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In Marseille, artworks get a facelift from specialized restorers, who practice their craft in a unique place in France, the Interregional Centre for Heritage Conservation and Restoration.
By Jean-Dominique Dalloz - Photos José Nicolas - January 15, 2012
With infinite precaution, the technicians handle a large and thin wooden box. They’ve just taken it off a truck from Paris, and are preparing to unwrap its contents with just as much care. Indeed, it holds a very precious object, a 17th-century painting, which will be placed on a special easel before submitting to a first inspection.
We are on the premises of the Interregional Centre for Heritage Conservation and Restoration (CICRP) in Marseille, located in the Belle-de-Mai quarter. “The painting hospital, in a way”, smiles Bernard Conques, the Managing Director.
“It’s a place reserved for often priceless artworks, the property of museums or of private collections from the four corners of France”. After an initial visual assessment on the state of the painting, the technician photographs the canvas from all angles before passing it under ultraviolet and infrared rays in order to examine the different layers of paint.
The different workshops of the CICRP occupy almost 2,000 m² and are equipped with materials adapted to restoring artworks: a giant hydraulic easel, systems for bridging paintings, a large, mobile horizontal worktable… Around the “patients”, different “doctors” operate.
Fine art restorers of course, who intervene here after being selected by tender, but also curators, archivists, technicians and chemical and physical engineers.
Among these specialists, an entomologist Fabien Forher. Today this excellent insect expert is hunting for a bug that loves making its nests in the glue used to stick the canvas to the backing. “It’s another area of expertise of the CICRP” adds Bernard Conques, “we are constantly conducting studies and doing research connected to the problems of conservation and the modification of heritage materials”.
A way of piercing the secrets of a painting and knowing its history, to give it a new lease on life and to guarantee it a long journey through time.
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