1

Cesare Brandi, Newton and aspects of the controversies of the 1950s and 60s at
the National Gallery, London
by Helen Glanville

The essence of Cesare Brandi’s concept and philosophy of restoration – and indeed of
cleaning – is encapsulated in his vision of the work of art as a product of the human spirit, the
materials of which are a means of transmission rather than an end in themselves – un mezzo,
e non un fine;1 “the materials of which the image is made must never take precedence over
the image itself, in the sense that they must disappear as materials and come forward as the
image”.2 Therefore, through the cleaning and retouching of the aged and damaged work, the
restorer enables the work of art to once more become the means of communication between
the creator at one moment in time, and the viewer, in a different temporal and spatial
context.3 The “observer” is therefore as much part of the “work of art” as are its creator and
the materials of which the work is composed.4

In the relativistic vision of the universe which we (like Brandi) have inherited from Einstein,
the observer and the phenomenon observed are part of the same reality, and in some way
which is not as yet fully understood the observer dictates the actuality of what it seen.5 The
Newtonian vision of the universe is quite other: the “objectivity” on which the Newtonian
scientific edifice and vision of the universe is built, is founded on the clear distinction

1
Cesare Brandi Teoria del Restauro, Einaudi 1972, p. 9. When cited in English, the translations are
mine.
2
Brandi 1972 (in note 1 above), p. 45: “la materia non dovrà mai avere la precedenza sull’immagine,
nel senso che deve scomparire come materia per valere come immagine.”
3
The “worth” of the work of art lies not in the intrinsic worth of the materials of which it is made but
in the creative spirit which fashioned it “l’opera vale per l’attività umana che l’ha foggiata e non per il
valore intrinseco della materia..” Brandi 1972 (in note 1 above), p. 35.
4
This is obviously as true of a piece of music, or a poem as it is of a painting or any other work of art.
“A work of art no matter how old and classic, is actually, not potentially, a work of at only when it
lives in some individualised experience...As a piece of parchment, or marble, or canvas, it remains
(subject to the ravages of time) self-identical throughout the ages. But as a work of art, it is recreated
every time it is aesthetically experienced”. John Dewey, The later works 1925-1953, vol. 10 (1934),
Carbondale, Illinois, Southern Illinois University Press, 1987, p. 111:
“Because objects of art are expressive, they are a language... Language exists only when it is listened
to as well as spoken. The hearer is an indispensable partner. The work of art is complete only as it
works in the experience of others than the one who created it. Language involves what logicians call a
triadic relation. There is a speaker, the thing said and the one spoken to. The external object, the
product of art, is the connecting link between the artist and the audience.”
5
This is demonstrated by the well-known “double-slit experiment”. For further details see Glanville
‘Relativity and Restoration’ in Alessandro Conti, History of the Conservation and Restoration of
Works of Art, Elsevier 2007, p. xi.

1
 2

between the observer and what is observed. Remove this distinction and the building
crumbles. The Newtonian universe can be analysed into its constituent parts, and is perceived
as the sum of these parts; Einstein’s universe is conceived as an indivisible whole, where
everything is related, and nothing can be added or removed without altering the whole.

The opposition – real or imagined – between the “objective” scientific approach at the
National Gallery in the 1950s, and what they saw (and see?..) as the “subjective” aesthetic
approach propounded by Brandi and his followers, and the superiority of the former over the
latter because of its imagined objectivity (which has, at times, been explicitly formulated but
is always implicit) can have no meaning in the quantum era in which we live.

In 1949 Paul Coremans would write to Philip Hendy “As in France, there seems to be in Italy
no real need for scientific and technical research, because all the results given by chemistry,
physics and technique are completely subordinated to a more subjective “aesthetical”
outlook.”6 Neil MacLaren and Anthony Werner, recently appointed chemists to the Scientific
Department of the National Gallery, in their response to Brandi’s 1949 Burlington Magazine7
article found that “subjective considerations tended to obscure facts, upon which alone
fruitful discussion can be based”. The same distinction between perceived objective and
subjective approaches to restoration, and thinly veiled denigration of the latter, can be found
in the choice of title given by Philip Hendy, then director of the National Gallery, to the paper
he presented (alongside Brandi and Richard Offner) in New York in 19618 ‘Science and
Taste in the presentation of damaged pictures’.

If you remove the greater “rightness” of science because of its objectivity, then evidence
which is perceived as having a lesser validity, because it is humanistic and documentary9 (and
therefore considered to be subjective because more open to interpretation than scientific
analysis), takes on equal importance providing the “context” of the observation, and then

6
National Gallery Archives, from a letter dated 15 th March 1949.
7
Brandi, C., ‘The cleaning of pictures in relation to patina, varnish , and glazes’, The Burlington
Magazine, XCI, July 1949, pp. 183-188.
8
Hendy, P., ‘Taste and Science and the presentation of damaged pictures’ (in Problems of the 19th and
20th centuries: Studies in Western Art, Acts of the 20th International Congress on the History of Art,
IV, Princeton University Press, 1963.
9
For instance Philip Hendy writing to Murray Pease in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, a letter
dated 18th July 1949 (never sent), National Gallery Archives: “I expect you will have seen Brandi’s
article in this month’s Burlington Magazine. You no doubt consider a highly “subjective” article, with
a good many fallacies, and therefore not worthy of a reply from any dignified person.....”

2
 3

going on to guide subsequent practice in cleaning and restoration. For both Brandi and
Gombrich (who was to champion him and his theory of restoration in this country),
restoration was art-criticism put into practice: la critica in atto. But as Gombrich was to point
out,10 unlike the art-historian, the restorer does not have the possibility of retracting his
critical interpretation. This is of course particularly true for the cleaning process in that what
is removed cannot be put back, but in Brandi’s conception of the work of art it also becomes
true of the restoration (retouching) stage, in that it is only the materials employed in the
restoration which are reversible and not the restored image presented by the restorer to the
each and every person, as the painting is re-created as a work of art before them.11

Cleaning
Just one example to demonstrate the importance of context (that is documentary
circumstantial evidence) in the interpretation and application of scientific analysis to the
practice of cleaning. Brandi’s 1949 article in The Burlington Magazine which castigated the
“raw” appearance of the paintings cleaned at the National Gallery, drew not only the official
response from the newly appointed chemists in 1950 (‘Some factual observations about
varnishes and glazes’),12 but also an unpublished report on the problems of removing varnish
from paintings, by Stephen Rees-Jones, first Director of the Technology Department of the
Courtauld Institute (Rees-Jones was, like Ian Rawlins who was appointed first Head of the
National Gallery Scientific Department, a physicist). This memorandum was sent to the
Scientific Committee of the National Gallery, and shows that the general unease felt on the
continent with the practice of “total cleaning” at the National Gallery, was also to be found in
some corners of the Anglo-Saxon establishment:13
“None of the solvents normally used in cleaning is completely inactive towards linoxyn; they
all have varying degrees of swelling action...on the paint.....Degree of safety depends upon
the amount of softening of the paint, and a real danger exists of excessive friction..........The
resultant erosion of the medium at the surface layer leads to chalkiness; this condition is due
to the presence of pigment grains not completely coated with medium” ending with an
10
Gombrich, E. H., “…when historians make a mistake (as we very often do) nothing much happens,
for we can be corrected by other historians. The texts remain after all, unaltered. With restorers the
case is different. They must alter the text itself.” ‘Blurred images and the unvarnished truth’, The
British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 2, no. 2, 1962, p. 176.
11
See note 4.
12
MacLaren , N. and Werner, A. E. ‘Some factual observations about varnishes and glazes’, The
Burlington Magazine, XCII, July 1950.
13
‘The problem of removing varnish from paintings’, sent to the Trustees of the National Gallery in
October 1949. National Gallery Archives, Minutes of the Scientific Advisory Committee, 1949.

3
 4

advocacy of prudence in approach “Variations in the varnish film thickness adds to the
cleaning risk, and there is some justification for leaving localised patches of old varnish”. A
response to Rees-Jones’ paper was presented at a meeting of the Scientific Advisory
Committee a few months later, in October 1949:
“As regards the condition of so-called chalkiness, it would seem that the first question to be
decided is whether this condition has any objective existence or is purely a subjective
phenomenon...”.14

Again this distinction, and the setting aside of an observation which is considered to be
invalid because belonging to the realm of perception, and therefore “subjective”. More
recently, further scientific investigation has been carried out at the National Gallery on the
possible effects of solvent action on the surface of paint-films,15 comparing paint cleaned
with solvents to similar paint-films from which the varnish had been removed mechanically
using a scalpel, and using photographs of the respective surfaces under SEM (Scanning
Electron Microscope) for the comparison. The conclusion reached, was that there was no
difference in surface appearance between the two paint-films under SEM.16 One of the
insights gained through theories of relativity, and important in this context, is the realization
that different physical laws apply at different scales of magnitude, and therefore what may be
perceptually “true” on the scale of microns might not necessarily be “true” on a macro-scale,
when you are standing in front of a painting.

This is Stephen Rees-Jones writing in 1962:

"It is not the intention to belittle the value of the scientific investigation of a painting before
and during cleaning but to challenge the idea that complete cleaning is always desirable, and
feasible with physical and chemical control; or in other words, that cleaning is concerned
only with the physics and chemistry of materials, all else being invalid on account of its
subjectivity. Such a limited materialistic concept takes no account of subjective visual
perception phenomena for example (which cannot be recorded with physical instruments) nor
of deeper aesthetic attributes, all of which are the essence of painting".17

14
Commentary by the Scientific Department, National Gallery. Signed A. E. Werner (research
chemist) and H. J. Plenderleith (Chairman, Advisory Committee), National Gallery Archives, Minutes
of the Scientific Advisory Committee, October 1949.
15
See Glossary, in Conti 2007, (in note 5 above), p. 428. In essence, the surface configuration (smooth
or broken up) will dictate the intensity of the hues seen.
16
White, R. and Roy, A. ‘GC-MS and SEM studies on the effects of solvent cleaning on Old Master
paintings from the National Gallery, London’, Studies in Conservation, vol. 43, 1998, pp. 159-176.
17
Rees-Jones, S., ‘Science and the Art of Picture Cleaning’, The Burlington Magazine, CIV, February
1962, p. 60.

4
 5

An idea of the importance of documentary evidence in the context of the interpretation of

scientific results, and the informed subjectivity of the choices made on the basis of this
evidence, can be gleaned from the following examples: in 1952 the decision was taken to
clean the panel of The Transfiguration (see figure 1) one of the small predella panels
belonging to Duccio’s Maestà in Siena. A preliminary scientific analysis was carried out by
the very young Joyce Plesters who had recently joined the Scientific Department18 as a
chemist, and she identified two layers of varnish on the panel: an upper one which was
resinous and contained iron oxide pigments, and a lower one which had “a brilliant pale
yellow fluorescence in U.V.” and “which dissolved completely in morpholine” after the
extraction of some resin. She concluded that the varnish consisted of “a hardened oil-resin
rich in oil”.19 In the same Conservation Dossier are two Treatment Reports completed by
Helmut Ruhemann who was to restore the panel; in the report dated February 1952 he
remarks that:
"Tests on a minute area in the head of the right-hand bottom apostle, showed that the cracked
layer does not contain any modelling: the details and modelling came out clearer by its
removal. On the other hand, it seems to be very old; so far, no evidence has been found that
the picture had flaked anywhere before the layer was put on."

In a further Report in May 1952 in he remarks that:

"After removal of the cracked accretions, a yellow layer, uneven and broken, remained over
most of the paint but not the gold. Tests showed that there was no modelling in this layer....
The Director [Philip Hendy] was called in to discuss this layer, and he and Mr. Ruhemann
and Mr. Davies [Keeper] agreed that it should be removed as far as possible without
damaging the paint".20

Almost fifty years later in an article in the National Gallery Technical Bulletin of 2000
entitled ‘The discovery and identification of an Original Varnish on a panel by Carlo
Crivelli’, the varnish found on this panel was described thus:
"Everywhere that the paint film is damaged so too is the coating,...together with the fact that
the coating has been applied to the painted areas only, exactly as specified by Cennino
Cennini in his instructions on varnishing, gave rise to the supposition that it might be the first
varnish to have been applied to the painting."

As was the case for the panel by Duccio, the oleo-resinous layer in the Crivelli (identified as
such through analysis, albeit using more sophisticated technologies than in 1952) did not

18
Chemists were recruited to the Scientific Department in response to the findings of the Weaver
Report in 1947.
19
National Gallery Archives, Conservation Dossier, Duccio, The Transfiguration, (NG1330)
20
As above, note 19.

5
 6

cover either the gold or any pre-existing damages. Yet in 1952 the old and possibly original
varnish layer was removed, while its presence was respected in 2000; it seems unnecessary to
make the point (in view of the content of Brandi’s 1949 article) that in 1952 documentary
sources relating to the nature and application of old varnishes were known; but practice will
be dictated by the mind-set of the people involved, and the decisions taken on the basis of
“scientific” evidence will nevertheless be subjective and informed by the particular
preoccupations and prerogatives of the participants. In both reports Helmut Ruhemann
reiterates the point that this “very old” layer contained no modelling. That is, the layer did not
contain any pigment, with the implication (I think) that its removal could not therefore be
considered as “over-cleaning”, in that no “material”, no “colour” was being removed, colour
being perceived not as a relationship between the pigment and the medium surrounding it, but
simply as “pigment”.21

Restoration22
The material reversibility of the materials used for restoration of the image is not the issue
here, but rather the irreversibility of the image presented to the viewer. For Brandi, the duty
which befalls the restorer (or conservator if one is being politically correct), is to present his
or her critical interpretation of the work without being either aesthetically false, nor
historically so, and without erasing all traces of the passage of time.23 The restored work
cannot be other than the restorer’s critical interpretation – the critica in atto – not only of the
material lost from the painting, but of what Brandi terms the potential unity of the work, of
which the materials are the expression. As such, the restoration should be immediately and
easily recognizable, and never must the viewer be in any doubt as to what is original –
however incomplete – and what is the restorer’s solution which enables the potential unity of
the work, to be transmitted the viewer:24 that is, both the aesthetic unity and the historical
authenticity of the work need to be respected, with emphasis of the former over the latter

21
For instance the following extract from the National Gallery Report, January 1960-May 1962, in the
section devoted to the Scientific Department, in response to concerns about “chalking” of the paint
after “thorough cleaning”: "At the most we may assume that nearly all the soluble material could be
removed from the very surface of the paint in a very thorough cleaning. Removal of the pigment
would, of course, imply damage. But any surface mattness caused by the removal of soluble material
from the medium can be entirely eliminated by the subsequent varnishing. Whether this slight
removal of soluble material has an effect for good or bad on the ultimate permanence of the paint is
not known"
22
By this term I mean solely the material added to the original image by the restorer.
23
Brandi 1972 (in note 1 above), pp. 7, 8.
24
Brandi 1972 (in note 1 above), pp. 17, 18.

6
 7

because if the work no longer communicates as a work of art, it is no more than a fragment.25
A liberal sprinkling of the above terms can be found in Anglo-Saxon conservation literature
of the past twenty or so years, but more as convenient labels denoting the dual essence of the
work of art, and without really taking on board Brandi’s fundamental concept of the nature of
the work of art as more than the sum of its material parts, and the principles of restoration
which derives from this concept and informs its practice.26

The distinction which Brandi makes between the work of art as a product of the human spirit,
(an indivisible organised whole, a gestalt27), and the artefact28 (belonging to everyday reality
and therefore having a logical unity which allows a missing part to be replaced logically, by
analogy as it is a sum of its parts) is crucial to an understanding of the gulf separating the
public stance taken by the National Gallery in the 1950s and Brandi’s philosophy, and it also
goes some way towards explaining why it has taken some thirty years to translate his seminal
work into English, relativistic and Newtonian visions seemingly mutually exclusive.

“To proceed by analogy presupposes – according to Brandi – the equivalence of the intuitive
unity of a work of art with the logical unity belonging to existential reality; that is the
intuitive unity which is an indivisible whole, with the logical unity which objects have in
everyday life – that is a sum of their parts, a totality rather than a unity”.29
A confusion of the former with the latter can be found not only in the practice of restoration
(and reconstruction) in the National Gallery30 (see below) but also in the use of the term unity
on a more theoretical level. This is Philip Hendy writing in 1961:
25
The emphases are mine. Brandi 1972, (in note 1 above). p. 7 “la singolarità dell’opera d’arte rispetto
agli altri prodotti umani non dipende dalla sua consistenza material e neppure dalla sua duplice
storicità, donde, una volta perduta questa, non resta più che un relitto” (The “double historicity” of the
work which Brandi refers to, is that of the act of creation and the subsequent act of perception).
26
It should be borne in mind that a translation of Brandi’s Teoria del Restauro only appeared in 2005
(Theory of Restoration, Nardini Editore).
27
A gestalt is an organised whole from which nothing can be removed or added without altering the
whole. Every element is related both to each other and the whole, and therefore the relationships
between elements (for instance the intervals between notes) are just as important – if not more so -as
the elements themselves. With colours in paintings for instance, every colour is affected by those
nearby, and cannot be considered in isolation, out of context. The concept of gestalt emerged with
Einstein’s theories of relativity, but it has been central to artists’ practice from the earliest times.
28
The emphases are mine.
29
Brandi 1972 (in note 1 above), p. 47.
30
Certainly from the 60s to the present day. For instance the restoration of Titian’s much damaged
Bacchus and Ariadne (restored between 1967-69), NG Technical Bulletin, vol.2, 1978 (see pp. 30 and
35 for images of the painting after cleaning but before restoration, and after restoration); of Lorenzo
Monaco’s Coronation of the Virgin begun in 1995 (NG Technical Bulletin, vol.21, p. 52 (plate 8), as
well as Crivelli’s Dead Christ of which a little more later.

7
 8

"Unity belongs to aesthetics. It is the great aesthetic...the principle of all principles...that the
unity of every picture be preserved...", and a little further on ".... unity of some kind, the
organisation of parts into a perfect whole, is the one thing for which we can be absolutely
certain that every artist has striven. We have to strive to understand it, and to preserve it, as
far as we can, intact".31

At this point it might seem that in fact Brandi and Hendy are speaking the same language,
and that the aesthetic unity with which they both are concerned is in fact the same concept. It
is only a little later in Hendy’s presentation that the divergence between Newton and Einstein
in terms of totality versus whole becomes apparent. Total cleaning is advocated by Hendy in
order to get back to the materials present so that they may be matched invisibly, and aesthetic
unity (that is the completeness, the material integrity of the picture) be retained or rather,
restored:
"...the picture has to be cleaned, and cleaned completely, so that the new retouchings may be
matched exactly to the original paint. This is still by no means universal practice....that all
retouchings must be done in the full knowledge of the exact local colour and the original
appearance, in so far as it has come down to us, of the whole picture under treatment.."32

Invisibility of the restoration so as to make the picture materially complete, is the aim. For
Brandi, a work can be reduced to a fragmentary status as much by what is added to it (in
terms of restoration) as by what it has lost in terms of material. If the “potential unity” is lost,
that is the impact of the work on the spirit, the picture is no longer a work of art but a
fragment of documentary interest only. For Brandi, because the work is a whole, created by a
particular artist at one particular moment in time. “We as restorers are not the creative artist,
we are not able to reverse the course of Time and legitimately insert ourselves into that
fraction in time in which the artist was creating the part which is now missing”.33 Goya
maintained that even the artist himself would be unable to retouch his own work at a later
date, because he was no longer animated by the creative spirit which had inspired the original
brushwork.34

31
‘Taste and Science and the presentation of damaged pictures’1963 20th International Congress on
the History of Art, in Hendy 1963 (in note 8 above), all quotations from pp. 143-145; compare with
Brandi "the unity which belongs to the whole, and not the unity which is achieved through a totality".
Brandi 1972 (in note 1 above), p. 13.
32
Hendy 1963 (in note 8 above), pp. 143-145.
33
Brandi 1972 (in note 1 above), p. 73 “noi non siamo l’artista creatore, noi non possiamo invertire il
corso del tempo e insediarci con leggitimità in quell momento in cui l’artists stave creando la parte
che ora manca”.
34
Cited in Conti 2007 (in note 5 above), p. 222 and note p. 263 “it is not easy to retain the fleeting and
momentary impulse of the imagination, and the harmony and concert which are found in the initial
creation, and the change will be seen in the retouching”.

8
 9

To illustrate this divergence in vision, I am here quoting just one passage as an example, from
a publication documenting the restoration and reconstruction of Crivelli’s Dead Christ
supported by Angels in the National Gallery (See figures 2-4):35
"In the case of the loss at the lower edge the reconstruction presented no difficulties, but the
height of the angel's shoulder had to be estimated, and no paint had survived from the side of
Christ's head. However, Crivelli's arrangements of hair usually follow a certain logic, and I
referred to other paintings by him to come up with a convincing solution not dissimilar to the
previous restoration....The Milanese restorer Luigi Cavenaghi in his famous reconstruction of
the head and body of Christ in the Pietà now in the Fogg Museum, virtually copied Christ's
head....but I was unable to find details to 'borrow' from other paintings."

For Brandi, reconstruction by analogy, replacing what is missing logically on the principle of
“come era, dove era” (as it was, where it was) “negates the very principle of restoration and
is an offense against history and an outrage against aesthetics; it makes Time reversible and
the work of art reproducible at will”.36

Conclusion
I think it is clear that there is a fundamental divergence between the National Gallery’s
approach to restoration (and it is an institutional approach rather than a question of the
practice of individual restorers)37, and the philosophy promulgated by Brandi and the
continental practices of restoration deriving from it. It reflects the opposition between a
Newtonian materialist approach to the work of art, and one informed by Einstein’s
discoveries and vision of the universe; one shared by Brandi (and artists in general through
history) in which colour is a question of relationships as much as individual hue, and the
painting is whole rather than a sum of its parts.

The prudence in the practice of cleaning and restoration which Brandi advocated, originates
in humility and an acceptance of one’s limitations and fundamental ignorance, what Richard
Feynman calls “the great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance”,38 without which
35
From Early Italian Paintings: applications to Conservation (2002) ‘The Restoration of Crivelli's The
Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels’, Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 238-246.
36
Brandi 1972 (in note 1 above), p. 47: “L’Adagio nostalgico: “Come era, dove era” è la negazione
del principio stesso del restauro, è un’offesa alla Storia e un oltraggio all’Estetica, ponendo il Tempo
reversibile, e riproducibile l’opera d’arte a volontà”.
37
See note 30 above.
38
"This freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and, I believe, in other fields. It was
born of a struggle. It was a struggle to be permitted to doubt, to be unsure...I feel a responsibility as a
scientist who knows the great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, and the progress made
possible by such a philosophy, progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought. I feel a responsibility
to proclaim the value of this freedom and to teach that doubt is not to be feared, but that it is to be

9
 10

there can be no progress. This is a hard pill to swallow in a land which still lives and thinks in
the wake of Newton’s certainties: it took over 150 years for England to accept that light may
not be made of particles but of waves, how long will it take us to accept that light is
potentially particles and waves at the same time, and that what light be actually, will depend
on individual perception?

Post-scriptum
A practical interim suggestion from the point of view of restoration, might be to provide full
reconstructions to be hung by the side of un-restored or minimally restored original works as
informed critical suggestions as to the original appearance of the work as a visual guide for
the public, as was done in Italy in the 19th century39 (and perhaps to have more physicists
involved in the arts and conservation.....).40

welcomed as the possibility of a new potential for human beings." Richard Feynman (Nobel Prize for
Physics, 1965) The meaning of it all, Penguin, 1998.
39
See for instance figures 163 and 164, Conti 2007, (in note 5 above), p. 330.
40
See also Ian Rawlins’ book Aesthetics and Gestalt, Nelson,1953 as well as the writings of Stephen
Rees-Jones (from within the conservation profession). Those of Einstein and Feynman do not require
my recommendation!

10