« 2023. # 6 (174)

The Ethnology Notebooks. 2023. № 6 (174), 1374—1385

UDK 7.025.4:27-312.47-526.62″1696″

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/nz2023.06.1374

«THE MOTHER OF GOD HODIGITRIA» OF THE YEAR 1696  FROM THE HOLY ASSUPIAN UNIVERSITY LAVR (the process of stratification and transfer easel painting during icon restoration and research)

POCHEKVA Andrii

  • ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4213-4873
  • Artist-restorer, Teacher of the department of Restoration Works of Art
  • of the Lviv Professional College of Decorative
  • and Applied Arts named after I. Trush,
  • 4  Snopkivska str., 79011, Lviv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: e-mail: pochekva@gmail.com

MELNYK Iryna

  • ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4213-4873
  • Artist restorer of the Lviv National Museum
  • named after Andrey Sheptytskyi,
  • 20, Svobody Avenue, 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: e-mail: i-mel@ukr.net

Abstract. Given the specifics of his practical activity, the artist-restorer of easel painting quite often meets with artworks that have undergone numerous transformations, both formal and aesthetic, over time. Artworks of easel painting changed very often — they were repainted due to an unsatisfactory state of preservation, sometimes due to a change in the preferences and tastes of artists or their owners, a change in the requirements of time or the functions that these works originally performed. In an effort to discover an authentic, older painting, the restorer removes the record, which unwittingly involves the complete destruction of one of the works, which also carries information about the contemporary era, culture, and often also has both historical and artistic value. That is why the application of the process of separation and transfer of easel painting to a new base is an alternative method of solving the problem. In the study, the authors aim to: described the complex of restoration measures that preserve and at the same time open for study all the painting layers of the artwork; to analyze the problems that may arise during the application of the technique of separation and transfer to a new basis of easel painting as one of the most dangerous, most difficult and least predictable restoration measures. The object of the study is the process of separation of easel painting, as a complex of scientific, laboratory-technical and physical-chemical studies of the work of art and a number of special restoration measures and operations aimed at preserving all chronological painting layers. The subject is the analysis, substantiation and practical application of the process of separation of easel painting on the example of the 1696 icon « The Mother of God Odigitria» from the Univ Holy Dormition Lavra from the collection of the National Museum in Lviv.

The methodological basis of the research is the application of general scientific methods of theoretical and empirical research in combination with narrowly specialized historical-comparative and technical-technological methods and special physico-chemical and restoration research methods.

Keywords: separation of easel painting, painting, icon, art, work, research, conservation, restoration, conservation, paint layer.

Received 6.11.2023

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