Amsterdam The Rijksmuseum begins the restoration of The Night Watch
(Amsterdam) Experts from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam began the restoration of the most famous painting by Dutch master Rembrandt, The Night Watch, on Wednesday, which will notably remove the ripples that have formed on the canvas since a change of frame in the 1970s.
Updated on January 19Agence France-Presse“For the past two years, we have been researching The Night Watch, mapping every fiber, every pigment on the paint,” explained Taco Dibbits, director of the museum.
“And now we are going to start the conservation, the restoration,” he told AFP.
Curators took the museum's centerpiece off the wall, which measures 3.8 meters high by 4.5 meters wide and weighs 337 kilos, and placed it on a custom-made table.
In the next few days they will remove the 1642 canvas from its original frame.
“After a while, we will see that the current canvas will lose its deformations,” Pieter Roelofs, head of painting and sculpture at the museum, told AFP.
The wooden frame will be replaced with an aluminum frame that can "continuously hold a bit of pressure on the paint so it can't bulge", Dibbits said.
They will then assess whether a complete restoration of the work is necessary.
Called “Operation Night Watch”, the restoration project, which costs several million euros, constitutes the most extensive and comprehensive research and restoration work on the masterpiece.
About 30 experts have been working for two and a half years in view of visitors to the web, one of the most famous in the world, studying it meticulously with the most advanced imaging techniques and computer technology.
During the first phase of the project, the experts notably discovered a sketch under the layers of paint, revealing the "genesis" of the masterpiece of the Dutch master.
Mr Dibbits said the team had also managed to make "the highest resolution photograph ever taken of a work of art".
"Now the audience can really zoom in on the image, dive into the image and see almost all the pigment," he said.
The Dutch Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) had received in 1642 an order from the captain of the bourgeois militia of Amsterdam Frans Banninck Cocq to portray the officers and members of his militia.
In nearly four centuries, the painting has experienced many trials. It escaped the Nazis and by 1715 had been trimmed down completely to be installed in Amsterdam's Town Hall.
The last major restoration dates back more than forty years, after an attack in 1975 by an unbalanced man who slashed it with a knife.
