Restoration as Fabrication of Origins

The aim of this publication is to clarify the relationships between material restoration and politics in Italian Renaissance art. The focus of this research is on the question of origin as a foothold for political, patrimonial, and cultural identity. These claims were enacted within a system which, rather than restoring the initial forms and meanings of existing objects, remodeled the past according to new identity requirements: spaces were reorganized, and works of art invested with new meanings. Their material and aesthetic reality was thus transformed and redefined. The aim is therefore to analyze the potential physical modifications of these artefacts in light of their symbolic recoding.

With contributions by Kathleen W. Christian, Caroline S. Hillard, Mateusz Kapustka, Jérémie Koering, Victor Lopes, Florian Métral, Arnold Nesselrath, Neville Rowley, Beat Wyss.

• Restoration practices in Italian Renaissance art
• Reassessing the concept of Renaissance
• Recoding of ancient works for political purposes