The Trace-to-Trace Encounter: Uncovering and Copying Whitewashed Medieval Paintings in Modern Europe

Ronah Sadan

My research project examines the reception of medieval wall paintings in modern Europe. Through a series of case studies spanning from the 1830s to the 1920s, it investigates the processes by which wall paintings, dating from the 1100s through the 1500s and consigned to oblivion beneath layers of limewash during the early modern period, were integrated into Europe’s cultural landscape.
Within this framework, my focus is on the effect that limewashing had on wall paintings and on the processes by which wall paintings were revealed from underneath it and then documented visually. Before photography had developed succificently to be useful in the relatively dark spaces of the churches, the mode of documentation that was considered most authoritative was tracing using semi-transparent paper or cloth. By preserving the scale of paintings, and enforcing empirical precision on copyists, tracing promised to deliver faithful registrations of paintings. However, it often became a creative act that re-imagined the paintings in forms palatable to modern tastes. In spite of their importance for the restoration of wall paintings, tracings made in the nineteenth century have rarely been studied and are often fragile, now requiring their own measures of conservation and re-mediation.