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Also what makes you think that future conservators will treat your artwork cautiously when they overzealously removed the uppermost paint layer of the Sistine Chapel. The catalogue of the Eakins retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art illustrates how the top layer of one of his paintings was likewise removed.
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Marvin:
Yea, I have thought of that too. I agree with you that conservators have indeed cleaned too deeply on the Sistine ceiling. They removed the unifying glaze that ties the whole thing together as a single piece of art.
I have seen examples of paintings where they cleaned and "lo-and-behold" discoved that the background was not brown after all, but gray-green -- DOH! Right through to the verdaccio undertones!
I mitigate that as much as I can by writing my medium formula down on the back of the painting so they will know what they are working with. That, of course, assumes that someone will value my work enough to someday have it cleaned and restored - I can hope - as can we all.
And I really did have to scrub vigorously to get into the paint layer. Ultimately, there is no iron clad protection from a conservator who does not know what they are doing. I hope my work gets a conservator who is not only a good conservator, but a good artist as well. The major failing I think the art conservation field has is too many chemists and not enough artists. They understand "what" but not "why" and "how". It's that lack of understanding of "why" and "how" that leads to overcleaning.
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