A brief note in The New York Times (“A Digital Substitute for a Stolen Caravaggio”, by Elisabetta Povoledo, December 12, 2015) and a longer post in The Daily Mail Online (“Painting Stolen by the Mafia is Resurrected”, by Gian Volpicelli, December 11, 2015) present the news that a team of conservators, computer experts and artists utilizing digital scans of both a photo of that painting and other paintings by Caravaggio, have recreated Caravaggio’s “Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence” which was stolen from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo in 1969. As we welcome the technology (I am sure that each of us can think of a number of works of art for which it could be applied), would I be a cynic to take note of the fact that the reproduction was commissioned by the Sky Television Network which will broadcast “Mystery of the Lost Caravaggio”, a documentary about the process, in 2016?
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AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse
Former Blog of the American Institute for Conservation