Wartime Care

Francesca Borgo

Renaissance wars were a major factor in the development of conservation and storage practices for artworks. Battles triggered episodes of transportation via plundering and looting, as well as safeguarding and protection. Their exceptionality often led contemporaries to question the otherwise assumed immobility of artworks, fixed by virtue of their weight, size, or support, and also to design new removal techniques aimed at securing the longevity of works. In contrast to the modern history of wartime heritage protection, premodern wartime care has been treated only anecdotally. This project translates some of the core questions of today’s preservation efforts in conflict zones into a historical perspective. It attends to early modern narratives of the displacement of artworks in the face of war, analyzing well-documented instances of protection and removal, both successful and unsuccessful, to examine period-specific reactions to the object’s endangerment and the way these reactions have evolved over time.