He or she must be trained in the most complete and advanced way, especially when ~ as in the restorer's case ~ the person bears the greatest responsibility (that of handling the object). Before the ICR was founded, a solid tradition of training was lacking, ® The room, specially equipped as an experimental, multipurpose space (a novelty at the time), was set up and used from the outset; the Bollettino dell'Istituto centrale del restauro took longer, given the understandable impediments of the war and post-war period, and saw the light only in 960. It continued punetually until he left his post as director (1960) and even beyond (up to 1967: a second series of the Bulletin began a few years ago) A national body with a consultative role, but very influential at the time. ‘The most illustrious Italian academics — whether from universities or from the Fine Arts Administration — were asked to take part. Their task was to give opinions on the most significant technical and managerial problems regarding historico-artistic works of art and monuments (detachment of wall paintings, relocation and/or anastylosis of monuments, restorations of major masterpieces, loans of art works for exhibitions in Italy and abroad, ete.). © A voluntary association to defend and protect the cultural heritage (works of art, monuments, historic centres, landscapes and environments) of Italy. Tt should be noted that this was certainly not what Brandi thought. "= In the pre-industrial period, it would have been called ‘artistic’ in order to indicate the production of items with particular characteristics that met basic requirements of group life, if not always primary needs. © Licia Borrelli Viad, Michelangelo Cagiano De Azevedo, Paolo and Laura Mora must at least: be mentioned. MLInstitut central de restauration & Rome, in Lamour de Vart, VIII (1946), p. 236. '»Itis not by chance that among his most important (and definitive) books are Disegno detla pittura italiana (1980) and Disegno delWarchitettura itatiana (1985): these are unexcelled (I venture to say) examples of the ‘reading’ of the most representative monuments and painted works of art in our country.THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTISTIC CREATION ACCORDING TO CESARE BRAND!' Nowadays the question of the specificity of art is being readily considered to have become irrelevant by historians as much as philosophers. This very widespread trend suggests that the distinction of a specificity, as determined by aesthetics ever since Kant, would completely alienate art from man, thereby alienating it also from the cultural, social, economic and psychological context it should belong to. Certain philosophical and critical currents of Nietzschian and Freudian inspiration regard works of art more as manifestations of a continuous creativity which they identify with ‘desire’. This creativity then, as a last resort, acts as a release from catharsis. From an art historian’s perspective, the instant of recognition of the work of art per se is already a given as it is acquired from the start, yet it is not made explicit (due to the secret fear of contaminating with subjectivity the objectivity essential for the methodology). This certainly favours the preponderant development of sociological, psychological, iconographic and economic studies aimed more at integrating the works into their contexts rather than understanding their emergence from the humus they feed on, without being diminished in it or confused with it. The question of quality is then easily sidestepped in favour of an approach which ends up dissolving the object in question in order to ensure objectivity, and manifests itself more than de facto in the choice of works and artists studied. Even though the concept of art has definitely broadened in meaning in response to its more recurrent use, there is a current reluctance to ask what art is. Furthermore, there is an acceptance of its indefinable nature, either for convenience or tactics’ sake, or, ina deeper sense, the immanent-existential nature of the query. ‘This is in contrast with the efforts made since the birth of aesthetics in the eighteenth century to which Kant, Hegel, Fiedler and Croce contributed decisively in various stages of its development, thus laying the foundations for the history of western art as an analysis of form. This movement corresponded to a new experience in art for the artists themselves who became aware that their approach had its own distinct finality which, in relation to the previous period, led the artists to reflect on themselves so that art itself became the subject matter of art: one can see this in Romantic irony, the poésie-de-la-poésie (poetry of poetry) and the subsequent forms of purism, all of which lead, at the start of this century, to the programmatic concentration of the arts on what was regarded as their own means of manifestation. It isa movement that has never ceased to develop even until now, becoming more and more openly self-referential. Since Romanticism, it has implied a new and modern claim by the artist to the totality of his or her existence. In this instance one could detect a religious dimension within the art itself (Holderlin, Blake, Novalis, C.D.28 ‘Cesare: BRaNbi, THEORY OF RESTORATION, Friedrich but also Malevitch, Mondrian or Barnett Newman). ‘The movement substituted itself to the concomitant crisis of the religious consciousness in twentieth century mass society. This consciousness led, as far as the public was concerned, to the ambiguous situation which Léopold Flam referred to as the art religion of modern man? This tendency towards self-referential art was recently once more accentuated with the post-modern movement and its recovery in the not historicised present of art history. One could henceforth ask oneself whether an understanding of the artists’ approach does not require now more than ever an enquiry into its specificity. Should the whole philosophical approach to art not be subject to examination of the critique, in order to avoid the projection of problems from a different area of thought onto art itself. Rightly so, even if, or indeed if, as Heidegger suggested, art is now possibly the one human activity that most certainly brings us closest to the experience of Being, ie. that it is the deepest and most total experience accessible to the human consciousness On the other hand, from an historical point of view, that of the art historian, the work of art has a remarkable characteristic which gives an evident distinctiveness to the art history discourse within human sciences. Indeed, whatever period the work of art was created in, it gives itself to us hic et nunc, in the absolute present of perception. It lacks a reality of its own until it is recognised by a consciousness, and this recognition is not the result of a judgment arising from an analysis, but the identification of a specificity within the perception itself and the point of departure for the historian’ Thus, if art history is possible, it distinguishes itself from 's stud other historical disciplines as, rather than recounting the history of an event in the past, belonging to memory, it intends to create of history a reality that is present in the consciousness.* In this sense, it is inseparable from the critique, to the extent that the latter aims to characterise the nature of this particular presence. This distinctive nature of the work of art. as reality, which is perceived without ever being identified with the physical reality of the perceived object, is the reason itself for the renowned, fundamental aporia of aesthetics that could be summarised thus: art cannot be defined with sole reference to works of art because an empirical approach of this sort would imply a criterion for the selection of these works, hence it would presuppose the concept of art; nor can it be defined a priori in the absence of an experience of art, which can only be the experience of individual works of art. As Cesare Brandi demonstrated, the aporia arises from the fact that art cannot be conceptualised in the same way as existing reality.! Hence, a science of art based on the natural sciences model would be impossible. However, Giulio Carlo Argan argues that: “The notion acquired by modern culture, of the entire phenomenology of art, has effectively made the significance of the concept of art void and useless, As a consequence, art history, as history of poetics, is the only possible form of scientific study of art and it thereafter supplants aesthetics'S Art history, then, regardless how little rigorous thinking may have been dedicated to it, poses a set of problems that are of obvious relevance at present. Hence, the thoughts of Cesare Brandi are of interest, who, as an art historian and poet, once more poses the issue of the specificity of art, to make it relevant today by exploring‘Tub PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTISTIC CREATION ACCORDING TO CESARE BRANDI 29 it in the ever-evolving context of contemporary art and philosophy. From his phenomenological analysis of artistic creation, between 1945 and 1957, which contributed critical tools to art history, all the more valuable due to their philosophical foundations, he developed tools which, through a long dialogue with structuralism and semiology, achieved a synthesis of linguistics and aesthetics, structuralism and phenomenology. Since Brandi’s ideas are little known outside Italy, due to the lack of translations,’ we propose to summarise the main points in the first phase of his thought process. It is so abundant in lessons for an art historian, and constitutes such an important foundation for ulterior developments, that it cannot be fully treated within the scope of this article. We hope, in any case, to pay homage to a master whose recent passing away has been deeply felt in the Italian cultural sphere and to introduce to an international audience an original thinker meriting wider recognition At the outset of his career in the 1930s’, Brandi found that Benedetto Croce had a pervasive influence on Italian culture, from art history and literature to philosophy and, in particular, aesthetics and historiography. At the same time, however, the younger generation was also becoming more and more critical of Croce’s thought, although they were deeply indebted to him. The main arguments of Croce, art as a lyrical intuition and the identity of intuition and expression, which appear as the ultimate achievement of idealism, derive their force from the authority they confer to the idea of the specificity of art, inserted into a mental approach in which art presents itself as the first, intuitive moment of recognition. It is up to the human mind to elevate it to the level of abstraction via the expansion of the concepts. But intuition thus conceived precedes any distinction between the real and the imaginary because, through the intellect, it precedes the consideration of the external world, hence it would be impossible to trace the path from the object to the image. In response to the question: the intuition of what? Croce replied: the intuition of feeling. It is the lyrical sentiment in which practical life as a feeling is contemplated, represented and transformed into an image which then ensures the unity that characterises the totality specific to the work of art. But the notion of the unity of intuition and expression makes any analysis of this sublimation impossible. Moreover, if one thinks of the extremely critical attitude of Croce towards the avant-garde movements at the beginning of the century, it is easy to understand the need of the younger generation to react. For Cesare Brandi, the main sources for critical reflection in this context were, on the one hand, the intimately felt experience of Morandi," on the other, that of the phenomenology of Husserl, in particular the Cartesian Meditations. ‘The result was a phenomenology of artistic creation which appeared in 1945 entitled Carmine 0 della pittura.§ No longer using the idealist spirit as his point of departure, but rather consciousness with its intentionality and its correlation: the world. He unblocked the impasse of Croce and rediscovered the means for an analysis of the relationship between the artist and the world, the path from the object to the image, and a way to split Croce’s unity of intuition and expression into two moments constituting the creative process. Obviously, the artist’s formulation of the image is not mimesis, is not the reproduction of the external object. On the contrary, it is conceived of only as the conclusion: the exteriorisation of a preceding phase, symbolic in nature, a phase of interiorisation which Brandi calls the constitution of the object. This appears as a30 (Cesare Brant, THony oF RESTORATION synthetic process sui generis, in which the state of mind of the artist, his or her interiority experienced in pains and joys, sorrows and expectations, becomes cemented in an ineffable totality through an investing of symbols, in an object which it considers in its pure appearance only. Certain perceptual aspects of the object remain while others are excluded, whilst isolating them from their practical context and the continuity of the course of its existence. Erected as a symbol by a unilateral act of consciousness irreducible to a mere cause-and-effect relationship, the interior object thus constituted maintains its reference to existence only by placing the latter in parentheses, a specific epoché which is the condition itself for the symbolic identification of the consciousness with the image in its pure representational capacity, its ‘pure representivity’. There arises a dialectical tension between the positivity of the object interiorised as an image, or what it has retained from what was perceived, and its negativity, or its break with the course of existence. The need then arises for a dialectic resolution of this tension into a third term: the formulation of this mental image, ever fluctuating and elusive, which becomes fixed as it exteriorises. ‘The formulation of the image thus becomes the sole, most pressing goal of the artist's consciousness, the totality of which is realised as an image for his or her own eyes as it is fixed in an object through which it returns to the world. Hence the act itself by which the representivity of the image, which the symbolic investment retains as pure figurativeness, comes into focus and fuses into the form, concludes the process and brings about the catharsis. ‘The reference to the object from the external world, suspended by the symbolic investiture, remains in the image as its cognitive substance: it can always be reactivated and regain a semantic function if the consciousness intends to aim at what is represented through the image. Inversely, however, the act of aiming of figurativeness implies the reduction of its semantic function to that of the cognitive substance of the image.” Since, furthermore, the constitution of the object is not mimesis, meaning the form of the image as figurativeness is neither the conformation of what is represented, nor that of the object produced as an instrument of its manifestation, whether it be a painting, a sculpture, a relief or an architectural construction. Its essence lies in the divorce with existence, in negativity. Likewise, the presence that it proposes is of an absolutely specific kind, based on this constituent. negativity, and totally distinct from the presence of the existing. In an early phase, Brandi conceptualised this in terms of pure reality, meaning without existence, in contrast to existential reality. Later,” he would propose the term astanza which might be translated as adstance (proximity, from ad-stare), which designated that presence of the existing object in particular, and which he sets in opposition to flagranza or flagrance. Now no reality, however, can be perceived without being structured by the formal conditions of time and space. The mental image resulting from the constitution of the object is also governed by this rule, even though it no longer belongs to the external world and ‘although a space is involved that has no physical extent, and a time without actuality, in a state of suspension in relation to existential reality’. Then, however, ‘space and time, which must act together to indicate the pure reality of the image are not existential space and time, but the formal premises‘Tue PHENOMENOLOGY oF ARTISTIC CREATION ACCORDING TO CESARE BRANDI 31 made in the intuition. Space and time can remain in the image as a merely cognitive determination of the object, without further reference to the concrete existence of the object itself, moulded from the cognitive substance of the image. But ideal space and time will have to be at the root of the formulation of the image as conditions for the inflection itself of the form which assembles itself as pure reality in the framework of ideal space and time.”!! ‘This synthetic union of space and time in the form is the rhythm, the basis for the possibility for all art, which will come about as the spatialisation of time in the arts so-called of time, where: ‘the time of the image is divided into portions which tend to fix the nucleus of the instant through the retention of the previous and protension of the subsequent, in other words, in the temporal rhythm or spatial rhythm of time. We will find a temporalisation wherever the space within the image must be read’.!2 The author concludes ~ we apologise for the length of the quotation necessitated by its importance: ‘Nothing more nor nothing else can be said to separate conformation from form, the work of art from the existing object. Any attempt to penetrate further, beyond the threshold of consciousness, of naturality, is doomed to fail. Similarly, any attempt to deduce the form from the image is deeply contradictory, because it turns the image into the content of form and logically puts forth the priority of a form without content. Such a form can then only be a schema deduced, subsequently, from work of art. Indeed, if this form without content could, if not exist, be conceived, it would have to be an archetype, a matrix the awareness of which, not being a category of logic, but a figurative intuition, should be derived from the suprasensible, and could never manifest: as a formal condition of intuition. But I know nothing of this suprasensibility, it is beyond my earthly life, which is not one of ecstasy or mystical rapture, but rather the free and responsible determination of the world. ‘The work of art, therefore, is the greatest effort that man can make to transcend his own transient existence, removing himself from time by conforming with the immutable in eternity. As soon as the effort is made, however, the work frees itself from its creator, sealed and perfect, freed from the becoming, yet continually drawn into the present of the consciousness that receives it. Born as the symbol of the ineffable, of an interior and secret urgency, it no longer manifests itself in the world as a symbol, a veiled truth that refers to an essence, but as pure reality, devoid of existence. Springing forth as supreme will of an individuality which is recognised without logical justification in the most disparate objects, it manifests itself to the consciousness with the absoluteness of law, the universality of the concept, the inviolability of nature Nourished from birth by its internal labour by the most diverse and most stirring emotional reactions, it emerges as a sublime purification of all32 ‘Cesage Brawl, THEORY OF RESTORATION human passions, a catharsis of man and of destiny’."* The task of the critique, then, turns out to be fundamental, since it has the responsibility of recognising the pure reality of the work of art and ensuring its acquisition and transmission to the culture. But, assuming that there is no mirage involved, it will not consist of going back from the form to the artist's natural and generally imperceptible impulses, which would reduce the form to being a mere revelation of the interior biographical reality of the author, instead of recognising in it the act of liberty performed by the consciousness as it transcended the initial given of experience to create the pure reality of the form, establishing its destiny and its history. On the contrary, the critique will have as its task that of establishing the figurative history of the image and tracing back the details of the constitution of the object as well as its formulation." Such an analysis can lead to the discovery of any potential failings in the creative process. Thus, for example, the coherence of the rhythm stems from the constitution of the object itself, any appeals for a means of formulation taken ‘cold’ from an external repertoire, not enrooted in the initial synthetic act, will reveal itself to be a superfluous operation ea post facto, a sort of internal scission of the work which threatens its organic unity and gives rise to a feeling of gratuitousness. ‘That is especially the case for all revivals and various forms of eclecticism. One has only to think of Egyptian sculpture from the Ptolemaic era, which transposes a Greek sculptural formulation onto the crowded, compact and hieratic scheme of the Pharaonic tradition, or the Roman portraits that appeared at the end of the Republic with stylish hairdos, bizarrely placed on an ideal body borrowed from a heroic or divine Greek figure. Internal discontinuity in the image can also manifest itself in its colour. The Lombard disciples of Leonardo da Vinci materialise the Master's sfumato bringing it back to the dark shadows of a chiaroscuro that defines its volumes. Even the prestigious colouring of Barocci seems added on to the initial sfumato if it is compared to the soft and moist blending of the two elements in Correggio paintings. ‘The critique will not be limited to monographic studies, however. The grouping of works and artists to compose a period or a movement in a period, which the conception of styles has always aimed at, does not justify itself by causal relations with other domains of culture. Rather, it is justified by participating in the same manner of being-in-the-world in which it is rooted and in which the constitution of the object is situated, just as is the case for the other specific developments in the culture, whether in religion, philosophy or literature. ‘The extension of this enquiry into architecture and poetry!® implies new problems to be faced, leading to further examination of the original theses where a new phase in the thought of Brandi initiates in his first encounter with structural linguistics, then assuming an important role in literary criticism, ‘To find the two phases of the creative process in architecture or poetry: the constitution of the object and the formulation of the image. It is indeed important, in the first instance, to explain how these appear for an art that is a response to a practical need and not based on the perception, direct or indirect, of an external object. In the second instance, the nature of poetry's particular relationships with thought and with language must be clarified. In both cases, the situation is clarified with recourse to the concept of the preconceptual schema, worked out by Kant to account for the mediation established by consciousness between the heterogeneous elements of image and concept, of‘Tue PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTISTIC CREATION ACCORDING 10 CESARE BRANDI intuition and category. Whereas Kant links the schema to time, Brandi, basing his analysis on the image, shows it to be spatial and temporal at the same time, and, furthermore, associates it with the genesis of language: “The source of the difficulty of placing the intellect in the production of the schema ceases if one takes into account the dual nature of the image, which consists of representivity, and cognitive substance: it is indivisibly yet reversibly representivity and cognitive substance, depending only on the intentionality of the consciousness to turn it into one meaning rather than another, Hence the image, while being heterogeneous with respect to the concept is open, on one side, to the phenomenon, on the other, to the concept: it is its conoscibilita [quality of knowable] that ensures the transition. Hence, in the representative sense, it puts forth the intransgressible condition for art, in the other case, it enables logical knowledge. [...] But the image, as a cognitive substance, becomes open ground to the operation of categories, and there the intellect performs the first selection and the first synthesis: a selection and synthesis with which intuition will have cooperated, offering the representative and image so far as it is knowable, while, in art, it must be knowable in so far as it is representative. This is how the preconceptual schema of the object is created, which, indeed, is not formed on a unique image, but on a variety of multiple images of the object, of which it deduces a constant structure. [...] At that very moment, the need for a word will present itself, to allow me to designate the core of cognition that I have isolated and fixed like a mental skeleton of the thing. Now the word comes and bears witness to the spiritual act, which is the schema. The schema is the structure of the word’.!" ‘The existence of the preconceptual schema is even documented by ideographic writing, hieroglyphs, at the basis of all forms of writing, which have detached themselves from the schema but slowly and not always completely, to become phonetic. This allowed Brandi to affirm the following in 1957, anticipating the reflections of Derrida in De la grammatologie. 8 “The schema detracted from the image will bear a vestige of representivity, and this vestige remains solid with the pre-selected elements, but reduced to such privative tracts that they rightly become schematic. And this is precisely because the schema is intermediate between the image and the concept. As a result of this, the schema is not so much the monogram of the image or concept, but rather, as cognitive substance, the ideogram of the image. Thus the remains of representivity, dragged along by the schema, act no longer as representative in themselves but as signifiers, and in the schema consciousness will possess a kind of primitive sign of writing’.!" Born from the first labour of the intellect on the sensed given that is the image, the schema therefore fixes a first stage which the further work in the abstraction by the intellect will bring about for the concept. But, by virtue of its intermediary position, it remains open on the image whence it originates, or to the concept towards which it is inclined, depending on the intentionality of the consciousness34 Cesare BRaNbi, Tuzory oF Restoration, that takes hold of it Returning then to architecture, it is clear that the practical need it rises from, is configured as a preconceptual schema from the architect's point of view, and constitutes the cognitive substance of what will become the architectural image.” ‘The schema takes concrete form in tectonics or construction! but work performed on the tectonic elements makes it possible to sublimate them and their utilitarian function as they are elevated to become form It is this process (which, for lack of a better term, Brandi calls one of adornment, as opposed to decoration-superposition, overloading or gratuitous superfluities) which, for example, designs the original support in the shape of a column, joining the abacus with the architrave as articulation, moulding the capital, carving the fluting which takes up the rhythm of the shaft, from which the curve of the entasis then creates a dialogue between the support and the load. So many operations are suggested by an often hidden play of analogies, but all aim at subtracting the support from the crudeness of its tectonic function. Starting with the schema to create the rhythm by concretising the form, the work proceeds, as it were, in a direction opposite from that intended by the painter, who reduces the infinite variety of perception to result in the synthetic clarity of the rhythm. This formal work, however, obviously does not operate on isolated elements: it affects the entire edifice as a whole. ‘The distinctiveness of the architectural form is that it implies the coexistence, the interpenetration, of the interior and the exterior conceived not as physical reality, but as veritable dimensions of a form which penetrate each other. In this sense, the exterior always implies an interior on the level of its formal structure, and the interior in turn implies an exterior. Moreover, this will be the choice of the dominant spatial theme which will characterise the periods that can be distinguished in the history of architecture. Greek architecture develops par excellence the theme of the exterior, which works out its interiority in the various formulas of the prostyle, amphiprostyle, the peristasis and its developments, while the interior of the cella hardly evolves. In contrast, Roman architecture, with its working of mural masses and vaults, shows the predominance of the theme of the interior, which asserts itself decisively in the Great Byzantine architecture under Justinian. Differing with the closed interior of the Romanesque, the Gothic will reaffirm the exterior, which bursts into the interior with floods of light. passing through vast stained-glass windows while the exterior, with its gables, pinnacles, fleches or balustrades tends to unravel into atmospheric space. The Renaissance reacts through Brunelleschi, setting the edifice in the visual pyramid of perspective thereby reasserting the predominance of the theme of the interior. Italian architecture had indeed traditionally preferred this emphasis, which explains its hesitation to accept Gothic architecture. The originality of Michelangelo lies, therefore, in his reaction against the conception of architecture as a visualisation of a theoretical conception of space to the benefit of an opposition between the two. fundamental dimensions, which express themselves in the dramatic contrast between the pressure of the interior on the exterior and that of the exterior on the interior. The twin columns, wedged in their niches between the projections of the mural panels of the Laurentian Library vestibule are one of the most striking examples. The Baroque will mitigate this contrast, nonetheless basing its dynamics of interpenetrations of interior and exterior on it. The tension drops with Neoclassicism. which, reducing the edifice to the geometrical rigour of typologies, gives rise to an‘Tie PrENOMENOLOGY OF Arristic CREATION ACCORDING TO CESARE BRANDI 35 objectivisation of architecture which will affect the entire nineteenth century. Instead of renewing the spatial themes, the Revivals, applying various alien formal repertories taken from history to the schema, vary only the scenographic play for which architecture has essentially become an object in exterior space. Modern architecture would not progress until Frank Lloyd Wright, inspired by Japanese architecture, and the rationalists (Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier), by the cubist decomposition of space, re-establish the primacy of the interior space. As far as Brandi’s discussion of poetry is concerned, it reacts on one hand to the conceptions of Croce, and, on the other hand, to modern linguistics. Renewing a romantic conception, Croce had reaffirmed the poetic origin of language and, identifying poetry with pure intuition, he considered it the first form of consciousness, still tied to the world of the senses, in the singular, and constituting the indispensable premise for reasoning. Hence the universality recognised in poetry, which Hegel saw in the coincidence of the object with the idea, reappeared in Croce in the form of the cosmic character or the totality of artistic expression. ‘What this universality of poetry might consist of, if poetry is knowledge, is impossible to grasp. It is no more so if poetry is not an act of knowing, but a reality, as the universal then consists of the universality with which poetry manifests, not to the few privileged or elect gifted enough to understand it, but to all people. Hence, this universality will have nothing in common with that of the concept, will in no way link, even by implication, the detail to the whole or to the idea. It will be a total and autonomous reality forever remaining and yet different each time. However, in this extreme individuality and singularity, it will be universal, as pure reality: the reality that the human consciousness creates for itself’.2* Thus distinct from knowledge, poetry remains no less tied to language by specific relationships. The elucidation of these obviously implied that a stand had to be taken concerning several fundamental problems of linguistics which can be briefly summarised as follows. In opposition to the thesis of the poetic origin of language, Brandi puts forth that of a practical origin, certainly not one of convention but of convenience, from a communicative point of view, attested to in particular by the numerous appearances of recent words.” ‘Then using the theory of the preconceptual schema developed on the basis of Kant's thought referred to above, Brandi shows that the word is constituted by the association with the preconceptual schema, originating from a first analysis of the image (of which he keeps an ensemble of stable elements) of a set of sounds that makes it possible to fix it. Circulated by means of communication, it is its reception in the social field that will give currency to the word, and accept it into language. But it must be remembered that the schema, fixed by the word, derives from the image in relation to which it constitutes a first operation by the intellect, an elementary and pre-linguistic structure of knowledge, and it tends, in its normal progress towards increasing abstraction, towards the concept. In its normal usage on the linguistic level, the word, a set of sounds indicating knowledge of a thing, is a sign, and the signified, effectuating an initial synthesis in the analytic givens of the schema, and will be situated not in the word, but in the consciousness, Here, depending on the speaker's intentions, it will occupy a variable level on the axis which conveys36 Cesare BraNbi, THeORY oF RESTORATION, awareness of the intuition to the concept.” ‘Two observations must then be made. The first is that, as Ferdinand De Saussure had already observed, the union of the set of sounds to the schema it fixes is a unilateral and arbitrary act of the consciousness (in the opposite case, indeed, it would not be possible to explain diversity among languages). ‘The second is that. the schema, originated from an initial act of consciousness exerted on the image, keeps some elements of representation and remains open on it. From then on, it depends on the intention of the conscience to reverse the normal flow of language as communication of knowledge and oblige it to represent rather than to signify. The schema, relinquishing its semantic function, resuscitates the image it derives from and its figurative value. The poet has at his disposal a range of means to this end. Yet: the most frequent and revealing is the metaphor, traditionally defined as the ‘unsuitable’ word put in place of the ‘suitable’ one. In actual fact, as Brandi shows, replacement of the word ‘unsuitable’ with the ‘suitable’ one is made possible through the conjunction of the two preconceptual schemas, however ‘the word which is transferred carries along all its baggage, hence it does not consent to abandon those features of its schema that do not coincide with the new schema on which it is grafted, and even less consenting to leave behind the image of which those features |[...] are the ideogram. If these were to be abandoned, one would no longer recognise it as metaphor, one would have a discrete word with its own schema which would have no feature adverse to the designated. But realising this, it is precisely because the transposed word, appearing with all its baggage, imposes itself with its indestructible structure, provoking the consciousness to evoke the image the word or turn of phrase refers to with a schema which deviates from all that preceded. ‘Thus it extracts from it the features that must have brought about the comparison, and therefore the possibility of transposition’2" For the poet, the constitution of the object has the advantage that formulation by means of language does not need recourse to exterior physical elements, ‘so that the distance between the constitution of the object and formulation can appear reduced and shortened to the point that it becomes almost imperceptible and even negligible’28 This is what explains Croce’s thesis of the identity of intuition with expression.” But the interior object that has been constituted by symbolic identification in the consciousness of the poet and that which the poet wishes to formulate ‘is not consubstantial to the word. The latter, as we saw, does not contain the image but derives from it’. It is on these grounds that not only the thesis of Croce is rejected, but that of Jakobson as well, identifying a poetic function of language.*! ‘The constitution of the object is pre-linguistic, and language, which offers the means to formulate the image, will have to be revised through a reversal of its normal course, so that it may represent rather than signify. This will then imply the reduction of the semantic function of the linguistic sign to the role of the cognitive substance of the image. Hence the relation to existence in which the poetic expression sinks its roots is sublimated in the work, the formulation of which, the casting of the rhythm in the space-time structure, has become the supreme and sole goal of the artist’s consciousness. This is how the dialectic of the constitution of the object is articulated in poetry as in painting‘Tu PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTISTIC CREATION ACCORDING 10 CESARE BRANDI 37 “The mental image, which is a way for consciousness to offer its self to itself, appears in the consciousness, preceding the act of symbolic individuation, together with those relations that the object, of which it constitutes the knowledge, maintained in the fabric of human reality. It also appears with those emotional ties which had established themselves in the individual personality of the one who generates the image in oneself. It is only with the act of symbolic individuation that the image shatters its ties and relations, and it is in this schism that its negativity resides. In the same way, in representivity there lies its positivity, so far as this has been confirmed or fixed in the symbolic individuation. Thus, the constitution of the object is dialectical and, as such, must be resolved into a third term, which is, indeed, the formulated image, into which it finds peace and interior act of creating form comes to an end’. Therefore, the same process takes place, in different ways, in the various arts, and Brandi subsequently extends his analysis to the theatre, the cinema and music.** If the relationship to existence is fundamental to the start of the creative process, it is placed in parentheses, struck by a suspending epoché due to the symbolic identification that reduces it to the cognitive substance of the image, In the formulation, necessitated by the dialectic tension thus engendered, the artist's consciousness has no other purpose than the work itself, in which this consciousness recognises itself in its own process and places the work in the world, As pure reality, inexistent, or as he was to say later, ‘a phenomenon-that-is-not-a- phenomenon’, the work is never realised except in a consciousness. It distinguishes itself thus from the material object which is the instrument of its entry into the world. “The reception of the work of art as such supposes a reciprocal concordance between the work of art and the receiving consciousness’,®> hence a specific act of the latter. Since the work is born of an epoché with respect to the existential complex of other phenomena, its reception ‘neither produces nor postulates any concordance of inherent, intentionalities for the author in the creative act, for the receiver upon reception’ (which explains that we can recognise the artistic reality of a work without sharing the Weltanschauung of its author or era) ‘For the author, the symbolic act of the constitution of the object took place and concluded in the formulation of the image, but the receiver had no right of access to the intentionalities other than the fundamental one by which the work of art is intended as such. A new investment of symbols by the receiver is valid solely for the receiver and does not affect the work, which it lowers to the rank of a phenomenon in which one accentuates, isolates or extracts particular aspects to adapt them to. a transient intentionality. Such a downgrading of the work to the rank of phenomenon is always possible but it is never justifiable if one claims to turn the personal investment of symbols by the receiver into the immanent characteristics of the work of art’.5* The work, of which the continued identification with itself is the result of its formulation, thus offers a dual historicity, since after having been realised a first time in the consciousness of the artist, it will experience successive epiphanies each time a consciousness recognises it as such. Each of these recognitions is, however, a38 Cesare Brant, Tabory oF Restoration dialectisation realised in a different historical and psychological situation, and it is appropriate to distinguish the work of art in so far as it can be received by a consciousness from the empirical variety of its concrete historical receptions. Furthermore, the fact that it reproduces itself as ‘an eternal present’ in its subsequent epiphanies in no way contradicts the historical character of the work of art, born in a determined context (a society, an era, a region) and a determined consciousness. It is thus also a historical monument and legitimately demands to be considered and examined as such. By doing this, however, the receiver turns away, whether considering it to be something acquired, from what makes a work of art a work of art, its non-existential presence, to reintegrate it into the continuous texture of history and, to that end, to consider it to be a sign of something else: the persona of the author, the historical, socio-economic contexts, etc. Returning, in Le due Vie, to the roots of this problem, Brandi further explores his distinetion between sign and image via an Auseinandersetzung with structuralism and semiology, in order to bring out two fundamental ways in which consciousness views reality depending precisely on whether or not the latter is constituted as a presence or as a sign, aliquid pro aliquo. As a presence it will manifest in two ways: the presence of the existing or flagrance, and the pure presence, without existence, of the work of art. Further examination of the relationships between the image and the preconceptual schema, presence and semiosis, will then lead him, in his last theoretical opus, the Teoria generale della critica, to formulate a new theory of the referent (denoted] and a new conception of the relationship between aesthetics and linguistics, based on a single origin of art and of language. In this new sense, the referent is no longer the exterior, extralinguistic object, which, while ensuring the autonomy of linguistics, made the relationship between language and the object, between linguistics and semantics problematic, but must be identified as a structure within language. ‘This institution of the sign which seems to consist in the extraction of the perceived, raised to the level of a sign, does not take place directly on the perceived. That is, it does not occur due to an absorption of flagrance in the sign, as would be the case if a separate moment of flagrance by the institution of the sign were not a necessary phase in the transition from the perceived to the sign. But a division comes about in this transition: the perceived derived from the exterior object splits and becomes a referent. Within the flagrance itself, the perceived, extracted from the continuum of experience taking place, seems to become more distant, and it is precisely in that first extraction that the neutralisation lies, the first un-realisation for which it acts as a referent for the preconceptual schema. Hence there is a first instance of isolation which in itself is already arbitrary, motivated only “within the limits” of certain specific characteristics of the perceived in so far as it is intended in a certain way, not as an objective object. That is how semantic areas differing from language to language are established. (...) This splitting up into perceived and referent (an event which follows the stimulus that gives rise to the perceived) is therefore not a useless artifice or hindrance but reconstructs aw ralenti that which is the‘Tue PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTISTIC CREATION ACCORDING 10 CESARE BRANDI 39 path from the outside world to the linguistic sign, a truly crucial path, not only for linguistics but also phenomenology and ontology. In fact, the referent thus understood is none other than the noeme of Husserlian phenomenology. Derrida explains the noeme very well: “I see a tree in the forest: I could also view it simply in my imagination, in memory, etc...Whatever type these visuals and noetic acts may be (in so far as they retrieve from the cogito), the unit of meaning of what I call this tree persists. This unit of meaning is neither the tree itself which, in point of fact, might not exist, nor a moment of consciousness (in the sense of a real inclusion). Were there no such thing as the noeme, that is to say this sense of an appearance that is neither in the consciousness, in the sense of a real inclusion, nor in natural and transcendent, reality, then objectivity would not be possible. Within the meaning as set forth above, the referent represents, for the field of modern linguistics, a novelty, because up to now it had always been identified directly with the external object” 7 ‘The second fundamental theme developed in the Teoria generale della critica is that of the basic arbitrariness which, put forth by Ferdinand De Saussure as the characteristic of the relationship between signified and signifier that constitutes the sign, is extended by Brandi as a common foundation of language and art. He says, inspired by linguistics in the form of Hjelmslev’s semiotics: ‘It is necessary to insist on the fact that the symbolic function, which is the tool of expressive activity itself, cannot be accounted for by resemblance and contiguity alone, but by the fact that, without rational motivation, it assumes one thing to be another, which had belonged to different, non-isomorphic domains’.®* The basic structure of consciousness is not the imposition of a signifier, even if that is its main activity, but resides in the unilateral choice of the means of expression like that of ‘an agent for a mandate’, and this fundamental arbitrariness is again to be found on the two axes characterising the bipolarity of consciousness, depending on whether the mandate consists in signifying or in presentifying. If language is the privileged form of the former, art is that of the latter. ‘In the constitution of the object, an object is torn away from its usual context where it is found and in which it is invested with a certain use or function. An empty and dusty bottle, as in Morandi’s case, is isolated and proposed in another context where it is unused, even alienated from usage: Only chromatic, luminous and plastic relations count. The bottle remains a bottle, just as the tram ticket remains a tram ticket in a collage; but it is shot down, unused, equivalent to being neutralised, suspended from ‘utensilhood’, hence in relation to its corresponding meaning. It is thus similar to a referent which aspires to turn signifier, but with a meaning different to that which it possessed as a bottle, a zero-degree meaning. In actual fact, the conferral of a second meaning is a unilateral act performed by the artist, which expires when, from the proposal of the new chromatic-luminous context, he or she formulates using different means, and not with the object itself as in the collage, the ex novo totalisation from which adstance comes about. At this point the40 Cesane BranDt, THEORY OF RESTORATION analogy with the linguistic sign comes to a stop: the result, which will be a painting, is not a new word, it is not a signifier: its signified will not be offered up by what it represents, rather, it will have no signified at all, even if it were able to contain multiple signifieds and take on collaterally and historically others still. This is an argument which should be continued later on, but had to be delineated now to clarify the unity of origin of two issues as different as language and art found in the arbitrariness of choice of the expressive function’.”” Given the scope of this article, we must limit ourselves to these necessarily summarised and all-too-brief notes on the course of Brandi’s thought after 1957. It was important, however, to show where a phenomenological enquiry as to the specificity of artistic creation leads in the context of contemporary problems, and that this could turn out to be fruitful both for philosophy and art. Paul Philippot Notes 1 Article in Archives de Vart: Entre esthétique et philosophic, Annales de UInstitut de Philosophie et des Sciences morales, ed. G. Hutois, Editions de Universit de Bruxelles, Brussels (1988), * Flam, L., ‘Lart-religion de Phomme moderne’, in Revue de l'Université Libre de Bruxelles, XVII, 5, (1965) pp. 361-383. » Ofr. G. C. Argan, ‘La Storia dell’Arte’ in Storia del'arte, 1/2, (1969) pp. 5-36, especially pp. 10-13. “Brandi, C., Le due vie, Laterza, Bari-Roude (1966), pp. 23-29. We shall come back to this point later, ® Argan, G. C., op. cit., especially pp. 6-10. “ Vittoria Rubin has created the complete Bibliography of Cesare Brandi up to 1980 in vols. 38-40, 1980 of the journal Storia dell’Arte. The first work of Cesare Brandi translated into French, Le due vie (Les deux voies de la critique) appeared in the Vokaer editions in Brussels in 1989. The translation includes an appendix of long excerpts of earlier works devoted to the phenomenology of artistie creation. * Brandi, C., Morandi, Le Monier, Florence (1942, 2% ed. 1952). ® Brandi, C., Carmine o della pittura, Enrico Scialoja, Rome (1945; 2! ed. Vallecchi, Florence 1947); quoted from the 3 ed. Einaudi, Turin (1962), p. 19 ff ° The problems posed by this analysis of abstract and informal art were dealt with by the author in Segno e imagine, Mondadori, Milan (1963), and in Teoria generale della critica, Einaudi, Turin (1974), p. 280 ff. Here we cannot take into consideration this examination which belongs to a later development in his thought. On this subject, however, see Les deux voies de la critique, op. cit. ° Jbid., p. 57. 4 Garmine o della pitura, op. cit. pp. 56-57. Ibid, p.57. 8 Jbid,, pp. 61-65 \ On criticism, see Carmine o della pittura, op. cit., p. 163 ff‘Tu PuENoMeNoLoGy oF Armismic CREATION ACCORDING TO CESARE BRANDI 41 © In Arcadia o della scultura. Eliante 0 delarchitettura, Einaudi, Turin (1956), and in Celso 0 della poesia, Einaudi, Turin (1957). Kant, L., Kritik der reinnen Vernunft, Transzendentale Elementenlehre, Il. Teil 1 Abt., II Bach, I Hauptst. Von dem Schematismus der reinen Verstandesbegriffe, VMA Verlag, Wiesbaden (ad), p. 237 ff. © Celso 0 della poesia, op. cit, pp. 39-40. 's Derida, J., De la grammatologie, Paris (1967) ™ Brandi, C., Celso 0 della poesia, op. cit., pp. 40-41, et Idem, Teoria generale della critica, Einaudi, Turin (1974), pp. 82-83. ® Arcadia o della scultura. Eliante 0 delWarchitettura, op. cit., pp. 122-123, 2 Ibid. pp. 124-125, Arcadia o della scultura, Eliante o delarchitettura, op. cit., pp. 122-123, % Ibid., p. 188 ff. This approach is historically developed in C. Brandi, Disegno dell’architettura italiana, Binaudi, Turin (1985), 2! Celso 0 della poesia, op. cit., p. 20. 2% Ibid. p. 36. 2 Ibid, p. 67 ff = Ibid, p. 99. 28 Ibid, p. 156. ™ Croce, B., Estetica come schema dell’espressione e linguistica generale, 9 edition Laterza, Bari (1950), p. 1-14; Celso o della poesia, op. cit., p. 156. % Celso 0 della poesia, op. cit., p. 156. " Jakobson, R., ‘Linguistique et postique’, in Bssais de linguistique générale, Editions du Mi Paris (1963), pp. 209-248, especially p. 220; and C. Brandi, Le due vie, op. cit,, pp. 61-62. "Celso o della poesia, op. cit., p. 174. "In Teoria generale della critica, op. cit. p. 215 ff. “In Le due vie, op. cit. % Ibid. p. 16. % Ibid, p. 16. " Teoria generale della critica, op. cit., pp. 34-35. See also our introduction to C. Brandi, Les deux voies de la critique, op. cit % Ibid, p. 61 ® [bid., pp. 71-72.A view from Siena of the countryside of Vignano where Cesare Brandi’s Villa is situated.Cesare Brandi THEORY OF RESTORATIONWe considered it important to put together this collection of Cesare Brandi’s writings on the conservation of works of art: on the problems it poses both concretely and as a crucial moment in aesthetic reflection. His is not an abstract theoretical proposition, but a teaching that —for those who studied under him at the Istituto Centrale del Restauro — has become inseparably a path of knowledge and a moral foundation. Although he is leaving his former students at the Istitulo to take up a university chair, we are comforted to know that his thought can hereby be shared by many others. Licia Vlad Borrelli Joselita Raspi Serra Giovanni UrbaniBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Cesare Brandi was born in Siena on 8 April 1906. In 1927, he took a degree in law at the University of Siena, and in 1928 a second degree in literature at the University of Florence. From 1934 on, he was a ‘Libero Docente’ (professor) in Medieval and Modern History of Art at the University of Rome, and in January 1961 he was named to the chair in Medieval and Modern History of Art at the University of Palermo. His career in administration of Antiquities and Fine Arts began in 1930 with the Superintendency of Monuments and Galleries of Siena, where he was given the task of re- organising, cataloguing and hanging the painting collection of the Siena Academy of Fine Arts in its new premises in Palazzo Buonsignori. The catalogue, on which he worked for three years, was published in 1933 by the ‘Poligrafico dello Stato’ Also in 1933, having won a competition as Inspector on the staff of the Administration of Antiquities and Fine Arts, he moved to the Superintendency of Monuments at Bologna. During his three years there, he set up a first restoration laboratory and, in 1935, an exhibition on the fourteenth century painting of Rimini. In 1936, he was called to Rome as Inspector in the Direction of Antiquities and Fine Arts, and then accepted a nomination as Director of Education at Udine; from there, he was transferred with a combined posting as manager and superintendent (Director of Government) in the Governorship of the Italian islands in the Aegean. With the rank of Second-class Superintendent, in 1938 he was recalled to the mainland and transferred to the staff of Monuments and Museums, for the express purpose of setting up the Istituto Centrale del Restauro, of which he became director in 1939. This post continued to the present day, with a de facto interruption from 8 September 1943 to 4 June 1944 in order to avoid collaborating with the Germans, and was taken up again with the arrival of the Allies. In 1953, he moved to the position of First-class Superintendent on the staff of the Directorate of the Administration of Antiquities and Fine Arts As Libero Docente in Medieval and Modern History of Art, he gave various courses at the following venues: University of Rome, Graduate Program in Art History — “Tuscan Painting in 1200°, academic year 1937-38; ‘Early Quattrocento Sienese Painting’, 1945-46; National Institute of Archaeology and History of Art in Rome ~ lecture cycles on ‘Theory and Practice of Restoration’ 195-53, 1953-54, 1954-55, 1955-56, 1956-57. After being secretary of the journal Le Arti together with G.C. Argan, he founded nmagine in 1947 ~a journal of art criticism and literature — and directed it until 1950. Following that, he was the founder and director of the Bollettino dell’'Istituo Centrale del Restauro until 1960. Beginning in 1948, Brandi also became active in the international sphere, and was in demand for conferences, consultancies and missions, whether for particular countries or46 ‘Cesare BraNbi, THpory oF Restoration for UNESCO.! In June 1959, he and Prof. G. C. Argan were awarded the ‘Feltrinelli’ Prize for art criticism by the ‘Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei’. He was awarded the following honorary titles: Commendatore dellOrdine al Merito della Repubblica (Italy) in 1954; Commander of the Order of Leopold II (Belgium) in 1958; named an Officer of the Academy by the French Embassy for fostering Italo-French cultural exchange, in March 1950; Gold Medal for ‘Benemeriti della Cultura’ (Italy) in August 1960. In 1967, he was appointed to the chair of Modern Art History at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where he taught until he reached mandatory retirement age. In Rome, he founded and directed (1973-76) the Yearbook of the Institute of Art History of the University of Rome. Between 1958 and 1986 he contributed to the cultural page of the most important Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera In 1971, he was short-listed for the Estense Prize with his book entitled A passo duomo [Ata Walking Pace]; in 1977 he won the Viareggio Prize for essays with his Seritti sullarte contemporanea /Writings on Contemporary Artj; and, again in 1980, the ‘Feltrinelli’ Prize of the ‘Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei’ for art criticism. He was Vice-Chair of ‘Italia Nostra’ and Chair of the Committee for Artistic and Historical Heritage of the National Council for Cultural Heritage. He died at Siena, in his home at Vignano, on 19 January 1988. (Ed. note) Notes * Conferences abroad were held: in 1948, in Belgium (Brussels), in Switzerland (Basel and Bern), in France (Lyon, Strasburg and Paris), in England (London); in 1949, in Portugal (Lisbon); in 1951, in Austria (Vienna); in 1952, in Spain (Madrid and Barcelona); in 1953, in Greece (Athens); in 1959 in France (Paris); in 1960 in Ireland (Dublin) and in Brgland (London); in 1962 in Libya (Tripoli) and in Tunisia (Tunis) Invitations and consultancies abroad took place: in Belgium (Brussels), November 1950; International Committee for the Restoration of the ‘Mystic Lamb’; in Austria (Vienna), April 1951 restoration of Altdorfer paintings, St Florian; in Malta (Valletta), 1952: wall paintings by Mattia Preti and Caravaggio’s ‘Beheading of St John Baptist’; in Turkey (Bogatky, Goreme, Anatolia, Karatepe, Istanbul), June 1953; in the United States (New York, Metropolitan Museum), December 1953-January 1954; in France (Paris, Louvre), June 1955: three frescoes by Luini; in Lebanon (Beirut), 1956: medieval rock paintings, and Libya (Sabrata and Leptis Magna) 1956, on behalf of Italian Missions Abroad; in France (Paris, Louvre), April 1957: tryptich by Sassetta; in Belgium (Anverse, Cathedral), 1959 and 1960: ‘Descent from the Cross’ by Rubens. Brandi's UNESCO missions were to: Yugoslavia, December 1951: reconstruction of the church of St Sophia in Ochrid; Portugal (Lisbon), 27-31 October: ICOM Committee for treatment of paintings; Palestine, Syria, Jordan, 1956; Jerusalem, restoration of the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock, or ‘Mosque of Omar’; the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), 19-24 September 1957: ICOM Committee for treatment of paintings; Egypt, October 1958: rock paintings of Abu Hoda and the tomb of Nefertari at Luxor; Matia, 1960: Roman mosaics; Cirenaiea (Libya), April 1960: Mosaic of Gars el Lebia; Czechoslovakia (Prague) August 1960; medieval wall paintings; Egypt, January 1962: rock paintings of Abu SimbelTHE CONCEPT OF RESTORATION Restoration is generally understood to mean any intervention that permits a product, of human activity to recover its function. This common conception of restoration already contains within it the notion of treatment of the product, and is closer to what, more precisely must be called a preconceptual outline.’ Any other kind of action in either the biological or physical sphere does not even enter into the common notion of restoration. Moving on from the preconceptual outline of restoration to the concept itself, it is inevitable that the act of conceptualising will focus on the variety of products of human activity to which the particular treatment called ‘restoration’ is applied. Accordingly, there will be restoration in relation to manufactured artifacts, and restoration in relation to works of art: and though the former may be in effect synonymous with repair or making as good as new, the latter is different, and not only because of differences in the procedures to be carried out. Indeed, when industrial products are involved — meaning products from the very smallest item to those of enormous scale — the aim of restoration will be, in effect, to re-establish the product's use. The nature of the restoration treatment, therefore, will be focused exclusively on achieving that end. But when works of art are concerned, even if there are some that, in their form, do have a functional purpose (such as architecture and, in general, objects of the so- called ‘applied arts’), the re-establishment of the property of use is, in the end, only a secondary or supplementary part of the restoration, and never the primary or fundamental aspect, that lies in having respect for a work of art as a work of art. It is essential here to state that the special product of human activity called a work of art is such because of a particular and conscious recognition. This recognition is unusual in two ways, both because it must be performed again and again by each individual, and because it can be validated only by such personal acts. The human product that deserves this recognition is there, before our eyes, but only as long as the conscious appreciation of it as a work of art does not definitely exclude it from the community of other products can it be generically classified as a product of human activity. Surely this is the peculiar characteristic of a work of art, in that it is not considered as such in relation to its essence or to the creative process that produced it, but in relation to the way it enters into the world, into each individual's particular way of being in the world. Such peculiarity does not spring from the philosophical premise from which one starts out. Only if art is accepted as a product of human spirituality does the peculiarity have an immediate resonance, whatever the initial premise might be. Do not think that one must begin with an ideal in mind, for even if the opposite stance is taken — a pragmatic point of view — what is essential for the work of art is its recognition as a work of art.48, Cesare Branpt, THroRY OF RESTORATION Here we can refer to Dewey,? who has clearly pointed out this characteristic: ‘A work of art, no matter how old or classic, is actually and not just potentially a work of art when it lives in some individualised experience. As a piece of parchment, of marble, of canvas, it remains (subject, however, to the ravages of time) self- identical throughout the ages. But as a work of art, it is recreated every time it is esthetically experienced.’ ‘This means that, until such a re-creation or recognition occurs, the work of art is only potentially a work of art, or, as has been stated, it does not exist except in that it subsists —that is, as in Dewey's passage, it is simply a piece of parchment, or marble or canvas. Once this point is accepted, unsurprisingly it leads to the following corollary: any way of acting in relation to the work of art, including restoration treatment, depends on its being recognised as a work of art Yet, if action in relation to the work of art is strictly connected to a judgement that it is art — and is recognised as such ~ the quality of the restoration will be just as strictly determined. This means that even when the work undergoes a stage in the restoration process that is common to other products of human activity, this stage is merely an ancillary to the treatment’s purpose, because it is being performed upon a work of art. Moreover, due to the work's indisputable uniqueness, it is legitimate to exempt restoration (as restoration of a work of art), both from the common meaning of restoration given above, and from the need to spell out the process by which it is conceptualised, since its aim does not rest on the practical procedures that characterise ordinary restoration, but rather on the concept of ‘work of art’ that gives it validity. Consequently, we have come to recognise the inseparable link between restoration and the work of art, in that the work of art conditions the restoration, and not vice versa. In addition, we have seen that what is essential for a work of art is its recognition as such, for that moment marks the work's re-entry into the world. At this act of recognition, the link between restoration and work of art begins; after, it will continue to develop, but the act of recognition sets the premise and conditions. From that recognition, not only do the material components of the work of art come into consideration, but also the dual nature of the way the work of art offers itself to the individual consciousness. Indeed, as a product of human activity, a work of art represents two cases [for restoration}: the aesthetic case [stanza], which corresponds to the basic artistry through which it is a work of art; and the historical case, which it gains as a human product created in a certain time and place, and existing in a certain time and place. Evidently, it is unnecessary even to add a case for usefulness (the only one in fact advanced for other human products), since its utility (if any), as in architecture, cannot be considered by itself in a work of art, but only on the basis of the work's physical being, and of the two fundamental cases through which it has an impact on the viewer: Now that the direct relationship between restoration and the appreciation of a work of art as such has been re-established, we can define restoration: Restoration consists of the methodological moment in which the work of art is recognised, in its physical being, and in its dual aesthetic and historical nature, in view of its transmission to the future. Plainly, the principles that guide a restoration during its operational phase will‘Tue Concert oF Resrorarion 49 have to derive from this elemental core of the work of art, as received by the individual consciousness. The physical nature of the work must of necessity take precedence, since it represents the real ‘place’ where the image is materialised, and it secures transmission of the image to the future, thus ensuring the receiving of the image into the human consciousness. Therefore, although the artistic case takes absolute precedence from the standpoint of recognition of a work of art as such, the moment the possibility of keeping such a revelation alive is invoked by this recognition, the work's physical nature becomes of primary importance. Indeed, although recognition must occur time and time again in the individual consciousness, the very moment it does occur, it also belongs to universal consciousness. The individual who enjoys that instant revelation feels immediately an imperative ~ as absolute as a moral imperative — for conservation. Conservation is developed in countless ways, ranging from simple respect to radical treatment, as in the detachment of frescos or the removal of paintings on panels or canvas. It is clear that the imperative to conserve is addressed generically to the work of art as a complex whole, but it focuses especially on the material in which the image is made manifest. Every effort and type of research must be undertaken to ensure that the material lasts as long as possible. Similarly, only treatment to this end will be legitimate and essential: only treatment that calls on the widest range of scientific support — and it is the first, if not the only, treatment that the work of art truly permits and requires through its fixed and unrepeatable being as an image. From this, the first axiom is clear: Only the material of a work of art is restored. But the physical medium to which the transmission of the image is entrusted does not merely accompany it; on the contrary, the medium and the image coexist. It is not a question of material on the one hand and image on the other. Nonetheless, despite the material's coexistence with image, it is not completely subsumed within the image. Some of the physical structure will be acting as supports for the parts that are actually transmitting the message, though the reasons these are needed and the image’s maintenance are closely linked. Examples would be the foundations of a building, the panel or canvas of a painting, and so on. Whenever the condition of a work of art is found to require the sacrifice of part of its material, the sacrifice, or any other treatment, must be performed from the viewpoint of what the aesthetic requires. The aesthetic case always takes precedence, since the uniqueness of the work of art compared to other human products does not depend on its material being, or on its dual historical nature, but on its artistic nature. Once that artistic nature is lost, nothing but a relic remains. Despite this, the historical case should not be underestimated. It has been said that a work of art enjoys a dual historical nature. The first aspect of this coincides with the act that formed it, an act of creation by an artist in a certain time and plac The second derives from its existence in the individual consciousness, which at a given moment gives it, when and where it is, historicity in relation to that time and place. We will return to the question of a work of art and time in more detail, but the distinction between these two times is sufficient for the present ‘The interval between when the work was created and the historical present (which keeps moving forward), is composed of the many historical ‘presents’ that have become the past. The work of art might retain traces of these transitions. In50 Cesane Brat, THEORY OF RESTORATION addition, in the body of the work, traces might remain of the place of its creation, or for which it was intended, and of the place it is when received anew into consciousness, Now the historical case refers not only to the first aspect of historicity, but also to the second. Bringing these two aspects together represents the dialectics of restoration, as a precise methodological moment in the recognition of the work of art as such. cordingly, the second principle of restoration can be stated: Restoration should aim to re-establish the potential oneness of the work of art, as long as this is possible without committing artistic or historical forgery, and without erasing every trace of the passage through time of the work of art. Notes ' For the concept of preconceptual outline, see C. Brandi, Celso 0 della Poesia, Einaudi, Turin (1957), p. 37 ff., and also the article by P. Philippot in this volume. ® Dewey, J., Art as Experience, New York (1934).2 THE MATERIAL OF A WORK OF ART Oniy the material form of the work of art is restored. This, the first axiom (set out in the preceding chapter), calls for deeper examination The fact that any image relies on physical means to manifest itself, and that means are not an end, does not excuse us from considering how the material used relates to the image. The latter, the image, is the focus of the imagination of the onlooker, but a thorough analysis of a work of art must include an appreciation or understanding of the materials used, which is to say the means to the end. Idealistic aesthetics has generally neglected this kind of investigation, but analysis of a work of art inevitably brings it up. Even Hegel could not avoid referring to what he called the ‘external and given material’, although he did not describe a firm doctrine for use in the conceptualisation of the materials found in art. In this connection, material should be judged by its superficial appearance - it would be quite wrong to start from an ontological, spiritual or epistemological position. Only later, when one arrives at practical restoration treatment, is there also a need for scientific knowledge of the material’s physical makeup. First, however, and especially in relation to restoration, we must define what material is, because it represents simultaneously both the time and the place of the restoration treatment. Consequently, we must start from a phenomenological (as opposed to an ontological) viewpoint, and from this perspective examine how the material ‘transmits the epiphany of the image’. It is no different to judging beauty: ‘quod viswm placet’, as the Scholastics would say. ‘The material used in the work of art carries the message of the image and it does so in two ways which can be defined as structure and appearance. Separating out these two fundamentals is like exploring the verso and the recto of a medal or coin. Whether appearance prevails or structure, together they represent the two functions of material in a work of art and normally one does not contradict the other, although conllict is still possible. Such conflict is usually in the contrast between the aesthetic case and the historical case, and in the end appearance will override structure, where they cannot otherwise be reconciled. An obvious example might be a painting on a wooden panel where the wood has become so fragile that it no longer provides adequate support (Plate 1). In this case, the painting is the material appearance while the wood is the material structure. Such a distinction might not always be so clear-cut: the fact that the painting is on wood gives it special characteristics that could be altered if the panel were removed. It is therefore important to bear in mind that the distinction between structure and appearance is more subtle than it may seem at first and, in practice, it is not always possible to determine the difference. Another example could be a collapsed building, partially destroyed by an earthquake, that lends itself to reconstruction or anastylosis52 Cesare BRANDI, THEORY OF RESTORATION (Plate II, 1-2). In this case, appearance cannot be limited merely to the outer surface of the stone blocks for they still have to remain as blocks — and not only on the surface. Nonetheless, the interior wall structure can be altered to protect the building against future earthquakes. Even the interior structure of any columns can be changed, as long the appearance of the material is not altered. In all likelihood, however, a delicate approach will be necessary to ensure that the altered structure does not influence appearance. Many lamentable and destructive errors have come about because of failures to investigate the material constituents of works of art for both appearance and structure. For example, there is a common misapprehension that un-quarried marble is no different to marble that has been worked into a statue. (This could be called the ‘illusion of immanence’.) Whereas unquarried marble has only its physical makeup, the marble in a statue has undergone radical transformation to become the vehicle of an image. In doing so it has become part of history thanks to the work of human hands, and a chasm has opened up between its existence as calcium carbonate and its existence as an image. As an image, the marble of the statue has separated into appearance and structure, making structure subordinate to appearance. Anyone who thinks that the mere identification of the quarry source of an ancient monument: sanctions him to quarry more stone there and remake the monument (where reconstruction and not restoration is involved), cannot justify himself on the pretext that it is the same material. The material is hardly the same, as it joins current history through being worked now and so it belongs to this epoch and not to a time gone by. Although chemically the same, it will be different and will amount to no more than an historical and aesthetic forgery (Plate III, 1-2) Another error, still entrenched in some quarters, similarly derives from insufficient investigation into what the material represents in the work of art. The error is concealed in the view — dear to the positivism of Semper and Taine — that material generates or determines style. This sophistry stems from paying insufficient attention to the distinction between structure and appearance, and from assimilating the material, as the vehicle of the image, into the image itself. In effect, the appearance taken on by material in a work of art is being considered as a function of the structure. At the opposite extreme, the role of material in the image may be neglected (as occurs in formal aesthetic theory). This arises when material's importance as structure is not recognised. Thus the same result is reached: the assimilation of the material’s appearance into form, dissolving the material's structural aspect. The basic distinction between appearance and structure can sometimes reach such a level of dissociation that, paradoxically, appearance takes precedence over structure, but only in cases where the work does not belong to the category of those arts described as ‘figurative’, such as poetry and music. Here, the writing — which is only the intermediary, not the actual physical medium of those arts — makes appearance more important (albeit symbolically), than the actual production of the sound of the note or the words, Another erroneous idea of material in a work of art limits it to the material consistency of the work. In this case the material expresses the image, and the image's spatiality is not limited to the envelope of the material transformed into the image, for other elements can also be taken as the physical means to transmit the image, acting as intermediaries between the work and the beholder. For example,‘The Mareriat oF 4 Work oF ART 53 consider the quality of atmosphere and light. A mere limpid atmosphere or a certain dazzling light can be taken as the source from which the image becomes manifest, no less than through marble, bronze or some other material. It follows that it would be wrong to maintain that only Pentelic marble was used for the Parthenon, because the atmosphere and light around the Parthenon are as material as the marble itself. ‘Therefore, the only excuse for removing a work of art from its place of origin is an overriding concern for its conservation,3 THE POTENTIAL ONENESS OF A WORK OF ART Having clarified the significance and limitations of the role of material in making manifest a work of art, we can now investigate the concept of ‘oneness’ which must be defined in order to establish the parameters of restoration To start with, the oneness expressed by a work of art cannot be conceived of in the same way as the organic and functional oneness that characterises the physic: world, from the nucleus of an atom to the human body. In this sense, it might suffice to define the oneness of a work of art as qualitative and not quantitative; yet, even this does not cleanly separate the oneness of a work of art from organic and functional oneness, because the phenomenon of life itself is not quantitative but qualitative. First, we must look at why it is so absolutely necessary to attribute the character of oneness to a work of art — and specifically the oneness that refers to the whole, and not the wnity that is reached by the sum of its parts. Indeed, if a work of art is not seen as a whole, it must be considered as a sum of its parts: this leads to a concept of the work of art based on geometry, similar to the geometrical concept of beauty. Here, as for the concept of beauty, the criticism of Plotinus would apply. Thus, if the work of art is composed of parts that are each works of art in themselves, we must conclude that, in reality, either those parts are not as individually autonomous as would appear, and the division into parts acts as a rhythmic device, or that, in the context in which they appear, they lose that individual value and are absorbed into the work of which they are part. Hither the work of art containing them is an assemblage and not one single work, or the autonomy of the individual parts is moderated on joining the whole. The special influence that a work of art exerts over the parts of which it may appear to be made up, is already an implicit negation that the parts make up the work. Let us consider a work of art that actually has several components. Taken individually, the components have no particular aesthetic significance; they might, only possess a generic value in terms of the beauty of the material, the purity of craftsmanship, and so on. Let us use mosaics as an example that parallels the painted surface and structural elements, such as bricks and stone blocks, for architecture. We need not dwell now on the problem, which is a side issue for us here, of the value of the rhythm an artist achieves when composing the individual parts into the image being created. ‘The fact remains that, once mosaic tesserae and stone blocks have been dismantled from the formal arrangement imposed upon them by the artist, they remain inert, and retain no memory of the wholeness that, through the action of the artist, they once formed a part. It is like reading words in a dictionary — those same words arranged by a poet into verse. Once separated from the verse, they revert to nothing more than a group of meaningful noises. Thus, ina mosaic and a construction made of separate blocks, we have the most56 esate Branbi, Tiory oF Restoration eloquent illustrations that it is impossible for a work of art to be conceived of as a sum of its parts: on the contrary, it must bring about a whole Once the ‘oneness of the whole’ is accepted for a work of art, we must ask whether this oneness is an attempt to reproduce the organic unity or the functional unity that is based on continuity of experience. Here, the things that make up the natural world do not exist as independent elements: a leaf recalls a branch; a branch recalls a tree; the chopped limbs and heads we see in a butcher's shop are still part of an animal. Clothing, too, as far as it is represented in the stereotyped cut of ready- made clothes, unmistakably refers to people. What lies behind our experience and daily existence in the world, is the need to recognise connections in all that exists and to reduce or eliminate the non-essential, i.e. anything whose connections to our existence are either unknown or have lost significance. It is clear how the existential connection of all things is a function of knowledge, and it is the very basis of science. From this scientific basis, laws are established and forecasts made possible. So, on seeing a lamb’s head on the butcher's counter, no one doubts that it had four legs when alive. Yet, in the image that is presented through a work of art, this world of human experience seems reduced to a mere cognitive function within the figurative nature of the image: any concept of organic integrity no longer applies. The image is truly and only what it represents. The phenomenological reduction that is used to investigate what exists becomes in aesthetics the very axiom that defines the essence of the image. Therefore the image of a man seen in a painting as having only one arm, has one arm only. The image cannot be considered as mutilated for, in reality, the image has no arms at all — assuming that the ‘arm-that-we-see-painted’ is not an arm. but only a semantic device within the figurative context of the image. The assumption of the other arm (the one that is not painted) is no longer related to the process of looking at the work of art, but to an inversion of the process of creating the work of art; the work of art is reduced to being a reproduction of a natural object, and the natural object represented — a man in this case — is assumed to have another arm. Although most people would think that anyone viewing a portrait of a man with only one arm instinctively reproduces the organic wholeness of a man with two arms, this is not what really happens. The intuitive and spontaneous reception of a work of art happens in exactly the way that has been indicated, limiting the mental substance of the image, or its semantic value, to no more than the image offers. Indirect proof of this observation can be provided. Think of someone who comes across a severed hand or even a human head: he or she would experience revulsion, not doubting for a minute that these had belonged to another person. Yet the sculptural depiction of an isolated hand or head, unless it was made to simulate human remains, will not trigger the same sense of horror, nor will it suggest the thought that these are parts of an organism that have been severed from it. Special measures would be required for the sculpted portrayal of an isolated head to be interpreted — without ambiguity — as a head ripped off from a torso. The iconography of St John the Baptist or St Denis is a case in point. In this way, the organic and functional oneness of existential reality can be shown to be a matter of logic, of the intellect, whereas the figurative oneness of a work of art is intuitive, at one with image as a work of art. At this point we have two propositions, both of which have been defined in order to demonstrate the point of restoration and by doing so regulate its practice.‘Tue PorewmiaL ONENESS oF a Work oF ArT 57 Indeed, as discussed above, a work of art possesses a particularly indivisible oneness, so much so that it cannot be considered as composed of parts. Moreover, this oneness is not comparable to the organic and functional oneness of existential reality. From this, two corollaries follow. In the first, it can be deduced that if a work of art, which is not a sum of parts, is physically fragmented, it will continue to exist as a potential whole in each of its fragments. This potential will be achieved in direct proportion to what has survived of the original artistic features on each fragment of the material that has disintegrated. For the second corollary, the inference is made that if the ‘form’ of each work of art is indivisible, where the work has been physically broken up, one will have to attempt to develop the original potential of oneness held within each fragment. This effort is proportional to the extent that the original form is still preserved within the fragments themselves. With these two corollaries, the possibility of intervening in a mutilated, fragmented work of art by analogy is denied. To proceed by analogy would, to begin with, require the intuitive oneness of a work of art to be equivalent to the logical oneness of our perception of existential reality. This has been refuted. In addition, it can be seen that a treatment that seeks to recover the original oneness by developing the potential oneness of the fragments of that whole (which is the work of art), should be limited to the evidence of the original that is implicit within the fragments themselves, or retrievable from reliable sources. This consideration relates to the starting point of restoration action, and the work's two aspects — historical and aesthetic — naturally come into play. With the one moderated by the other, together these must set how the potential oneness of the work of art might be re-established without creating an historical fake or an aesthetic outrage. Here, we can derive some practical principles that cannot be considered empirical. The first is that any integrative intervention must always be easily recognisable, but without interfering with the oneness that it is designed to re-establish. Therefore, the integration should be imperceptible at the distance from which the work of art will be viewed. On closer examination, it should be immediately obvious without the aid of special equipment. Many axioms of so-called ‘archaeological restoration’ are being contradicted here, in the sense that the need to reach a unity, chromatically and in luminousity, between the fragments and the integrations is being asserted. Also, if the distinction between added parts and original fragments can be achieved with special and lasting techniques, the use of identical materials and an artificial patina is also acceptable, as long as the aim continues to be restoration and not reconstruction (Plates IV, V, VD. The second principle pertains to materials and related image. Materials cannot be replaced if they directly contribute to the figurative appearance of the image and not to the structure. Where principal supports, load-bearing structures and so on are concerned, one has greater freedom of action, but always in harmony with the historical context. ‘The third principle concerns the future. It dictates that a restoration should not prevent any future restorations but, rather, facilitate them. The preceding considerations have not exhausted the problem, for the issue of58 Cesare Branbi, Thbory oF Restoration lacunae is still unexplored, especially considering that integrations should never be based on sheer imagination. It is one thing to develop the figurative motif of a fragment so that it joins up with one nearby, even if not contiguous, but another thing altogether to replace a missing figurative element with integration by analogy. So the lacuna issue is still to be addressed. In a work of art, a lacuna is an interruption in the figurative fabric. Contrary to general belief, the most serious aspect of a lacuna for a work of art is not what is missing but what is put inappropriately in its place. The lacuna itself has a shape and colour with no relevance to the figurative aspect of the image represented. It invades the work of art like a foreign body. The studies and experiments of Gestalt. psychology are invaluable in helping to interpret the meaning of a lacuna and find ways to neutralise it. Despite its random shape, a lacuna is a figure against a ground, and that ground is the painting itself. In the way that human perception spontaneously generates an order of its own, which relies on symmetry and the simplest forms for immediate interpretation of a complex image, there is an institutional relationship between figure and ground. In short, it is through a spontaneously generated pattern of perception that we establish a relationship between figure and ground in a visual image. This relationship is then articulated and developed in a painting according to the inherent spatiality of the image. When there is a lacuna in a painting's overall fabric, this unexpected ‘figure’ is perceived as a real figure to which the painting provides a ground. The image is not only mutilated but also devalued, in the sense that, what was born as a figure is now relegated to mere background. Out of the first attempts to establish a restoration methodology that avoided integrations based on fantasies of the imagination, came the empirical solution of a neutral tone — an attempt to reduce the prominence of the lacuna in the foreground by means of a tone as inconspicuous as possible, which, it was hoped, would push it to the background. It was an honest effort, but not enough. It became clear that a neutral tone does not, in fact, exist; that, in reality, any tone — supposedly neutral or not — has an influence on the chromatic arrangement of the painting, What is more, because the added tone was in such close conjunction to the colours of the image, by contrast these were dimmed, and the chromatic intrusiveness of the lacuna was actually heightened. Something was still missing. The immediate observation was that the lacuna could not be allowed to combine with the colours of the image, because it always appeared to be at a different level from the painting — either more prominent or recessed. Eventually, a new starting point was found in the simple observation that if there is a spot on the glass in front of a painting, this spot, which also affects the visibility of what lies beneath it (almost as if it were a lacuna), is perceived as being at a different level from the painting's surface, so one still sees the painting continuing beneath the spot. If the lacuna could be given a colour that — instead of harmonising with or being designed not to overpower the painting's colours — stands out in tone and luminosity (if not in timber), the lacuna would act like the spot on the glass: one could perceive the continuation of the painting beneath the lacuna. ‘This criterion was applied in the more problematic areas of the ‘Annunciation’ by Antonello da Palazzolo Acreide (Sicily; Plate VII]: the lacunae appear as spots above the painting. This was not yet the best solution but still it was better than before, To improve it, all that was necessary was to apply the principle of difference in level (colour statics permitting) to the lacuna, forcing the lacuna to become the ground of the painting instead of the other‘Tue PorenTial. ONENESS oF 4 Work oF ART 59 way around. In this way, even the random shape of the lacuna no longer has a marked inpact on the appearance of the image, and, since it does not relegate the painting to the background, it becomes a part of the material-structure, with its own appearance. In most cases, it is enough to expose the wood or canvas of the support to obtain a clean, pleasant effect, especially since all ambiguity caused by the dramatic appearance of the lacuna as a painted figure is eliminated (Plates VIII, IX). In that sense too, the colour recedes to the background; it is there but does not join in or directly interfere with the chromatic arrangement on the painted surface. This solution, albeit an intuitive one, has received support and explanation from Gestalt psychology, for it exploits a natural mechanism of perception.4 TIME IN RELATION TO THE WORK OF ART AND RESTORATION We have recognised the particular structure of a work of art as an entity, and clarified in what way and to what point its potential oneness can be re-established as ssential to the aesthetic case for restoration. Having done that, we must now investigate the issue of time, as it affects a work of art, in regard to the historical case. By now, we know that, in art, a distinction made between time and space is a temporary and illusory distinction, for time and space constitute the formal conditions for any work of art, and are fused with the rhythmic consonance that brings about the form. Nonetheless, as well as being at the core of this rhythm (from the phenomenological rather than the formal viewpoint), in the work of art, no matter what it is, time is encountered in three distinct moments. First, there is the duration of the externalising of the work of art, while it is being formed by the artist; second, we have the interval between the end of the creative process and the moment when our consciousness becomes aware of the work of art; third, is the istant when the work of art strikes consciousness like a bolt of lightning. These three meanings of historical time in a work of art are far from being always present and clear to the viewer of the work. Indeed, they are often confused with or replaced by the chronological meaning of the work's historical time — that is, what is generally understood by the extra-chronological time, as form, that the work of art produces. The most common confusion occurs when the attempt is made to identify the work of art’s time with that of the historical present in which the artist, or the viewer (or both), lives. Even on uttering this sophistry, it seems almost impossible this could be, and yet it corresponds to an almost innate, mistaken attitude, akin to common sense. Moreover, underlying the sophistry is, unquestionably, the negation of the work of art’s autonomy. In other words, it is presumed that, because Giotto, for instance, painted compositions that are universally considered to be works of art — even acclaimed as such during his lifetime — these works of art must indisputably represent the epoch in which Giotto lived, in the sense that the epoch expressed Giotto even more than Giotto expressed his epoch. The two basic moments of the creative process are, of course, being implicitly confused in this crude approach: in the first, which leads to the symbolic identification of the object,' the artist decides whether to incorporate the sacrosanct tastes and concerns, theories and ideologies, desires and schemes that he might have in common with his epoch. That is up to him. But when he comes to creating the object, so individually and intimately dedicated, of these concomitant outside factors that come together in the final object, nothing will remain, or will remain only like an insect trapped in amber. The time in which the62 Cesare Brann, Tazory oF RESTORATION artist lives might or might not be recognisable in his work, and the validity of the work will be neither raised nor diminished an iota, At the instant of the actual reassumption of the work of art into consciousness, whether it occurs in a few seconds or a hundred centuries, if the work of art is to be experienced as taking active part in the event (in a period different from its own), it must lend itself to acting as a stimulus. This leads to what has been called suggestive interpretation. In other words, it will not be enough for the work of art to strike consciousness in an instant — an instant that exists in historical time — but the extra- chronological ‘present’ of the work must also be brought into play. The work will be required to come off its pedestal, to undergo the gravitational pull of the time in which we live, to be in the very existential quandary from which contemplation of the work should free us. ‘Thus, if one has an ancient work of art, it will be asked to be contemporary in some way, perhaps in accordance with fashion, or in an attempt to devolve to the work purposes that — whatever they might be — will always be extraneous to the form, which has no place in such an exercise, Over the centuries, the fortunes and misfortunes of Giotto or Raphael, Correggio or Brunelleschi have been mapped out in this way, together with the total rejection as well as the unqualified praise that have alternated over the course of time. These fluctuations are certainly not beneath the notice of history; indeed, they are history and history of culture, when understood as the purposes and ideas involved as viewed in the light of current taste and chosen interests. Such history is undeniably legitimate and undoubtedly useful. For purposes of reading the form, it can be a valuable field of study, but it will never be history of art. History of art is the history that addresses — albeit through the chronological succession of artistic expressions — the extra-chronological moment of the time that is enclosed in the rhythmic consonance. The history of taste is the history of chronological time, which gathers the finished and immutable work of art into its flow, Nevertheless, the confusion between extra-chronological time (or the time inside the work of art), and the viewer's historical time becomes rather more serious and damaging when it intrudes on the works ~ and it almost always does — with the very reality in which we live. Here, to have one and the same substance for the aspirations, purposes, morality and social nature of all or part of the epoch seems right and inevitable, which, if felt by the artist to be a premise for the act of individuation of the object as symbol (and only then), must be recognised as legitimate — but not obligatory. Outside of the restricted sphere of the creative process, no more can be sought from or asked of modern artists than is asked of the ancients, Yet, we have seen that time is also involved in a second period, which is represented by the interval between the end of the creative process — or finished form —and the moment when that form resonates in the current viewer's consciousness, It would seem, however, that this elapsed time does not come into consideration of the work as an aesthetic object, for, unless it becomes a quite different work, a work of art is immutable and invariable. Accordingly, the calculation of the time passed between the work's completion and reactivation has no impact on it — indeed, it slides over the reality of the work. This consideration might seem irrefutable, but it is not, because it does not take into account the physicality that is needed for the image to arrive at one’s consciousness. This physicality may be minimal, yet it is always there, even when it virtually disappears. For example, the objection could beToe BLATION TO THE Work OF ART AND RESTORATION 63 made that a poem, if read silently, only with the eyes, needs no physical vehicle, in that writing is merely a conventional tool for indicating certain sounds. In theory, one could even create a poem with a series of symbols, knowing only what they mean but not how they are pronounced. This is a mere quibble. Not knowing the sound that corresponds to the symbol does not imply that the sound is unnecessary to the substance of the poetic image. The image would be as diminished in its figurativeness as the famous compositions of ancient paintings for which there is no image, only a description The need for sound exists, and even if the sound is not supplied, it lives in the totality of the language's image, which every speaker possesses fully, and gradually activates internally. Now, given this (relatively unexpressed) recognition, the time elapsed between when the poem was written (when the language was pronounced in a certain way), and the time when the poem is read (and the language is no longer pronounced in the same way), is very important. Only dead languages, artificially frozen in their pronunciation and meaning, can be said to be stable over the course of time. In point of fact, even they are not exempt, since the influence of pronunciation will also have some impact on them, albeit in a lesser way. If anyone should complain that these observations are excessively subtle, we would remind them of the phases of French pronunciation, because of which no recitations of the Chanson de Geste are now made. We no longer pronounce even Pascal the way Pascal spoke himself. Or take Spanish, where the different value of the jota profoundly alters the reading of seventeenth-century prose and poetry. And so, time still goes by, even for such works of art as poetry, that seem more immune to it. Here, too, time has the same effect as it does on a painting's colours, or on the hues of marble. Music is equally affected, for ancient instruments have been so greatly modified — for tone as well as pitch — that nothing is more approximate than the way Bach sounds on a present-day church organ, or even Corelli or Paganini on a violin of their period, fitted with metal strings. In this sense, although consideration of the elapsed time will occur just after the instant flash that makes a work of art resonate in the consciousness, such a consideration will not be purely historical. It must merge with the judgment we make of the work, and illuminate this in a way that certainly is neither unnecessary nor marginal. Likewise, it is neither marginal nor unnecessary to know the variations and fluctuations in the meaning of words over the centuries. Having arrived at this point, we might also wonder how this examination relates to the theory of restoration; but the answer is soon found. It, in fact, was necessary to establish the moments that mark the insertion of a work of art into historical time, in order to define which of these moments offers the conditions necessary for that special intervention entitled ‘restoration’, and when such an intervention is permissible. Clearly, one cannot speak of restoration during the time from the object's conception until itis finally formed. It might seem to be restoration, since the process is carried out on a finalised image; but in reality we have once again a fusing of the image with another image, an act of creation and synthesis that weakens the first image, and seals it in the new. Still, there will be (and certainly have been), people who would insert restoration into precisely this most intimate and unrepeatable phase of the artistic process64 Cesare Branpt, Tapory oF Restoration This is the most serious heresy of restoration: it is restoration by fantasy. (Plates Ill, X, XI, XII, XII). Although it might seem equally absurd, one could also attempt to have restoration come within the interval between the completion of the work and the present; this, too, has been done and has a name. It is restoration by ‘reperfecting’, that is., returning the work to its original state and erasing the elapsed time. We should recall at this point that the so-called ‘archaeological’ restoration, however praiseworthy it may be for its respect for the work of art, does not achieve that to which human consciousness fundamentally aspires in relation to the work of art — that is, to re-achieve its potential oneness. Only the first phase of reconstruction is represented by it, and that ends, of necessity, when the surviving relics of what used to be a work of art no longer allow credible integrations. Thus there can be no wavering or doubt on the path to take, for there is only the one shown; all others are refuted. We need not belabour the point any further in order to state that the only legitimate moment for the act of restoration is the actual moment of conscious awareness of the work of art. At this time, the work of art exists in the moment and is historically present; yet it is also part of the past and, at the cost of not being part of human consciousness, is thus part of history. For restoration to be a legitimate operation, it cannot presume that time is reversible or that history can be abolished. Furthermore, the act of restoration, in order to respect the complex historical nature of the work of art, cannot develop surreptitiously or in a manner unrelated to time. It must allow itself to be emphasised as a true historical event — for it is a human action — and to be made a part of the process by which the work of art is transmitted to the future. From a practical standpoint, this historical requirement should translate not only into a differentiation of newly integrated areas, something already made explicit, when the potential oneness is re-established, but also into a respect for patina (Plate XIV), which can be thought of as the accretion of time on the work of art. Furthermore, it should make provision for the saving of sample areas that, show the work of art’s condition before restoration, and also that of non-contemporaneous parts of the work that represent the same passage of time. For this last requirement, of course only a general guideline can be provided, for each case has to be evaluated individually and never at the expense of the aesthetic case, which always takes precedence. As for patinas, although in practice the question must be examined and resolved case by case, a theoretical approach is called for thus removing this key point for restoration and conservation of works of art from the realm of taste and controversy. Notes } Fora discussion of the theory of artistic creation during the essential moments of the making of the object and the forming of the image, see C. Brandi, Carmine o delta Pittura, Vallecchi, Florence (1947); Binaudi, Turin (1962)5 RESTORATION WITH REGARD TO THE HISTORICAL CASE The basic theory of restoration has been outlined in the preceding chapters Yet, between the explanation of the principles that should underlie restoration and the actual restoration treatment, there is still a gap to be filled, corresponding to the role played by regulations in the field of law. In other words, given that the very concept that a work of art is a unique object because of the unrepeatable singularity of historic events, each case of restoration will be a case in itself and not just an element in a collective series. Nevertheless, a few broad categories of works of art can be determined, precisely on the basis of the system of reference by which a work of art is a work of art, both as historic record and as form. In the transition from norms to application, these categories must act as a reference point in the same way that regulations provide instruments for implementing legal norms. These reference points, however, will group an indefinite number of individual cases on the basis of fairly general characteristics. Consequently, they do not function as norms themselves, but as an interpretative support for the application of an actual norm. If a work of art is the result of human activity and, as such, its appreciation does not depend on variations in taste or fashion, its historical significance takes priority over its aesthetic value. Since a work of art is an historical record, it must be considered as such from the extreme point at which the formal arrangement that shaped matter into a work of art has almost vanished, and the monument is reduced to little more than a residue of the material that made it up. In effect, we must examine the ways we can conserve a ruin. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to think that the reality of a ruin will lead us to the rules for its conservation. With a ruin, one does not merely define an empirical reality, one also makes a value judgement about what has been simultaneously considered under the headings of history and conservation. That is, one does not simply focus on its current condition but on its past, which informs its current presence (of little or no value in itself) and on the future for which it should be preserved as a vestige or evidence of human activity and as a departure point for conservation treatment, It cannot be called a ruin if it does not bear witness to human time, even if it cannot be exclusively linked to a form that was received from human activity and then lost. In that sense, a carbon fossil cannot be called a ruin, as it is a vestige of a pre-human forest, nor can the skeleton of an antediluvian animal. ‘The dry oak that shaded Tasso would qualify, as would the stone with which David slew Goliath (if it still existed and was verified as such). A ruin, therefore, is anything that bears witness to human history but has changed so much from its former appearance as to be almost unrecognisable. Still, this definition in the past and present would be66 Cesane Brant, THEORY OF RESTORATION incomplete if the particular manner of existence that is embodied in a ruin did not project itself into the future with an implicit expectation of the conservation and transmission of its historical message. Consequently, the preservation of a work of art that is reduced to a state of ruin depends to a great extent on the historical significance ascribed to it. On the practical level, it is equivalent to products of human activity that were not art, but even in their current ineffectiveness still retain part of their historical potential. With a work of art, however, the poor condition of its aesthetic vestiges seems to be the result of a loss of status. When dealing with ruins, restoration can only be a consolidation and preservation of the status quo. Otherwise, the ruin was not a ruin, but a work of art that still maintained an implicit vitality that would allow its original potential oneness to be re-established, The identification of a ruin, therefore, goes hand in hand with that initial phase of restoration known as preventive restoration, meaning merely maintaining the status quo. This approach recognises that any direct treatment is explicitly ruled out if it goes beyond conservation monitoring and consolidation of materials. Recognising something as a ruin means expressing a judgement that a ruin of a work of art and a purely historical ruin are equivalent, are logically on a par with each other: ‘Together with direct intervention, within the limits set here, there is also indirect intervention into the ruin’s spatial environment. With architecture, it becomes an issue of urban planning; with painting and sculpture, it becomes a question of presentation and positioning. (But as this factor involves the ‘space’ of the work of art, it will be treated later.) None of these considerations are obvious, given that there is a tenaciously recurrent illusion that a ruin can be brought back to its original form. It is not enough to know ~ even with extensive, detailed, documentary evidence — how the work used to look before it became a ruin. Reconstruction, re-creation or replication have nothing to do with restoration proper. By their very nature, they go too far, and have legitimacy (if at all), only in the field of deliberate reproduction of the processes used in forming a work of art. From what has been said above, it will be found to be relatively easy to respect. the ruin of an historic monument as if it were the ruin of a work of art, for such respect will be shown through conservation and consolidation of the material. To define when a work of art ceases to be a work of art and becomes a ruin is more difficult. Take the case of the church of Santa Chiara in Naples, which was bombed during the Second World War, and burned out. Because vestiges of the gothic, Angevin structure were revealed again, it seemed as if more than a ruin were left; yet, precisely because those vestiges seemed so clear, the problem had to be seen from the standpoint that will be discussed in the next chapter: that is, restoration in regard to the case for the aesthetic. It should have been considered in this light, and I wonder whether the evocation of the church's former condition might not have been more effective if it had been kept as an historic ruin and not repaired (Plates XV, XVD, When both historical and artistic factors are at stake, the re-establishment of the work's potential oneness should not be pushed so far as to destroy authenticity: that is, by superimposing a new, inauthentic but overpowering historical reality on the old. For the moment, we must limit ourselves to accepting a ruin as the residue of an historic or artistic monument, which can be nothing other than what it is, and where restoration can only maintain it that way, using whatever techniques are required. Hence, the legitimacy of the conservation of a ruin lies in the judgment it receives on its historicity, as a mutilated but still recognisableRESTORATION Winit REGARD TO THE HISTORICAL CASE or witness to a work and a human event. Therefore, with this concept of ruin, a work of art’s analysis, in terms of its restoration, from the very first begins at. the stage beyond which the constituent materials of the work of art revert back to their raw state. Consequently, this is the most basic level of restoration. Having to present the work of art, not in its transition from inner creation to outer form, but as already having an existence in the world, restoration must start from precisely where the work of art ends, that is, at that moment of transition [momento-limite] (a boundary in both time and space), where the work of art, reduced to a few traces of itself, is about to fall back into an amorphous state. Nevertheless, a ruin is not the only case where something is placed on the same level as the conservation of a work of art, though it is neither a work of art nor a product of human activity. Take the case of what is called natural beauty. Given so many splendid examples, in itself it would merit examination, and being listed among the examples where restoration — as both preventive restoration and conservation treatment — should also be extended to something that is not a direct product of human activity. Yet in the realm of judgements, its consideration derives from its similarity to a work of art. Respect for a view, the protection of a panorama, the integrity of some natural features linked to a particular culture (woods, fields, fallow land), are being demanded on the basis of analogy to an aspiration to form, and understood in such natural aspects by a particular historical and individual consciousness. These are other cases where it is valid to extend the concept of preventive restoration and of conservation to something that exists, but whose appearance is not the fruit (or is only in part) of human endeavour. It is clear that this need for conservation does not detract from either the aesthetic or the historical case, for what one wants to conserve and preserve is not a piece of nature in and for itself, but that small part of nature — with or without human modifications — as it is seen and presented, in isolation from its context, and intended as an aspiration to form in human consciousness. Therefore, there will be no designation of this type that is not linked to a special phase of human culture. Just as Switzerland's mountain landscape was considered frightful up to the time of Stael, so the vast and desolate Roman countryside had no champions before Romanticism, which ‘classicised’ it. At the time of the true classical Roman landscape, from Poussin to early Corot, the beauty of the Roman Campagna lay in its curious trees and hills, the overarching sky, the still lakes, and the ruins of aqueducts and temples. And so, the conservation of such aspects must take place in homage to the historical case, not just according to the current value put on them. If the case exists, it refers not to current taste but to an historical phase of taste: this is the point where discussion should begin. Continuing the analysis in terms of the historical case, we are faced with two problems with regard to works of art: whether to keep or remove additions, and to keep or remove reconstructions. In going from a work of art that has been reduced to a ruin, to a work of art that has undergone additions and reconstructions, it might seem impossible to approach the problem from a strictly historical point of view. Yet it must be stressed that I do not wish to solve the same problem using two distinct approaches, merely to examine whether keeping or removing additions and reconstructions can be considered legitimate from the historical point of view. I also want to determine the limitations of both the historical and aesthetic case to try to68 Cesane Brant, Tory oF RESTORATION find at least some way to reconcile any discrepancies By presenting the problem of the legitimacy of conservation or removal, I have already overcome the obstacle posed by those who believe that the legitimacy of conservation is based exclusively on the historical significance of the work of art. If this were so, both the barbaric vandalisms and the integrations that, over the centuries, have been inflicted on works of art, on artistic (not restoration) grounds would, unconditionally, have to be respected. Nor should the possibility that both can be respected together be excluded. Yet, since a work of art is endowed with both historical and aesthetic aspects, conservation or removal must not occur at the expense of the one or the disregard of the other. Therefore, in view of the historical case, we must first ask ourselves whether it is legitimate to keep or remove any additions that the work of art has received. In other words, apart from the fact that aesthetic judgement will affect whether an addition is kept or removed, is it legitimate to keep or remove it on the grounds of the historical case alone? This consideration brings us to examining the concept of ‘addition’. From an historical point of view, an addition to a work of art is nothing more than new evidence of human activity and, therefore, is part of history. In this context, an addition is no different from the original and has the same right to conservation. On the other hand, removal, although also the result of human action and thus also part. of history, in reality destroys a record and does not record itself. By doing this, it leads to the negation and destruction of an historical process and the falsification of evidence. Therefore, in historical terms, only the conservation of an addition is unconditionally legitimate, whereas its removal always needs justification, or should at least be carried out in a manner that will leave a trace both in record and on the work of art itself, Consequently, the conservation of an addition is the norm, removal the exception. This is the exact opposite of what nineteenth-century empiricism recommended for restorations. Nonetheless, one might object that one type of addition does not necessarily represent the product of human activity — that is, the alteration or accretion that goes under the name of patina. I have said not necessarily because unquestionably the artist might have counted on a certain setiling produced by time in the material of the colours, the marble, the bronze or the stone: in this case, it is clear that any conservation or integration of patina is an intrinsic part of the respect for the potential oneness of a work of art that is entailed by restoration Yet we must also consider the case of a work of art where the artist did not necessarily foresee its ageing as a way for the work to fulfil itself in time ~ in a long- term finishing process. The problem is raised here, but cannot be fully resolved historically, given that the aesthetic case takes priority. Nevertheless, from the historical standpoint, it must be recognised that it is a way to falsify history when historical evidence is, so to speak, stripped of its antiquity; that is, if the material is forced to acquire new freshness, crisp lines or otherwise made to belie its age. Any preference for the material over the human activity that shaped it cannot be admitted by historical consciousness, because the work is valued for the human activity that formed it and not for the intrinsic value of the material; even gold and precious stones acquire new value from the human hands that work them. From the historical standpoint, therefore, the conservation of a patina — as that particular blurring that the newness of material receives over time and which speaks thereforeRESTORATION WiTit REGARD TO THE HISTORICAL Case, 69 of the passage of time — is not just admissible but explicitly required. It might be thought that the problem is not so different, as far as reconstruction is concerned. Even reconstruction is evidence of human action and represents an historical moment, but it is not the same as an addition. An addition can complete a work or can function, particularly in architecture, differently to what was originally intended. With an addition, there is no imitation; there is, rather, a development or an insertion. A reconstruction, instead, seeks to reshape the work, intervening in the creative process in a manner that is similar to the way the original creative process developed. It merges old and new so that they cannot be distinguished, abolishing or shrinking the time interval between the two moments of activity. The difference, therefore, is striking. In two ways, the explicit or implicit pretext of reconstruction is always to abolish a time lapse. One is that the latest intervention (the reconstruction), is intended to appear as if assimilated into the same period as the work’s birth. The other is that it also is intended to bring the preceding time completely into its own, In the historical context, we therefore have two diametrically opposed situations: the first case (that is, where the most recent intervention is intended to be dated retroactively), is never admissible. The second case (where the reconstruction is intended to absorb and engulf the pre-existing work leaving no trace of it behind) ~ albeit not belonging to the field of restoration — can be perfectly legitimate, even historically, because it is still authentic, current evidence of human activity and, as such, a record of history And so, if we return to the alternatives of conservation or removal from a visual and historical perspective, I consider it appropriate, whenever possible, to return a monument to that state of imperfection in which it had been left by the historical process, and which ill-considered restoration has completed. However, we should always respect the new oneness that — regardless of the restoration’s senselessness — was established within the work of art through a new fusion; the more this fusion affects the work of art, the more it is also a real source of historical material and evidence. Thus, the closer an addition comes to being a reconstruction, the worse it is; whereas a reconstruction will be all the more acceptable, the more it differs from an addition and tries to form a new oneness in place of the old. Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that even the worst reconstruction does, in fact, document human activity, albeit mistakenly, and that itis still part of human history. Therefore, it should not be removed — at the most it may be isolated. This position would seem unassailable historically, were it not for the fact that it leads to a conviction of non-authenticity or falsification for the entire work of art. We could begin to question the monument’s very truthfulness as an historical record, and, at the level of philological critique, that cannot be allowed. Furthermore, a similar requirement to completely conserve all phases through which the work of art has passed must not contradict the aesthetic case, which will be discussed in the next chapter.6 RESTORATION WITH REGARD TO THE AESTHETIC CASE* We have seen that a ruin is not just any kind of residue material, a mere remnant of a product of human activity, but that for the purposes of restoration, technically, the definition of ruinousness implicitly involves recognising the need to take action for its conservation. This particular concept of a ruin has been discussed in the light of historicity, and as the most extreme point that can be reached (in the range of restoration action), in something that was once of human interest. In that context, it could only be suggested that this relic of human activity was, by prior right, also a work of art. The case from this point of view has still to be examined. Yet, immediately such an examination is proposed, it seems unnecessary, in the sense that ~ logically — as long as vestiges of art remain in a product of human activity (no matter how mutilated), it cannot be called a ruin. Conversely, if those vestiges are entirely lost, it is no longer a question of art, but only of historic interest: therefore, from the aesthetic standpoint, the ‘ruin’ question cannot be posed without an innate contradiction. Such fine distinctions are unnecessary, since from the aesthetic standpoint, we are not forced to define the conceptual grounds of a ruin as we would from the historical standpoint. In the view taken here, every remnant of a work of art that cannot be returned to its potential oneness without becoming a copy or a falsification of itself is, aesthetically, a ruin. And here it would also be absurd to require more exactness, in that — where every case is unique and individual, as for a work of art — a judgement of quality cannot be expected to change into one of quantity and, by doing so, aspire to the mathematical-empirical certainty of the Pythagorean table Among the most typical examples of ruins that cannot be made whole, but that must be conserved if possible, are the sculpture of Palazzo Bevilacqua and the [church of] Madonna of Galliera in Bologna, the Aphrodite in the Museum of Rhodes, the frescoes of Ospedale del Ceppo in Prato, the frescoes of Sodoma and of Sassetta and Sano di Pietro at the Porta Romana and at Porta Pispini in Siena, the frescoes of the Bigallo Loggetta in Florence, etc. (Plates XVI, XVIII, XIX) Yet, from the artistic standpoint, the concept of ruin also presents complications that cannot be ignored, for the possibilities that the ruin belongs to a given monumental or landscape complex, or that it determines the character of a zone have also to be entertained. This position might appear merely empirical and arbitrary, but in practice, it is not. Against the negative definition of the concept of ‘ruin’ — as remnant of a work of art that cannot be brought back to its potential oneness ~ can be set the positive determination that, although it cannot be brought back to its potential oneness, it is a remnant of a work of art that is connected to another work of art, from which it receives, and on which it imposes a particular spatial2 Cesane BraNpi, THEORY OF RESTORATION enhancement, or, on its own, it improves a given landscape. In that sense, defining the impact of a ruin can be very important. If from a negative standpoint the action to be taken for its conservation is unchanged (that is, remaining strictly conservationist to meet the historical case), when a ruin is no longer only a relic but a positive participant, it might be asked whether its most recent relevance should not prevail. Consequently, if it enhances a natural space, should not this aspect prevail over respect for the remnant as a ruin? Take the case of the Arch of Augustus in Rimini (Plates XX, XX1), which was inserted between two towers as a city gate and then linked to the building complex that rose upon the walls. Or other examples, such as: Trajan’s Forum with the additions of the Hospice of the Knights of Rhodes; the ruin of the Clementino; the ‘Temple of the Sybil at Tivoli; the house of the Crescenzi on Via del Mare; the temple discovered on Via delle Botteghe Oscure; or the excavations at Largo Argentina (Plates XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XV, XXVI) In practice, the fact of a ruin’s connection to another building group, with or without a space between, does not change the terms of conservation: how and where it is, without completions of any kind. If there is a work of art into which a ruin has been reabsorbed, it is this second work of art that should be entitled to prevail Accordingly, the medieval arcaded window in the midst of the Mannerist Palace of Piazza dei Cavalieri in Pisa should mot have been restored (Plate XXVII, 1). The ruin of the Muda had already been incorporated into the seventeenth century building and, by then, had only a weak historical voice. A memorial slab would have sufficed instead of the false Pisan window that, from thin air, the restorer reopened and completed, adding nothing to the magnificent, pure reality of the Canto del Conte Ugolino. Different in appearance but identical in substance is the problem of the conservation of the so-called house of Cola di Rienzo or of the Crescenzi on Via del Mare [Rome]. From the historical viewpoint, the connection with other, subsequent buildings should have been respected, and not replaced in a new and completely arbitrary way by buildings that smothered the ruin, destroyed its spatial context, and failed to incorporate it into the new space, in which the ruin is warded off as if it were a wart or an indecent excretion. In that particular example, not only the ruin of the monument should have been conserved but also its surroundings, to which validity was given by the ruin. The same is true of the ruin of the Clementino, left like a useless obstacle in the Lungotevere, which rejects but cannot completely ignore it. Another approach would be to recognise a ruin's importance in its ability to draw attention to and emphasise the surrounding environment, similar to the way the tonic accent supports the atonic syllables of a word. It might be thought that, given the work's current state, which is now more valuable because it s7ypports the landscape or urban syntax, it could be completed (that is, redeemed from its state of ruinousness), but this hypothesis should also be ruled out. In that, as. a work of art reduced to a ruin, it performs the function of enhancing a landscape or an urban zone, in the consciousness of a person who recognises its validity (that is, one who sees the work in this sense as active), this is connected not to its original oneness and completeness, but to its current marred state. In its marred state, the work provides an environmental solution on the pictorial level: that is, not on the rigorous level of the work of art, but on that addressed to a certain view of the object — arranged, lit, staged according to a particular formal conception. Accordingly, a marred work of art reverts to an artificial object, seen in the true reality of its marred state, and in its3D TO THE AESTHETIC Case 73 presence combined with other objects. This was how the Roman ruins were understood and used in gardening and landscapes from the seventeenth century onwards, up to the threshold of our own time. The Temple of Castor and Pollux at the Roman Forum, and the Temple of the Sybil at Tivoli are two typical examples of monuments that have acquired an appearance, in their marred condition, which is indissoluble from the landscape surrounding them. Therefore, it is wrong to believe that every broken column could legitimately be raised and recomposed when, on the contrary, the environment where this would occur has, historically and aesthetically, reached a settled state that must not be destroyed for either history or art. And so, it is always a mistake to rearrange a Roman archaeological area where the stratification of time has settled, in order to integrate the ruin into the spatial qualities of another work. A ruin left untouched is preferable to that abstract space, to the emptiness around a monument that is senselessly created. With all this, and ignoring countless other examples, all that can be done is stress that, when the aesthetic case is also taken into account, a ruin, conceptually, must be treated as a ruin, and the action to be taken should always focus on conservation, not integration. It can be seen that, on this issue, the historical and aesthetic cases agree in their interpretation of the work to be undertaken in the form of restoration. We now return to the problem of keeping or removing additions, bearing in mind that not only a ruin is involved. It could be (and frequently is), the case that additions have been made to works of art that could recover their original oneness (and not just their potential oneness), if, wherever possible, the additions were removed. It should be realised that, by viewing the problem from the aesthetic standpoint, the historical approach is overset, in that its focus is on preserving the additions. In the case for the artistic nature of a work of art, the call is for removal. So, a possible conflict emerges with the conservation requirements advanced by the historical case. Naturally, in a theoretical discussion, such a conflict can only be outlined, as it is one of the more individual and, as it were, unrepeatable debates that can arise. Yet, a resolution cannot be justified by a decree from on high: it must be suggested by the case that carries the greatest weight. And since the essence of a work of art must be seen in the fact that it is a work of art, and only secondarily has an historical case, it is clear that if the addition disturbs, perverts, obscures or detracts in part from sight of the work of art, the addition must be removed. Other conservation aspects, documentation and historical stages should be maintained wherever possible, for this approach can remove them from the living body of the work and nullify them. First on the list of items to be removed are the crowns placed on the heads of sacred images; this is perhaps the most. typical and simplest case of removal of additions. Still, the problem will not always appear so simple and obvious. Take, for example, the case of the Volto Santo [Lucca] (Plate XVII, 2): should the skirt, the slipper and the crown be kept or removed? Cold logic might lead to the decision that such later elements should be removed; but yet, contrary to what might be expected, I would not agree. Whatever might be thought of the Volto Santo, it is certain that ~ as a Romanesque statue — it was transmitted over the centuries thanks to the added iconography it has today, and which has been reproduced in an entire series of statues, paintings or etchings — ranging from that in the Baptistery of Parma to the frescos of Aspertini and so on. To cause this work to revert to its original state of completeness would imply displacing it in the continuous historical series by means of which its evidence is documented. In my opinion, the Volto Santo’s value as a work74 ‘Crsare BraNbl, Tipory oF Restoration of art is not sufficiently great to offset the importance of its historical dimension, and so it is I feel that it should keep this documentary aspect, which, aside from the intrinsic value of the added parts, is in itself a highly important historical relic. In other words, a value judgment is always required to perceive whether additions should be kept or removed. We still have not entirely exhausted the problem of the conservation of additions, because, again, the legitimacy of the conservation of patina must be examined from the aesthetic point of view. We have seen that, historically, the patina documents the work of art's passage through time, and therefore should be preserved. But, aesthetically, is its preservation equally legitimate? In this respect, it must be stressed that such legitimacy must be deduced from an unequivocal standpoint: that is, apart from the fact that the artist might even have planned for this almost perceptible layer that time would add to the work. In that case, conservation’s legitimacy is not the exemplar for the conservation of patina, but only, as it were, a strengthened example of conservation itself. A parallel would be a complex syllogism compared to a simple syllogism. This point must be stressed, since, as has been said, if the patina represents an addition, the aesthetic case would generally call for its removal. The opposing conservation process, called for by the historical case, will only occasionally prevail. And so the legitimacy of conserving patina must not rely on being able to reconcile the two cases in any specific, individual example. The key to this issue will be provided by the material of which the work of art is composed: that is to say, given that the transmission of the formed image occurs through the material, and that the material's role is as a transmitter, the material must never take precedence over the image, in the sense that it should become unseen as material, and act only as image. If the material should stand out with such freshness and insensitivity as to overwhelm the image, the image's pure reality [realta pura] will be disturbed. Therefore, from the aesthetic standpoint, a patina imperceptibly tones down the material, and forces it into a more unassuming role within the image. This role as dampener will provide a practical measurement, of the point to which the patina should be taken ~ or of the equilibrium it must attain. These considerations have led to the deduction that from an aesthetic perspective patinas should be preserved. The reasoning derives not so much from an historical presupposition, or from a simple, cautionary criterion, but arises from the very concept of work of art. This concept would be negated only by a completely topsy-turvey situation in which it is demonstrated that the material should take precedence over the image. In such a situation, the highest point of art would be a goldsmith’s shop.! The problem of reconstruction still remains to be examined. Here too it is clear that, from the aesthetic perspective, the solution to the problem depends first of all on the attitude to the reconstruction: if it involves reaching a new, artistic oneness, then the reconstruction should be kept. But it may be that the reconstruction — whether a misguided repair or a new adaptation — cannot be removed, as it has brought about the partial destruction of some features that would have allowed the monument to be either preserved as a ruin, or brought into accord with its potential oneness. In this case, the reconstruction must be retained, even though it prejudices the monument. ‘The reconstruction of the bell tower of St Mark’s in Venice (which is more a copy than a reconstruction, but functions as a reconstruction of the urban fabric that it was intended to complete), again raises the problem of the legitimacy of a copy replacingRestoration wir ReGagp 10 THE AESTHENC Cast icy an original that has been either removed, for better preservation, or has disappeared. Now, the substitution of a copy cannot be justified, on either historical or aesthetic grounds, unless the replacement functions merely as an integrating element, and has no importance in itself. A copy is an historical fraud and an aesthetic fraud: it therefore might have some justification in a purely didactic sense, or as a reminder, but it cannot be a replacement without causing historical and aesthetic damage to the original. In the case of St Mark's bell tower, what mattered was having a vertical element in the square; an exact reproduction was not required, except, it must be said, on parochial and sentimental grounds. The same is true of the Santa ‘Trinita bridge, where a concerted effort should have been made to encourage restoration and anastylosis, rather than a brutal substitution with a copy. That example was more serious because — whereas the bell tower had been patched up over the years ~ the Santa Trinita bridge was a major work of art. So the fake produced is even more criminal. The nostalgic saying, ‘as it was, where it was’, is the negation of the very principle of restoration, It is an offence against history and an outrage to aesthetics, claiming that time can be reversed, and that a work of art can be reproduced at will. Notes * Bollettino dellIstituto Centrale del Restauro, 13, Rome (1953), pp. 1-8. * Regarding retaining or removing patinas, which sometimes is of a piece with retaining or removing varnishes, there has been a long debate, which still smoulders beneath the ashes. This issue is explored in the two articles given in Appendices 5 and 6. Here, an opinion from an unexpected quarter is cited, based more on psychology than on taste, which is prudently against total cleaning: it is particularly significant given that it comes from England, a bastion of de-patination as a cleaning method. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, Pantheon Books, New York (1960), pp. 54-55: “The National Gallery of London has now become the focus of discussion about the degree of adjustment we should be prepared to make when we look at old paintings. venture to think this issue is too frequently described as conflict between the objective methods of science and the subjective impressions of artists and critics. The objective validity of the methods used in the laboratories of our great galleries is as little in doubt as the good faith of those who apply them. But it may well be argued that restorers, in their difficult and responsible work, should take account not only of the chemistry of pigments but also of the psychology of perception ~ ours and that of the chicken. What we want of them is not to restore individual pigments to their pristine colour, but something infinitely more tricky and delicate - to preserve their relationships. It is particularly the impression of light, as we know, that rests exclusively on gradients and not, as one might expect, on the objective brightness of the colours’7 THE SPATIALITY OF A WORK OF ART Given that restoration is a function of the work of art's impact on the viewer's consciousness, it might mistakenly be believed that this impact is, like a flash of lightning, confined to an instant. ‘This belief would be a double error. Although the lightning bolt of the work of art occurs in the historical time of an individual's consciousness, the duration of the bolt cannot be subdivided in the same way as the historical time in which it occurs. That is, to have a full impact on consciousness, a work of art can take ~ if not light years ~ certainly years in which all the elements that serve to explain cither the semantic value of the image, or the particular figurative nature of that image, are brought together and into focus. Into both this process and the gathering of information, restoration comes as the very actualisation of the work of art; and so two phases can be simply recognised. 'The first is the reconstitution of the authentic text of the work; the second is the treatment of the material of which it is composed. Yet, the division between these two phases does not automatically correspond to a time sequence, since, in order to reconstitute the authentic text of the work, the treatment of its material should or can actively participate. The material might have been added to, tampered with or covered up, even buried (deliberately or accidentally, leading to excavation finds). With regard to the latter, the belief that i se of historic research in itself, does correspond to its essential ‘ion of restoration work, but it is absurd to think of excavation as standing alone, as if it could suffice without restoration. Excavation does not take precedence over restoration. Excavation is itself merely the preliminary phase of the work of art’s reactivation in individual consciousness, after its loss on being buried. Therefore, excavation is nothing more than a prelude to restoration, and restoration cannot be considered as a secondary or optional phase. To begin an excavation without a restoration component is not a work of either historical or aesthetic research, but a senseless operation, with a heavy social and ethical responsibility. There is no doubt that something buried is protected more by the continuing of its current stable conditions, than by the violent disruption of such conditions brought about by excavation. Consideration of the various phases of treatment involved in re-establishing a work of art, and also those phases, not outside the work of art, but within the very time frame in which it enters individual consciousness, produces a structure that is rather more complex than the synthesis with which consciousness objectifies itself in recognizing a given object as a work of art. Yet it is clearly not the examination of the singular structure of the consciousness that reveals the work of art to the individual self that is now the concern. Rather, after looking at the time frame of the work of art, we must look at the spatiality of8 Cesare BraNbi, Tuzory oF Resrorarion, the work of art, in order to see what spatial aspects must be protected by restoration: here, it must be stressed — not only én restoration but by restoration. Awork of art, given its figurative nature, exists in a spatial autonomy that is the prerequisite of pure reality. Its spatial essence then inserts itself into physical space, the very space in which we live, and even intrudes into this space, without truly belonging there. This effect is not unlike that of the absolute chronology the work produces, which, while representing an extra-chronological present, enters into a time experienced by our consciousness — into historical time, dated and even measured. But this condition, of bringing a spatial nature of its own into the same space defined by our own living presence in the world, constitutes a host. of problems for the work of art. These do not relate to its own spatial nature, which has been set for all time, but to the precise interface between this spatial nature and physical space. If restoration is carried out in order to re-establish the critical text of the work, and not simply as a practical treatment in itself, at this point the likeness must begin to be considered between restoration and legal norms, whose validity does not depend on any particular ruling handed down, but on the reasoning that arose as an expression of consciousness. In other words, the practical side of restoration is to restoration as a ruling is to legal norms. The ruling is necessary in view of efficiency, but is not indispensable to the universal validity of the norm itself. For this reason, the first intervention to be contemplated is not a direct one into the material or the work, but one that should be addressed to ensuring conditions in which the work's spatial nature is not obstructed by its self-assertion in the physical realm. This proposition also affects the act in which a painting is hung on a wall, but not simply as a phase of interior decoration. The primary focus is on the encapsulation of the work's spatial nature, its recognition, and so the care taken to settle it in a protective physical space. To hang a painting on a wall, remove or attach a frame; to give a statue a pedestal or to remove it, take it from its place or create a new one for it; to widen an architectural space, or even dismantle and re-erect the building elsewhere — there are as many operations as those that profess to be acts of restoration. Naturally they are not always positive acts; indeed, more often they are decidedly negative, such as those involving the dismantling and rebuilding of an architectural work.8 PREVENTIVE RESTORATION Preventive restoration is an unusual term that could mislead us into thinking that there is a sort of prophylaxis that, like a vaccination, could immunise a work of art for its lifetime, Needless to say, such a treatment does not, exist. From monuments to miniatures, a work of art cannot be considered to be the same as a living organism; there is only the aesthetic and material reality in which it exists, and which acts as the medium for the manifestation of the work as pure reality. A work of art, be it a monument or a miniature, is composed of a certain number and quantity of materials which — given an unquantified and unquantifiable set of cumstances and specific agents with which it acts in combination — can undergo alterations of various kinds. Such alterations, which are harmful to the image or the material or both, determine the conservation treatment. Therefore, the possibility of preventing alteration depends on the precise physical and chemical characteristies of which the work of art is composed, and undeniably certain alterations can also be entirely or partly contrary to the needs of the work of art per se. That is, being composed of a certain material or a certain group of materials, the work of art can have conservation needs that are contrary to its enjoyment as a work of art, or restrictive of that enjoyment. The possibility of such a conflict is not hypothetical, as we will see below. Here I must define the area of what is meant by preventive restoration, and explain why I speak of preventive restoration and not simply prevention The language of preventive restoration is unavoidably linked to the notion that has been developed of restoration itself. | have defined restoration as ‘the methodological moment in which the work of art is recognised, in its physical being and in its dual aesthetic and historical nature’. What then does methodological moment mean exactly? The recognition of a work of art as a work of art occurs intuitively in individual consciousness, and this recognition lies behind all future behaviour towards the work of art as such. It may then be deduced that the behaviour of the individual, who recognises the work of art as such, instantly personifies universal consciousness, which is entrusted with the task of preserving and transmitting the work of art to posterity. ‘This task, that the recognition of a work or art demands of the individual who recognises it as such, appears just as categorical as the moral imperative. The very fact of its being an imperative determines the area of preventive restoration — such as care, removal of dangers and assuring favourable conditions. But in order for these conditions to be not just wishful theory, but effective, the work of art must be examined: first, as to the adequacy of the image manifested in it: and, second, as to the condition of the materials of which it is made. Here, this inquiry becomes a80 Cesane BRANDI, THEORY OF RESTORATION philological and scientific process, which is the only way to clarify the authenticity with which the image was transmitted to us, and the state of its material(s). Without this precise philological and scientific inquiry, neither the authenticity of the work as such can be confirmed on reflection, nor can the work itself be securely transmitted to posterity in its material form. Any action taken to recover what. remains of the image’s elements, or to ensure the conservation of the materials on which its manifestation as an image relies, will be conditioned by the performance of an initial, two-part investigation. For this reason, the practical acts that follow ~ restoration as commonly understood ~ are merely the practical aspect of restoration, just as the material of the work of art, towards which practical restoration is directed, is subordinate to the work of art's form. ‘Therefore, defining restoration as the methodological moment of recognition of the work of art as such, that recognition comes in that moment of the critical process on which, and only on which, can the legitimacy of restorative action be based. Beyond that moment, any intervention into the work of art is arbitrary and unjustifiable: moreover, let me remove restoration for good from the empirical approach, and include it in history, as a critical and scientific awareness of the moment in which the restoration treatment comes into being. By defining restoration through theoretical principles instead of empirical practicality, I am simply doing the same as defining law independent of its sanctions. Law's legitimacy must legitimise its sanctions, and not vice versa, A sanction does not legitimise the law's right to impose it - that would be the most obvious grounds for an appeal, This observation is not meant to disparage practice; indeed it should be raised to the same rank as theory, since it is clear that theory would make no sense if it were not validated by implementation. Therefore, the performance of acts considered necessary by preliminary examination is implicit in the recognition of their necessity. Consequently, as restoration does not consist merely of practical treatments for the material of the work of art itself, it therefore will not be limited to those treatments. Any measures intended to ensure the work of art’s future conservation as image, and as the material that forms the image, are equally a part of the restoration concept. Accordingly, it is only for practical purposes that a distinction is made between preventive restoration, and restoration carried out directly on the painting Both the former and the latter have validity, because of the single, indivisible imperative that consciousness imposes during the act of recognition of the work of art, in its dual aesthetic and historical nature, that leads to its preservation as both image and material A special point has been made of stressing the intrinsic validity of the concept of restoration, and including in it also the exception of preventive restoration, for, by considering it a simple humanistic eatension of the concept of restoration, it is possible to be tempted into culpable indulgence, in examples where there is a conflict, between the needs imposed by aesthetic enjoyment of the work, and those required by conservation of the material to which it is entrusted. Moreover, the preventive measures implicit in the concept. of preventive restoration are rarely insubstantial, and often call for greater expense than direct restoration of the work of art. This is yet another reason to affirm the absolute necessity of such measures and expense, unlike the current mentality that would focus only on interventions of extreme urgency, of non-postponable emergency.