This is one painting that might be better seen and not heard

The Improbability of Love, a recently published novel by Hannah Rothschild, film director and trustee of several British museums, is a tale of plundered paintings, self important art experts, desperate art dealers, and greedy art collectors. One of the few noble characters is a conservator who works in the National Gallery’s lab. Through descriptions of her work, the reader learns about conservation procedures like test cleaning, sampling, and cross section analysis. This positive view of conservation is muddled by a Watteau painting that expresses its view of restoration (yes, the painting, a major character in the novel, speaks—although no one hears it):  “Imagine my horror at the latest turn of events: the young man has found a restorer. The mere mention of the word sends shivers through my paintwork. The atrocities committed in the name of restoration; look no further than a certain Velazquez in London or Leonardo in Paris. I am so delicate that whole swathes of my composition could disintegrate in the wrong hands. Though my patina is smeared with layers of soot, candle smuts, human effluents, tobacco smoke and varnish, the prospect of a restorer let loose with bottles of noxious spirits fills me full of quaking, mind-blowing terror.” This is one painting that might be better seen and not heard.