Reworking Renaissance Surfaces: Art History and Conservation in Dialogue

“Si Fanno a Caso”: The Reworking of Renaissance Tin-Glazed Earthenware
Zuzanna Sarnecka (University of Bern) & Valentina Mazzotti (Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche)

This conversation between an art historian and a conservator positions ceramics as an art of constantly reworking recipes, of adjusting working methods, of altering surfaces through various deliberate treatments and accidental occurrences. The reworking of ceramics was done on a case-by-case basis, according to Cipriano Piccolpasso’s sixteenth-century notion of “si fanno a caso.” The themes addressed in the discussion will include the retrieval and reworking of recipes, the intentional modifications of the so-called “standards” of production by Renaissance artist-practitioners, the accidental errors that occurred at various stages of the process, the subsequent modifications introduced to deliberately alter specific aspects of the work or to mitigate the damage caused over time or brought about by such disastrous events as the Second World War. The modifications that followed the making of the artworks invite considerations of the restoration and de-restoration of ceramics.

(Re)work in Progress: Implications of the Conservation Project of Correggio’s Madonna of Saint Sebastian
David Ekserdjian (University of Leicester), Steffi Bodechtel (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) & Helen Buddensieg (Goethe University Frankfurt/BHMPI)

Correggio’s Madonna of Saint Sebastian is currently being restored at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. Painted around 1524 for the Confraternity of Saint Sebastian in Modena, the altarpiece had been in a critical state since as early as the sixteenth century. Many restoration attempts were made over the following centuries. Before the conservation project, which began in 2022, many layers of discolored varnish had made it difficult to grasp the richness of the composition. Now that all the layers of varnish have been removed, the original colors and composition can be seen again. However, the removal of all the old retouches and fillings also reveals losses, particularly in the area of the panel joins. This discussion between the project’s lead conservator and art historians will provide insight into the various stages of this ongoing research project. Beginning with Correggio’s own working process and ending with the question of the use of inpainting, the discussion will focus on the question of who added to, altered, and (re)worked Correggio’s composition over the centuries, and what this means for an altarpiece which, perhaps because of its appearance, has long received less attention than Correggio’s other altarpieces.

SPEAKERS:

Zuzanna Sarnecka
Zuzanna Sarnecka is an SNSF Ambizione Fellow at the Institute of Art History, University of Bern, working on the project titled: “Artistic Failures in Renaissance Ceramic Workshops” (AFIRE). She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (2017) and an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art (2012). Her monograph, “The Allure of Glazed Terracotta in Renaissance Italy” (2021), focuses on the relationship between devotion and craftsmanship in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian art.

Valentina Mazzotti
Valentina Mazzotti earned a degree in Conservation of Cultural Heritage (2002) and an MA in Science and Conservation of Materials in Cultural Heritage (2004) from the University of Bologna. Since 2012, she has served as the Chief Curator of the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche (MIC) in Faenza. Starting in 2013, she coordinated the restoration project of the MIC collections bombed during the Second World War, which led to the permanent exhibition “1908–1952: In memory of a dream enterprise”(2022).

David Ekserdjian
David Ekserdjian is an Emeritus Professor of History of Art and Film at the University of Leicester, where he taught from 2004 to 2024. The author of numerous books and exhibition catalogues, above all on the Italian Renaissance, he has also served as a Trustee of the National Gallery, Tate, and Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Steffi Bodechtel
Steffi Bodechtel has been a painting conservator at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister and the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden since 2017, specializing in paintings on canvas and panel paintings. Her restoration projects have included works by Anton van Dyck, Giulio Romano and Antonio Allegri, known as Correggio. She has also published on research and restoration projects involving Michael Wolgemut, Lucas Cranach, Anton van Dyck, and Giulio Romano.

Helen Buddensieg
Helen Buddensieg is a predoctoral fellow in the Lise-Meitner Group “Decay, Loss, and Conservation in Art History” and a doctoral candidate at Goethe University, Frankfurt, where she is writing her doctoral thesis on Correggio’s Madonna of Saint Sebastian and the “visionary” altarpiece in sixteenth-century northern Italy.

Scientific Organization: Lise Meitner Group “Decay, Loss, and Conservation in Art History”

_{Image:
Correggio, Madonna of Saint Sebastian, c. 1524, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gal.-Nr. 151, © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Photo: Herbert Boswank
Unknown artist from Pesaro, Saint Sebastian, c. 1490-1510, tin-glazed earthenware, inv. no. Inv. 20603 © Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza Photo: MIC Faenza}