Gentaltaret

Prof. Anne van Grevenstein, University of Amsterdam Prof. Ron Spronk, Queen’s University, Kingston and Radboud University, Nijmegen The project Lasting Support ran from April 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011. Lasting Support was generously supported by The Getty Foundation: %20the%20Altarpiece.pdf IV. Official description of the necessary restoration works: Beschrijvende Meetstaat V. Dendrochronology report, Dr. Pascal Fraiture The Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck in Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, is the single most important work of Early Netherlandish painting in existence, and is generally accepted to be among the most important surviving artworks in the world. The enormous cultural and art-­‐-­‐-­‐historical impact of the polyptych, which was completed in 1432, is unparalleled in Northern European art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Ghent Altarpiece is the ultimate example of the late-­‐-­‐-­‐medieval Ars Nova in painting, when significant advances were made in illusionism in order to depict highly complex iconographical programs. The huge scale of the work, which measures 340 x 440 centimeters when opened, makes the polyptych one of the largest surviving fifteenth-­‐-­‐-­‐century altarpieces in Northern Europe. The Ghent Altarpiece is a highly complex object in regard to its iconography as well as its material history. Over time, its individual oak panels have been repeatedly separated from each other for long periods of time, and groups of panels have been subjected to distinctly different climate conditions and restoration treatments. Only two panels, Adam and Eve, have retained their original shapes and frames, still being painted on both sides. The other six wing panels were split lengthwise in nineteenth-­‐-­‐-­‐century Berlin, where the resulting twelve panels were cradled at the back. The three panels at the top center were all cropped at the top when their original, relief frames were removed, probably in the eighteenth century. This intricate material history will have to be the guiding principle for any future conservation and/or restoration treatment of the work. Its complex material history made an in-­‐-­‐-­‐depth study of structural aspects of the now eighteen separate panel paintings in the context of the history of past restoration treatments necessary in order to devise individualized treatment protocols for the panels, and to develop safe conditions for the future care of this structurally complicated work of art. During 2007, serious concerns emerged about the state of conservation of the altarpiece. The polyptych is currently housed in a large, bulletproof glass box, the climate conditions of which were highly inadequate. The need for an urgent conservation treatment of the panels was first signaled by the organization Monumentenwacht Vlaanderen and by the Belgian Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK/IRPA) in Brussels. From initial examinations by an international group of experts the urgent need for a conservation treatment within an interdisciplinary context has indeed become apparent, since areas of lifting and tenting paint needed to be secured quickly in order to avoid permanent damage. Since the summer of 2008, a small group of international specialists in the conservation and restoration of panel paintings and in technical art history have united with representatives of the administrative bodies from the province of East Flanders in an advisory committee to aid the responsible clergy of Saint Bavo Cathedral in this process. Simultaneously, the church wardens expressed a wish to consider possible alternatives for the current location of the Ghent Altarpiece in the Villa Chapel (no. 5 on the floor plan; fig. 2), in order to examine whether other locations within the cathedral (such as the Sacrament Chapel, no. 27, or the Vijdt Chapel, the original location of the altarpiece, no. 29) might better serve the need for improved and updated visitor services t