Konserwacja obrazu "Matka Boska z Dzieciątkiem w Ogrodzie Różanym"

The painting entitled „The Holy Virgin with Child in the Rose Garden" which belongs to the Diocesal Museum in Opole, comes from the end of the fifteenth century, and is executed in tempera on canvas glued onto a panel (72 X 47). The painting combines the Low Country semi-figural depiction of the Virgin with Child, intended for private devotion, with the iconographie trend of the „rose garden", favoured by German fiftenth-century art. The scheme of the depiction which originates from the compositions by Roger van der Weyden, reveals a German influence testified by the modelling of the form, caligraphic drawing, concern for details as well as the technological argument - the limewood of the base. The painting was offered in January 1987 to the Chair of Conservation of Easel Paintings and Wooden Polychromy Sculpture of the Department of Conservation of Artworks at the Academy off Fine Arts in Cracow. At the I time, it was in a critical state of preservation. Upon the basis of an examination of the object and the results of physical and chemical research it was possible to determine its history and technological construction. The undertaking involved the removal of the determinal effects of three previous conservations, and the execution of a complete technical and partial aessthetic conservation. After the removal of retouched paint and putty, and the cleaning of the reverse, the whole painting was impregnated, and the missing parts of the wooden panel were supplemented. The indented cracks in the paint layer and the ground were pressed down and glued, the gaps in the ground were replenished and the losses and smudges of the gilting and the paint layer were retouched by means of the pinpoint consolidationmitation method. The work was completed in April 1987. From 25 October of that year the painting is part of a permanent exhibition at the Diocesal Museum in Opole. (translated by A. Rodzińska - Chojnowska)