The Fourth Miracle Part 4 of 4

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. From websites and online stores, to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. When this painting arrived at the studio, it was rough, and it proved to need just about every technique under the sun. And, the retouching isn't even complete yet. But, throughout the process, we had the right materials, the right tools, and the right know-how to achieve success. And, while you may not need that arsenal to conserve a painting, if you ever find yourself needing to build a website, know that Squarespace is your kit, and they've got you covered. You see, Squarespace has done the heavy lifting to be two steps ahead, making sure you can get started right away without any prior experience. If you're not a graphic designer, no worry. They have thousands of beautifully designed, mobile-friendly website templates that will get you up and running with one click. And, if you're not a coder, don't worry. You can add and remove features to the website, again, with one click. Things like an online e-commerce solution, contact forms, website gallery, scheduling, and more. And, if you're not a professional writer, again, Squarespace has you covered with their built-in AI tools, which will help you edit, expand, and modify your copy to make you look like a pro. So, even if it feels overwhelming, and it will, just know that Squarespace has your back. Head over to squarespace.com slash Baumgartner for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code Baumgartner to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Because the amount of retouching that this painting requires is, well, to say the least, epic, I'm going to start on one area that I think will be relatively easy, relatively quick, and can put some wind in my sails, so to speak. Whenever there's a project like this, there are areas that are exciting and fun, like the hands or the face, and then areas that are just, kind of, well, boring, like the background. And so, I try to balance choosing a fun part and a boring part, always giving myself a carrot at the end, so that I'm not, well, uninterested in the project, so that I don't lose energy and steam. And one of those ways I can do that is choosing things that are fun, like this. Working on the head of the staff here is not terribly complicated, but it will allow me to feel good about the first part of retouching that I'm doing, to see that the color mixing that I'm doing, that the approach that I'm taking is correct. And then from there, I can extrapolate and start working on the rest of the painting. So, I'm just going to work on finishing up this area, what's in the screen here, just retouching all of these little areas away, so that I'm happy with it. And eventually, with a little bit of practice, I get there, and the image starts to come together. Now, one of the things that's really tricky about retouching is choosing what to retouch and choosing what to leave. Now, of course, we could consider retouching absolutely every pock mark, every little chip, every little scratch, every little piece of bare canvas, every fly speck, every little imperfection, and sometimes that's what's called for. But sometimes, when the overall painting has a tone, a tenor, a feel to it, it's worth considering holding back. And in this case, on this painting, that's precisely what I'm doing. Obviously, the areas of fill-in are going to get completely retouched and reintegrated. Those are massive areas of damage, and they take away from the overall image. We don't want these large areas of white. We want to be able to see the painting as the artist intended. But there are other areas where the painting is a little bit threadbare, where you can see some of the canvas through, where there may be some age or something still on it. And in those areas, we have to consider maybe leaving some of that for a couple of reasons. First, if we're going to retouch everything, then everything needs to be retouched, and it becomes a much more massive project. And economically, that becomes a much more expensive project. It becomes much more time-consuming. It becomes much more intellectually, emotionally difficult. It takes more out of us, the conservators, to be constantly going over and over and over the painting with a finer and finer-toothed comb, looking for smaller and areas to retouch. But besides those two practical reasons, there's another reason, and this one is feel. And I know that kind of sounds hokey and wishy-washy, but this isn't a new painting. This painting has been around for a long time, and we don't want it to look brand new. At least, John doesn't want it to look brand new. And so, in that respect, we have to consider leaving some of its damage, allowing it to be itself, being more sympathetic to the painting, maybe leaving some of the areas of abrasion, maybe leaving some of the little chips or tiny little scratches, and allowing the whole to come together with a unified feel. And this may be controversial, but this, of course, is unique to the painting, unique to the conservator, and unique to the client. Sometimes, comprehensive, picture-perfect, absolute conservation, restoration of every little detail is what's required. And for those clients, that's what we deliver. And sometimes, other clients want what we call a sympathetic restoration, where we have some care and sympathies for the earned life of the painting, or at least for how it looks right now. Now, I'm not talking about leaving dirt and calling it a patina. What I am talking about is finding the balance between addressing every little issue and leaving some of it so that the painting feels and looks like itself. And honestly, there is no straight rubric for this work. There is no hard guideline, 20% retouching, 60% retouching, only in the blues, only in the greens, this brush or that brush. You kind of just have to feel your way through it, and that's where experience comes into it. My interns and assistants are much more conflicted about retouching and what to do, where to retouch, how much to leave. But in time, with enough practice, they'll start to get that feel that allows the retouching to look, well, just right. After a few areas of retouching that I felt were pretty successful, it's now time to move on to a more important area, a higher stakes part of the painting, and that's his right hand. It has a particularly casual, draped look to it, and I need to fill in the missing fingers. I mocked them up using some of the watercolor, but that's just for rough shape. Now it's time to really flesh them in with the retouching paints. This is really, really fun for me. You probably can't tell by the way I'm handling the brush, but I'm really interested and engaged in this part of the retouching because this is something that everybody's going to focus on, and getting it right really matters. Now, these retouching paints are not like oil paints. They're really kind of lousy for painting. They're great for retouching, but they're not good for painting. They don't blend well, they dry incredibly fast, and when you apply wet paint over dry paint, well, the dry paint becomes wet again and it can smear, so you lose some definition and detail. So while doing this with oil paint may take, oh, I don't know, 10 or 15 minutes, it's going to take, I don't know, twice, three, four times as long to do this with retouching paints. On top of that, because they don't blend very well, every time there's a color change, like on his knuckles where we go from a shadow to a highlight, you have to mix a new color and you have to dab it on top, lots of little dots. We can make this paint somewhat transparent, which helps, but really it's not easy to paint with retouching colors. But as time goes by, as I work to refine the shape of the fingers, the bends, I'm starting to get a feel for what I want them to look like. Another thing that's difficult here is that I can't paint the fingers how I want them to be painted. I spent a lot of time in high school not taking notes in math class, or at least pretending like I was taking notes in math class, while drawing my left hand. I'm a righty, after all. I spent a lot of time in college drawing and painting my hands. I've spent a lot of time looking at hands. I think that they're incredibly expressive and beautiful, and one of the things that I love seeing artists paint. So, without tooting my own horn too much, I'm fairly good at painting and drawing hands. But in this case, I can't paint and draw the hands like I want. I have to do them like the artist did, and that's tricky. It requires me to suspend some of my skills and step into the role of matching, which is frustrating. I want to paint these hands more beautifully, with much more articulation, with much more skeletal structure, with muscles, and a really beautiful drape. But that's not how this artist painted them. They're a little bit stiffer, a little bit less refined, and so that's the modality that I need to get into. Which, as I said, can be really frustrating. But that's also one of the really exciting things about being a conservator and doing retouching, that you have to be able to adapt the persona, or at least the style, of another artist. And that's a challenge in and to itself, one that I relish, one that I think every conservator relishes. That's what our job is, to mimic, to recreate, to absorb different personalities, and somehow figure out how to make the painting complete. So, while it is frustrating, it's incredibly rewarding. And as I come to the conclusion of this hand, well, I'll come back later and do a little bit more work. I'm starting to feel really good, and ready to tackle some of the more complicated and more challenging parts of this painting. While the hands were certainly an area of focus, probably the most important area is, of course, Sanginaro's face. It is a portrait, after all. His eyes are looking at us, and this is what we are going to center in on when we see the painting. So this is probably, maybe, the most high-stakes part of the painting. It is, unfortunately, also one of the more damaged areas. Now, yes, there is all of this white area that's missing paint, and that's not the part that I'm talking about being really damaged. I know, that's crazy, because it's really damaged. The part that I'm talking about is that this painting was skinned, and that's something that happens when a painting is over-cleaned. That's a term conservators use for when some of the paint has been removed, either by using too strong of a solvent, or by using too much pressure, or abrading the surface. But one way or another, we've lost some of the artist's original material. Now, there is a debate about how far we go. Do we glaze in this whole face and make it complete and full, or do we kind of work with what we have and try to make it acceptable? Now, I am of the camp that we shouldn't glaze in and repaint the entire face, at least not in this case, where there's so much information missing. We don't want this face to look odd or awkward compared to the rest of the painting. Remember, we're doing what's a little bit more of a sympathetic restoration here, leaving some of the wear. So we need this face to match the rest of the painting. And so, in some areas, like his mouth, where much of the detail has been lost, I'm just sketching in kind of what would be there, maybe some suggestions, and hopefully allowing the viewer's eye and brain to fill in the rest. I'm not going to articulate all of his lips and his teeth and make it fully complete, because that might be a bridge too far. And it also might make that area look different than the rest of the painting. So I'm going to leave it. And it might look somewhat unsatisfying right now, but I think when the painting is complete, it will look balanced and it will come together. Now, on his face, I am doing more retouching of some of these skinned areas, because this, of course, is his face, and we're all going to be staring at it. So I want to remove as much of that damage as possible. But I'm still not glazing. You can see in his cheeks, there is still some wear. I could easily glaze that in and make it look smooth and beautiful. But that, again, would make his face look different, something apart from the rest of the painting. And even though it may look more complete, it would look right. And then the retouching would fail, not because it wasn't accurate, but because it was maybe too accurate. So it's this complex balance. But as I wrap up most of his face, I'm starting to feel really good about his eyes, which, if you've watched for long enough, you'll know is something that I love to leave for the end. Because these are the places where we land. Smack dab in the middle of the painting, he's staring out at us, we are staring back at him. And the eyes are expressive. If painted well, they'll tell a story completely separate from the entire painting. They'll add more to it. They'll give us something to feel. So I always love working on eyes. Again, here, the eyes are a little bit more damaged than I would prefer. And so I have to restrain myself a little bit, because I don't want to add too much color and complete them where they don't need completing. I'm just trying to let them be themselves. But as I continue on, it starts to feel more complete. He starts to gain his personality back. And I can start to feel a little bit about what the artist was trying to communicate when he painted this portrait. There's a certain sadness, a certain longing in his eyes. There's a confidence and a calmness. He's not distressed or distraught. But maybe he's caught in reverie. Or maybe he's just a little bit more sorrowful than he otherwise would be. But that's San Gennaro. And achieving that might make this painting feel complete. The other significantly important part of the painting, perhaps even more so than the face, is the left hand of San Gennaro, in which he holds the vial containing his blood. Previously, this was cropped. The painting was actually smaller by about an inch and a half or so. And so the person who did the retouching previously just kind of smooshed the hand in there. And it didn't look good. It looked unnatural. It wasn't to scale. And it was kind of crude. It also didn't blend in with the rest of the painting. Once we removed all of that old retouching, we found that, well, unfortunately, there really wasn't much of anything left. And we decided to expand the size of this painting so that we could add in a more natural-feeling hand. This, of course, is incredibly important to the painting. So having it cropped just wouldn't cut it. We didn't want his fingers going off the canvas plane. And that's why we decided to extend it. Now, that may be controversial. But you know what? That's what we did. That's what the client wanted. And trust me, I think it was the right decision. Now, when retouching a painting like this, where there's so little of the original, it's really, really complicated. I did several sketches. I used photographs, trying to understand how the hand would naturally rest in this position. And I found that it wouldn't. In fact, there is no way to contort one's hand to look like this. And that, as I mentioned earlier, is one of the difficulties of retouching when there is missing content. That what is right from an anatomical perspective may not be right from an artistic perspective. And so for this painting, while I really wanted to make the hand look natural and beautiful and accurate, I couldn't. Because that's not how the artist painted it. So I had to use the clues of paint remaining that were there. And there were some little bits to extrapolate and create the hand so that it, well, fit in the painting. And it's a really weird feeling to have to make something that you know isn't anatomically correct or doesn't have the right perspective or just kind of feels weird. But that's just how it goes. I'm not trying to make this hand feel right. I'm trying to make it feel right for this painting. And onto the vial. Again, we had so little information that I was just trying to create something that fit and felt right. Now, there are a million ways to create a vial. And I'm sure that many of you have feelings and perspectives on how I did this wrong. And you are welcome to open your own conservation studio and take a shot at this. If you did, you will be glad to know that all of these colors that I'm using are reversible. They can be removed with a solvent that won't damage the painting. So, yes, you can wipe off all of this retouching and have a go at it yourself. Good luck. Here, again, I'm just trying to make something that feels like it belongs. The previous vial was a little bit cartoonish. It felt too, I don't know, detailed, precise, too much. I really don't know. It just didn't feel right. And I know I keep saying that, but sometimes you just have to go by what feels right. And that's where experience and doing thousands upon thousands of hours of retouching really makes a difference. You're able to look at something and understand it on a level that maybe your brain can't quite process right away, but your stomach or your gut or your sixth sense, your intuition knows. And that's really what I'm trying to do here. Make sure that this vial communicates what it's supposed to. That it's holding San Gennaro's blood in liquid form. That it fits in with the rest of the painting. It doesn't look like a cartoon or standing outside of the painting. And that when we look at this area, it just makes sense. We can just see it as part of the whole. That's really what retouching is about. It's not necessarily only about perfect color matching, because none of us are matching these colors perfectly. It's about completing the image and allowing the eye and the brain to see it as a whole without the distraction of damage. And that sounds really easy. That's actually really difficult. And that's where tons of experience comes in. Now this is just the first pass. I did come back later and refine some things after leaving it for a day or two. Sometimes a little distance from the thing that you're working on gives you some clarity and some perspective, and that can be really helpful. And so while not only with this hand, but with the rest of the painting, I and my assistants kept making passes every couple of days to look at it with a new set of eyes to see if there was anything that needed to be corrected or anything we wanted to do differently. But eventually, we did finish the retouching. And it was a happy day when it was finally complete. Let me tell you, this took weeks of going back and forth and back and forth, doing a little bit, leaving it for a day or two, checking it, coming back, refining, removing. But that's just the process of retouching. When it's all said and done, however, the painting is not yet complete. The final varnish needs to be applied. And before I do that, I'm going to clean the painting with my bare hand. I know, sacrilegious that I'm touching a painting with my bare hand. But I want to make sure that any dust or debris is removed. And while a brush can brush things off, my hand can feel things that are being removed. And then it's time to apply the final varnish. This, of course, is a synthetic resin varnish that's ultraviolet stable and plasticized, meaning that it resists yellowing better than regular varnishes or natural resin varnishes. And it's flexible so it won't crack. I've chosen to brush this on because I think I can get a very beautiful effect. And the painting isn't so large that I need to cover a ton of area quickly like I would with a massive painting and the spray gun. So once it's applied, I'll just work the varnish back and forth with my brush as the solvent evaporates, giving it a beautiful luster. Once that's all complete, I can finish up the painting. Now, you'll notice that I put the painting in a frame. Now, this is not the frame that the painting came in. In fact, it didn't come in a frame. This is just one that I had lying around the studio that I cut down to fit this painting. I just wanted this to be a little bit more complete than sending it back with nothing. So John will probably replace this frame, and that's fine. It was abandoned in the studio, so no harm, no foul. I'm also screwing down that little piece of canvas, the original, that we salvaged so that it stays with the painting forever. So this is the point in the video where we would fade from black and I would be walking down the street in Little Italy with the San Gennaro Festival behind me. And I would meet with John and John, and we would talk about the importance of San Gennaro. We'd experience the festival and showcase the painting on their float. Unfortunately, a massive Nor'easter has knocked us out of commission, and I am stuck in Chicago at my studio working instead of at the San Gennaro Festival. But all is not lost. John and John have rallied, and they have some stuff for you to see. Obviously, we thought we would have you with us here in Little Italy for San Gennaro, and then this Nor'easter came and took away all of those hopes and dreams that we had. We got one miracle out of the painting. We didn't get another miracle out of the weather, unfortunately. But I think we really want to thank you and kind of share with you and your audience how much this painting has meant to us and to the community here at the 100th anniversary of San Gennaro. When they surprised me and we opened it up, I was kind of, I think, floored. I don't think I realized how much work went into this. It's beautiful. But John, you were there for me to take it to mass. What was that like? It was very emotional. It was a packed church, and people were impressed, and they gathered around the altar. It was up on the altar during the mass. It was really emotional. It was nice to see people recognize the message of the painting, the spirituality behind it. It definitely got a lot attention in the store every time we opened it up, took it out, if it was in the studio window. But, you know, for me, I'm just floored by how much effort you had to put in, Julian. I mean, look, the hand and everything. It's just beautiful. The way you extended the canvas. I think this painting has been given a lot of new life, and I'm shocked at the age, you know, somewhere between kind of late 1600s, 1700s. I hope it's got another 300 years in it. I'm curious to know what we're doing with it. What do you have planned for the painting? I mean, I think I'd like it to be here in the store full-time for people to come and see. So hopefully it can be a little bit of a destination for Little Italy. And I think, you know, during the feast to have this in the store, sort of our altar. I'd love to set up an altar that we can raise money for the community, raise money for the feast, and for the Fili di San Gennaro. And I don't know, you know, you shepherded it through in the mass and everything. I think they'd be inclined to let us participate every year this way, right? Yeah, I don't think that would be an issue with that. Like I said, the people were drawn to it. It could become a tradition. Yeah, it means so much that we were able to have it here for the feast, for the 100th anniversary. You know, the community this year was bigger than ever. I mean, we couldn't comprehend, even with the bad weather, how many people came through. It's the oldest representation of San Gennaro here in Little Italy. I know that. That's for sure. And I think one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. So I'm really humbled that you took this on with us. So Julian, from all of us at Red Saw Studio, and the Italian American Podcast, and all the other institutions that come out of here, grazie for bringing us our patron saint for the feast. When John and John brought this painting of San Gennaro into the studio, I thought it was going to be a big project. I could see all of the damage on the painting, but I had no idea how epic and how massive of a project it really would become. How many different techniques I would have to use, and how complicated some of the procedures would be. I had no idea that I was going to have to remove this paint layer from its canvas to do a paint film transfer. I had no idea of the scope and scale of the retouching that was going to be required. How much I was going to have to fill in and invent to complete this painting. I also didn't know that we were going to have to enlarge this painting. Make it bigger so that the image would be complete. All of this took months and months of work. And at times, it was incredibly frustrating. Because it was difficult. Because it challenged us. And because some of the old work was really disappointing. But ultimately, I think we prevailed. We addressed all of the damaged areas. We filled in the parts that were missing. We made the painting more structurally sound and stable, so that it can have a life going forward and not continue to deteriorate. And then finally, we started to put the painting back together. Making it more complete. Making it look like itself. Being careful not to retouch too much, but just the right amount. The new stretcher will keep the painting stable. And the choice to interleave was wise, given how mobile this painting was and will be in the future. And we saved the piece of the original canvas, so that in the future, if ever is needed, it can be studied and tested. And the story of this painting can continue. I mentioned this was an epic project. From before, when the painting came in and looked sorry and worse for wear. To afterwards, when the painting just looks normal. With a complete paint film transfer, massive amounts of retouching, and a lot of tender care. I don't think it's far from saying that this may have been the fourth miracle.