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Course: Special topics in art history > Unit 2
Lesson 1: The conservator's eye- The conservator's eye: Marble statue of a wounded warrior
- The conservator's eye: Taddeo Gaddi, Saint Julian
- The conservator's eye: a stained glass Adoration of the Magi
- The conservator’s eye: Rembrandt's Aristotle with a Bust of Homer
- The conservator's eye: Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory
- Anselm Kiefer, Bohemia Lies by the Sea
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The conservator's eye: Taddeo Gaddi, Saint Julian
Italian artist Gaddi's egg tempera painting on poplar wood showcases the artistry and durability of medieval guild techniques. The painting, featuring Saint Julian, combines timeless gold leaf with realistic imagery, creating an illusion of heaven on earth. Despite environmental challenges and restoration, the artwork remains a testament to Gaddi's skill and the enduring appeal of Renaissance art. Taddeo Gaddi, Saint Julian, 1340, tempera on wood, gold ground, 54 x 36.2 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Speakers: Corey D'Augustine and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Really interesting! I never new they used rabbit's skin as a glue source! You learn something new everyday, just got me wondering if there's artist out there who still commit to doing this kind of art!(7 votes)
- Since egg yolk is an organic material, how is it that it did not break down over time, and indeed, seems to have contributed to the longevity of the painting?(6 votes)
- cool but why Rabbit skin not Deer?(2 votes)
- at4:10, how does urine help remove candle wax?(2 votes)
- if they uses rabbit for glued what is glue now made of?(1 vote)
- Glue is still made from various kinds of animal skins. When you think of how much meat goes into fast food, you can begin to imagine how much skin is available for making glue.(1 vote)
- I know these are old painting practices of rabbit skin to make paint, but it is interesting. why was rabbit skin the material of choice? what properties did it have to make it effective?(1 vote)
- They extracted the collagen from the skin. Collagen is elastic and binds to organic surfaces (such as wood). As it wasn't exposed to humidity (because of the paint on top), it didn't swell, so I guess that's why they needed to make sure the whole surface was painted. If you want to try for yourself, make some concentrated gelatin (5-10% by mass) and let it dry out, then try to break or deform it.(1 vote)
- So are tempera paintings on wood kind of like a dry fresco, in that it has to be done quickly/is more like drawing? I may have my frescos mixed up anyways, I don't know much ab. Anyways very interesting video! My art history class uses Khan Academy for supplemental material but I've been watching even more than they link to because they're so fascinating!(0 votes)
- Is this a newly added lesson? Are new lessons often added after a certain amount of time?(0 votes)
- Yes, this is a new video. We add new essays and videos regularly, often one or two per week.(0 votes)
Video transcript
(piano jazz music) - [Narrator] We're up on the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at a small panel painting by an Italian artist who's name is Gaddi, one of the most prolific
students of Giotto. - [Narrator] This is an
egg tempera painting. - [Narrator] We generally
think of old master paintings as being oil paint of canvas. - [Narrator] In southern Europe, we have a tradition dating back all the way to the middle
ages of painting in egg. Whereas oil painting is
really a northern tradition. - [Narrator] So why egg yolk? - [Narrator] These
artists are very concerned with binding pigment, all
of these colored powders, etcetera, many of them mineral, binding those colors to the wood panel, the support that these
works are often painted on, in a way that's gonna be durable. - [Narrator] And they were durable. These are over 500 years old. - [Narrator] These
paintings are coming out of a very highly refined
tradition of painting guilds. The way this would work
is that as an apprentice, you would train for often
seven years under a master, understanding not only
how to paint beautifully, but how to make sure that your painting lasts for as long as possible
with no visible change. - [Narrator] And that makes
sense given the subject. We're looking at an image of Saint Julian. - [Narrator] It's painted on poplar wood, a rather soft wood, it's one
that warps a lot over time. - [Narrator] And we can see that the surface does bulge toward the center. - [Narrator] In fact, it
probably would have done so even more before it was
restored in the 19th century. A lot of these paintings have been planed down from the
reverse and mounted onto a cradle, a rigid wooden
structure in the back that doesn't allow it to flex naturally. We tend to think that deforestation is a very contemporary problem, but the hardwoods of Italy were already deforested by the early
and middle Renaissance, so this is why they're painting on poplar. They knew it wasn't the best wood, they knew it would change but
they didn't have a choice. - [Narrator] And that's
not the only change. It's pretty clear that
the lovely gothic arch that the Saint is surrounded by would have ended with its point. But here it's been cut off. - [Narrator] Almost all of the Renaissance paintings that you'll find
in museums around the world are only small fragments
of what would've been very large alter pieces. - [Narrator] It would have been part of a multi-paneled polyptych. And we need to of course, think back to a period
before air conditioning. - [Narrator] Where are you suppose to encounter this painting? Certainly not here at the Metropolitan, but in a church in northern Italy. A non-heated, non-cooled environment, super humid and super dry
depending on times of the year. And this is a very harsh
environment for any work of art. - [Narrator] Because the
wood itself is expanding and contracting and presumably
there's the potential that the paint itself could loosen. - [Narrator] Wood has this ability to expand and contract again, no problem. Paint does not have that ability however. And that's the reason why
paint, very often cracks so extensively on these panel paintings. - [Narrator] Wood is absorbent and so you wouldn't want to
paint directly on the wood. - [Narrator] What these
artists and artisans would do is use rabbit skin glue, glue made from the skin of rabbits, that's a size material. In other words, it's
a sealant of that wood and it limits the ability of that wood to absorb moisture. - [Narrator] On top of
the rabbit skin glue an additional layer of seal is added. This is known as gesso. - [Narrator] The gesso or the ground or the priming of the painting is actually a mixture of
rabbit skin glue again and then some gypsum, calcium sulfate, some white powder in other words. This is an absorbent material, which is now going to
receive the egg tempera paint and also in areas under the gold, a material called bole, a kind of clay. It's often reddish in color,
it is in this painting, and that clay is again
mixed with rabbit skin glue. So if there's a whole lot of glue all throughout the layer
structure of this painting, it's part of the reason
why it's so durable. - [Narrator] Let's talk about
the paint for just a moment. Tempera is painted with
a very small brush. - [Narrator] That's right. - [Narrator] With very fine brush strokes. - [Narrator] Egg tempera
dries quite rapidly and is very difficult to work wet in wet like you can with oil, brushing wet paint into wet paint that's
already on your panel. Here this is much more
like a drawing technique because you have all these
individual, crisp little lines. The face here is incredibly well preserved and we see all of these beautiful, they almost look like pencil lines, and really that's the tip of the brush, we can imagine how
painstaking this process is to be able to make this degree of modeling and illusionism essentially
with pencil lines. - [Narrator] But while the
face is really well preserved, the red garment seems to be kind of flat. - [Narrator] Remember that these were in churches for hundreds of years and they were cleaned
by, not conservators, but monks and nuns, you
know the candle soot and the grime that would
collect on these paintings had to be removed with
very strong materials, urine and lye believe it or not. These are very corrosive substances. A lot of the upper brush work, the higher layers of the paint, sadly have been scrubbed off. And this probably happened
hundreds of years ago. - [Narrator] It's a little misleading to call this a painting because only about 50% of the surface is actually paint. The rest of it is gold. - [Narrator] Gold is one of the only noble metals that we have. It's a metal that doesn't tarnish. The message here is yes, it is expensive, it's luxurious, it's appropriate
for a religious painting, but deeply embedded in that meaning is also the fact that this is
timeless, it doesn't corrode. - [Narrator] The gold
leaf which is actual gold that has been hammered very very thin, then applied and burnished. A smooth object is rubbed over it and what we're seeing
here is just a faint trace of the original gleam that
the gold would have had. - [Narrator] This is
water gilding technique. The bowl is moistened slightly and that's all the
adhesion necessary for this incredibly thin sheet of gold. Now after the gold is applied, there is small metal tools which make all of these beautiful
little indentations. Again, we're not supposed
to be at the MET, we're supposed to be on
our knees in candlelight and that light is
flickering and refracting off of all those little
nooks and crannies. It's part of the magic of these paintings. - [Narrator] It is too
easy to forget about the incense, the music, the lighting. - [Narrator] The entire
point of water gilding is to make it look solid. And even though we know there's just a tiny thickness of gold leaf there, these craftsmen were so good that they provided the illusion of solid gold. - [Narrator] So this is
really an art of illusion, trying to produce an object, costly because of its labor, that looked like it was costly
because of its material. - [Narrator] In the early Renaissance we have this great paradox
that on the one hand where does this scene take place? In a world of gold, perhaps that's heaven, but at the same time,
this figure is painted quite illusionistically. I can imagine talking to that Saint. - [Narrator] And this artists
was the student of Giotto who is credited with
dramatically furthering the idea that he could represent figures that looked as if they were
in a world that we recognize, that they had mass and
volume, that they cast shadow. - [Narrator] We have one
foot in the Middle Ages, this world of gold, but
we have another foot defiantly here on earth. In other words, we have heaven on earth and this is a very powerful motif for these devotional paintings. (piano jazz music)