Oh, dear. This situation certainly proves that the moving parts behind a big institution are still humans, and are prone to making mistakes. Case in point: the National Gallery of London has managed to botch one of the world’s nativity paintings, right in time during the festive season.
Piero della Francesca’s The Nativity is back on view after a 3-year restoration, with the Gallery deciding to exhibit the art piece during the festive season. Unfortunately, the results of the process might put off a few art enthusiasts. First, the colors in the original painting were altered to a different shade and hue.
Additionally, every line in the painting was re-emphasized, to the point that somebody just drew a sloppy line over every detail in the artwork, or as Jonathan Jones puts it: “it’s like a garish digital reconstruction of what the painting may have looked like in 1475 when it was new – except, instead of offering this as a hypothetical, it has been physically repainted or, in the evasive language of restorers, ‘retouched’.”
Image credit: The National Gallery, London
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