Restauring Patinas and Tartars in the Musée Napoléon's Workshop of sculptures Restaurer les patines et tartres dans l'atelier des sculptures du Musée Napoléon En Fr

Résumé En

From 1798 to 1814, a very small number of bronzes sculptures compared to the number of marbles were restored before being exposed in the halls of the Musée Napoléon becoming Musée Royal. If the main activities of Bernard Lange (1754-1839), chief of the workshop, were about reassembling or complete sculptures, an unsuspected part of the activity was to recreate a general aspect to the sculpture. About the marbles, the question of sanding is partially known for the period. Studying supplier invoices of the Atelier des restaurations permits to apprehend and better know the “cooking recipes” and steps which lead to the actual states of marbles and bronzes. As exemples, Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine (1774-1860) or his father was paid 30 francs after 1805 for «Raccords de la dorure et du vert antique » to the bust of Antonino Pio now come back to Parma. Another example, to restore an antique porphyria table , fish glue with lime [chaux], alcohol, egg white, charred bone stew and ocher were used .The contribution will be focused on the first controversies about the technics of cleaning marbles, at the end of the 18th century, and “cooking recipes” for recreating the past by new patinas and tartars.