History of Art alumnus Matthew Hayes, BA ’99, publishes new book The Renaissance Restored.
Matthew Hayes is a paintings conservator in private practice and director of the Pietro Edwards Society for Art Conservation in New York City. He has a PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
The Renaissance Restored: Paintings Conservation and the Birth of Modern Art History in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Getty Conservation Institute) charts the intersections between art history and conservation in the treatment of Italian Renaissance paintings in nineteenth-century Europe. Initial chapters discuss the restoration of works by Giotto and Titian framed by the contemporary scholarship of art historians such as Jacob Burckhardt that was redefining the earlier age. Subsequent chapters recount how paintings conservation was integrated into museums in London and Berlin under the direction of Charles Eastlake and Wilhelm Bode. The narrative uses period texts, unpublished archival materials, and historical photographs to probe how paintings looked at a time when scholars were writing the foundational texts of art history, and how contemporary restorers were negotiating the appearances of these works. The book proposes a model for a new conservation history, object-focused yet enriched by consideration of a wider cultural context.
