been the object of several mounting campaigns, the first of which occurred in the first half of the eighteenth century, at the initiative of Antoine Coypel and of his son Charles, successive keepers of the royal collection of drawings. They con-cerned about 450 drawings, which were at that time glued on to blue cardboard mounts deco-rated with strips of gold paper. Much later, in the 1970s, numerous single study sheets were placed in beveled window mounts, within which they are maintained by a hinge on the right side edge.
Today, these drawings are the object of a restora-tion campaign that intends to loosen the hinges that sometimes marked the sheets and to change the mounts, which have become acidic.
Past treatments tell us about the perception that our predecessors had of Charles Le Brun’s cartons. At the time when Garnier d’Isle, Control-ler General of the Royal buildings 2 could write that at least “the heads, the hands and the feet”
should be cut out in order to save them, the im-portance accorded to the cartoons was due to the renown of their author, Le Brun. Their primary function, to transfer a given composition onto the wall, was no longer valid; cartoons were not regarded as true works of art3. In the eighteenth century, one exception, however, is notable:
Pierre-Jean Mariette had a head [cut out of a car-toon] stuck on to a blue mount4, as he did with the most valuable works in his collection. In the early nineteenth century, the remounting of car-toons on canvas marked a change in the works’
perception: it was performed in order to frame and exhibit them in the galleries of the Louvre.
At this time, any missing parts of the drawing were completed directly on the coloured margins (Fig. 3).
The first exhibition of Le Brun’s cartoons opened in 1866 and lasted for several years. The effects of light, coupled with the deterioration from the mix of adhesives used for the pasting, have caused severe discoloration. These mixtures of flour-based, protein and carbohydrate adhe-sives age badly; they harden and can take on an orange color. At the time, they were used by painters as well as by picture restorers. Numer-ous small folds and creases show a deformation of paper and a lack of understanding of paper’s expansion and contraction phenomena, which confirms our hypothesis that the remounting of Le Brun’s cartoons was realized by painters or picture restorers. In France, the conserva-tion of graphic works of art is a relatively recent
discipline; formerly it was associated with the practice of mounting and framing small- and medium-sized drawings, while larger formats were associated with the conservation of large-sized paintings.
Between 1992 and 1994, a campaign was start-ed to identify and photograph the cartoons by Charles Le Brun in the collection. Basic restora-tion work was done on this occasion, consisting of surface cleaning of the ensemble and a provi-sional consolidation of tears, in order to allow the works to be photographed safely.
The earliest exhibitions at the Louvre Museum were pedagogical in nature; their aim was to allow maximum access to the works. Thereaf-ter, little by little, the role of the museum was redefined; it adopted a more scientific approach to conservation. Today, the museum not only conserves works of art, it also wishes to affirm the historical state they were in at the moment of acquisition.
The works on paper preserved in the Depart-ment of Drawings and Prints of the Louvre are made accessible to researchers and interested lay persons in the Department’s study room.
Consul-Fig: 3: Missing areas of the drawings completed in the 19th century
tation presumes that the works are mounted in such a way that both recto and verso can safely be examined. This imperative directs the selec-tion of restoraselec-tion treatments.
Conserving, displaying, consulting – these demands are sometimes difficult to reconcile, especially for large-sized works. Conservation im-plies a stable environment and climate, minimal handling, and maximum protection against light and against atmospheric pollution. The solutions needed for exhibition of the work may be tempo-rary; in that case, it is more a question of means, of the time needed for an intervention, of the budget allocated for the restoration, installation and taking down of the work, than an ethical issue. However, consultation of the works on pa-per requires durable and sustainable solutions to problems of conservation; the works need to be accessible and it must be possible to manipulate them safely.
The approach chosen by the conservation stu-dio at the Department of Drawings and Prints seeks to take into account, in its treatments, to maintain as much as possible the work’s au-thentic character, to enable its exhibition and its consultation, and thus to allow historians to conduct their research.
In the case of Le Brun’s cartoons, there is the additional difficulty of the sheer number and heterogeneity of the ensemble. Among the 700 cartoons there are masterpieces, unique items of great historical and artistic importance, as well as more modest works and even copies that were used to transfer the drawing or as teaching mate-rial for pupils. However, all share the fact that they are essentially working drawings, carrying the traces of their use.
Since the creation of the conservation studio of the Department of Drawings and Prints in 1989 and following the first restoration cam-paign, which involved superficial cleaning and consolidations needed to allow an inventory of the collection to be taken, sixty cartoons have been restored. Over the past twenty years, resto-ration protocols have evolved and the materials used have been updated. Nevertheless, the same inherent logic and the main stages of restoration remain valid. They take into account both the history of the cartoons and their dimensions.
Cartoons that were folded or rolled often suf-fered so much friction that the radiance of the white chalk heightening and the velvety char-acter of the black chalk lines were lost. If the
cartoon was pasted onto a backing canvas, on the other hand, it usually is now badly discolored and few traces of the white highlights are left.
The stiffness of the marouflage and the deteriora-tion of the adhesive justify the cartoon’s removal from the canvas backing. Additionally, poor stor-age conditions were often the cause of distortion of the canvas, extreme dirt, and stains. The diffi-culty encountered in removing the glue depends on the quality of the adhesive used and its age.
Selected solutions involve heat and an alpha-amylase gel.
Consolidation of tears and filling in missing areas are needed in all the cartoons. Folded or rolled works often exhibit more tears, yet their paper is not as distorted as is the case with works that were backed on canvas in the nineteenth century. Some cartoons are lined once or twice.
Wheat starch paste and Japanese “minogami”
paper are used to line the cartoons (Fig 4).
The large- scale cartoons are, in general, past-ed onto a canvas of ‘agpast-ed’ linen preparpast-ed with
Fig. 4: Ambassadors’ staircase, Château de Versailles, detail of conservation work
intermediary sheets of paper. This procedure is frequently adopted with cartoons that were re-mounted on canvas in the nineteenth century.
The preparation of the support is done concur-rently with the restoration of the work itself. The linen is ‘aged’ three times to give it the required inertia guaranteeing stability. It is a long but essential process, needed to obtain optimal ad-hesion of the paper to the canvas. Strain gauge frames are used to absorb the stresses the work may undergo due to climatic variations.
Small-sized works are mounted on acid-free board of either honeycomb structure, or simple lightweight board. Different techniques may be employed: the work may be stretch-mounted on a cardboard, or mounted in such a way that the verso of the sheet remains accessible.
The questions posed by the preservation of the cartoons continue after their restoration.
Until few years ago, the cartoons were systemati-cally framed in heavy wooden frames painted black. This has been discontinued since, both to preserve the original character of the cartoons and for reasons of weight during handling. The cartoons are now placed in a light type of frame that is needed for storage or for handling during transport.
The choices made in the restoration of the cartoons of Charles Le Brun remain a matter of importance. The equilibrium between conserva-tion, exhibition and consultation is a delicate one, and both the margins of action and those of the budget are limited. On-going research takes us ever closer to lighter, less invasive manners of mounting, consistent with the preservation of the works’ authenticity and their history.
Valentine Dubard for the team of conservators of the Department of Drawings and Prints of the Musée du Louvre
Notes
1 The ‘packets’ gathered works according to site and type; patterns were kept sepa-rate. See: Beauvais, L. Pinault Sørensen, M. 2000. Musée du Louvre, département des Arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins. Ecole française, Charles Le Brun, 1619-1690, 2 vols., Paris, for refer-ences to all historical information cited here.
2 Statement of 2 June 1749 ; see note 1.
3 « Ces cartons de très peu de valeur » (« these cartoons of very little value »), circa 1730, Charles Coypel ; see note 1.
4 Department of Drawings and Prints, Inv.
29845.
Author
Valentine Dubard 31 bis rue de Montreuil 94300 Vincennes vadubard@gmail.com
Département des arts graphiques Musée du Louvre
14 quai François Mitterand 75058 Paris cedex 1 valentine.dubard@louvre.fr