Estudos de Conservação e Restauro

Foreword

2024-03-02T18:48:35+00:00

António Soares dos Reis and Augustus Saint-Gaudens: an artistic friendship

2024-03-02T18:48:33+00:00

António Soares dos Reis and Augustus Saint-Gaudens enjoyed a close friendship in Paris (1868-70) and Rome (1871-72), about which little is known. There are no extant letters between the two sculptors and few references to their relationship in published or archival sources. Some conclusions may be posited through their training, shared experiences, and mutual friends. This paper traces the time that the two artists spent together through the lens of Saint-Gaudens, an artist of French-Irish parentage who would become the leading American sculptor of his day. It examines concurrent work on Soares dos Reis’s O Desterrado (1872) and Saint-Gaudens’s Hiawatha (1871-72; carved 1874).

Soares dos Reis’ plaster models: technical production and the challenge of the conservation and restoration

2024-03-02T18:48:31+00:00

Soares dos Reis’ natural gifts for the fine arts and the knowledge obtained during his academic career provided him with the tools for teaching and executing his work, considering clay models as a transitional material and original plaster models. The Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis (MNSR) houses among other works of art a great number of original plaster models. Nowadays, they are a source of technical information due to the execution marks left on the support. In a work project delineate between MNSR and José de Figueiredo Laboratory (LJF), six plaster sculptures were selected, with problems of alteration, to start the intervention process of conservation and restoration of the body of work authored by the sculptor.

Exploring portable ultrasonic pulse velocity avails in the conservation assessment of plaster sculptures in museum environment

2024-03-02T18:48:29+00:00

Ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) is generally used in Civil Engineering as an in situ and non-destructive methodology to assess the condition of construction materials. Given the fact that non-contemporary sculpture was traditionally made with similar materials – stone, wood, clay or plaster – a hypothesis arose regarding the possible contribution of UPV for the conservation assessment of sculptures with stone-based materials. Plaster is a fragile material, very susceptible to internal and external fractures, alterations and losses. Museum sculptures cannot be moved to a laboratory, due to conservation protocols and therefore portable UPV could, in theory, play an important role in assessing these artistic structures in situ. There are scarce references to such a methodology, and its implementation implied a partnership with Soares dos Reis National Museum (Porto, Portugal) for an experimental approach to three plaster sculptures made by A. Soares dos Reis: “St. Joseph”, “St. Joachim” (both made in 1880) and “Narcissus” (1881). The aim of this study was to assess if portable UPV could help to detect superficial and internal damages and differences between the original plaster and added materials.

A material that “lends itself to fine interpretations”. The status of plaster in Marino Marini’s Oeuvre

2024-03-02T18:48:27+00:00

The purpose of this paper aims to clarify the use of plaster in Marini’s artistic practice, both when the plaster is a unique piece, and when it is in relation with other materials. Even if Marini often used plaster in a ‘traditional’ way to make casts suitable for the translations to bronze or other materials, these sculptures are very often considered by the artist not only as translation tools and ‘mediation’ between the idea and the final plastic artwork, or academic exercise. For the artist, sculptures in plaster are also works with a proper autonomy that can render them final and definitive, as is evident from sculptures such as Piccola Pomona or Danzatrice, both made in the 1940s.

A 3D Potree tool for the technological study of sculpture

2024-03-02T18:48:25+00:00

If the realization of 3D models is now commonplace, the production of professional systems for the digital study of works of art, and sculpture remains a scientific challenge. Within the framework of an ARC project, the PANORAMA platform of the Université libre de Bruxelles has developed a tool for the acquisition and digital study of sculpture. This tool is not only aimed at Heritage documentation: through examples, it is demonstrated that it is an effective support of technological study.

Re-envisioning criteria for documentation of plaster artist models in museum collections

2024-03-02T18:48:22+00:00

In the nineteenth century, plaster artist models were an intermediary step in the sculpting process. Since they feature complex methods of construction, a variety of materials, and were used in different ways, the classification and documentation of these objects in museum collections is often complicated. This paper proposes criteria to use in the study of plaster artist models, developed in the context of an ongoing research project about the Swiss sculptor Vincenzo Vela (1820-1891). The method presented here allows models to be considered within a suitable historical and technical context, reflecting their material and physical characteristics, as well as their role and importance in the sculpting process