Bellori, Maratti, Bottari e Crespi. Intorno al restauro – Modelli antichi e pratica di lavoro nel cantiere di Raffaello alla Farnesina

The present paper investigates the origins of the restoration discipline as a scholarly issue. It focuses on the earliest interventions for which written documents exist that undoubtedly attest to their having been conceived and executed in terms of critical method: namely, those interventions on the frescoes by the Carracci in the Galleria of the Farnese Palace, and by Raphael in the Loggia of the Farnesina, which were both planned by Giovan Pietro Bellori and Carlo Maratti in concert, and carried out by the latter, between 1690 and 1695. In their approach to, and implementation of, the restoration work Bellori and Maratti formed here a consonant team, as is especially evident from the self-conscious critical stance the two of them maintained on the question of how to retouch the paintings. In a new and radical departure from existing practice, they adapted the precepts of restoration that, until then, had been thought appropriate to antique sculpture alone (there were no surviving Greek and Roman paintings to which they could be applied). As an extension to the previous discussion, a detailed analysis of the opinions, so frequently referred to in recent literature (and yet so often misunderstood), by Giovanni Gaetano Bottari and Luigi Crespi on the restorations completed by Bellori and Maratti is provided. An appendix deals with the problem of the original antique sculptures that, according to Bellori (who devoted an entire chapter to the Loggia in his Descrizzione of the Vatican Stanze), served as models to Raphael when he painted several figures at the Farnesina.