Bringing two medieval saints back to life

In early 2022, Paintings Conservator Birgit Straehle conducts a condition check of the back sides of the panels depicting Saint Blaise and Saint Christopher. “Spending time with an art object and facilitating the change, you are the first to see the magic happen. That is the sweet reward. It was a pleasure and privilege to bring the beauty and dignity back to life in this work by Paolo Veneziano.”

This fall, a work of great beauty and significance from the Worcester Art Museum's collection was a highlight of a Getty Center exhibition. The Worcester Triptych displayed the skill, sophistication, and ambition of Paolo Veneziano, Venice’s premier 14th-century painter. Known for his use of jewel-like color and evocative depictions of iconic Christian scenes and saints, his works range from altarpieces to frescoes to smaller devotional paintings that thrill visitors and scholars even now, nearly seven centuries after they were created. In the Getty show, WAM’s The Seven Saints—seven wooden fragments that originally comprised the shutters of a portable altarpiece (shown on the opposite page)—were reunited with three other fragments and displayed as a triptych, their original form. (Art historians refer to the reassembled work as The Worcester Triptych.) Similar to an altar piece, but smaller, such triptychs were designed for individual devotion and could be opened and closed much like a shuttered window. “Seven Saints is one of my favorite pieces in WAM’s collection,” says Birgit Straehle, Paintings Conservator at WAM. When she first encountered it in 2006, she had no idea she would one day tackle the challenging conservation of the back sides of The Seven Saints in preparation for the Getty’s Paolo Veneziano: Art and Devotion in 14th Century Venice.* On two whole pieces of wood, Veneziano painted images on both sides of Worcester’s panels that made up the shutter doors. The shutters opened to great dramatic effect to reveal The Seven Saints. When the triptych was closed, Saints Blaise and Christopher appeared on the triptych’s exterior on a red background. While still elegant, the exterior figures are less refined than the seven saints sumptuously arrayed against gilded backgrounds. But in the 19th century, the triptych was disassembled and dispersed among various collectors for greater profit. The exhibition reunited ten of the eleven fragments comprising The Worcester Triptych—two from the Getty and one from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. One more panel has yet to be located. The story of the triptych’s place of honor at the Getty exhibition begins in a lab at WAM during the height of COVID-19. Straehle had only a few weeks to conduct a comprehensive conservation treatment of the exterior paintings worn by time, exposure, and use. The precious interior panels, meanwhile, were pristine. Straehle’s first thought when seeing the back sides of the shutters: “chaos.” She recalled in that moment that Veneziano painted as the bubonic plague raged. COVID-19 was taking its own devastating toll as she stepped up to restore the master’s work.

Straehle documented her work in exacting detail throughout the process. “It was a very intense project,” she says, due to the abbreviated timeline, the panels’ condition, the fact that there was painting on both sides of each panel, and, to top it all off, the curved surface of the panels. Straehle studied Saints Christopher and Blaise, noting every visible detail. In hierarchical terms, those saints were less important, which explains their position on the exterior and the lack of gilding in the background.

Image shows how The Seven Saints were displayed at WAM for many years. To see the original panel configuration as a triptych, as shown in the Getty Center exhibition, Paolo Veneziano: Art and Devlotion in 14th Century Venice, visit Getty.edu. Paolo Veneziano (Italian, active 1333 – 1358), Panels from the Wings of a Triptych, mid 14th century, tempera on panel, Museum Purchase, 1927.19.

According to Straehle, the outside was so degraded it was difficult to see the saints’ forms and envision the color. Previous conservation campaigns left behind layers of varnish atop grime, old retouching and fills, and, in some places, bare wood was exposed. While Straehle removed the layers of non-original materials and grime, she discovered good news. The original paint she saw was vibrant and colorful. The more original paint she retrieved, the more information she had to inform the next steps in the conservation treatment that included repairing structural loss and color compensation. With these visible clues to what the originals looked like, Straehle was able to give the panels comprehensive conservation treatment and restore losses that had occurred over time, including Saint Blaise’s head and halo. On the other hand, since there were no traces of the bishop’s left hand holding the staff and Saint Christopher’s right foot, she color-matched the losses with their surroundings without suggesting a design.

* To see the original triptych configuration, shown in the Getty exhibition, visit Getty.edu. “I did my best to be true to the artist’s style and intention,” the conservator explained. Now visitors can enjoy the depiction without being distracted by obvious visible damages. And future conservators will have an easier time making restorations to the work. “All materials I used for fills and retouching are nontoxic and easily reversible” she says. Straehle worked until the last minute, stepping back finally to allow the panels to be readied for the trip to Los Angeles. “Spending time with an art object and facilitating the change, you are the first to see the magic happen. That is the sweet reward. It was a pleasure and privilege to bring the beauty and dignity back to life in this work by Paolo Veneziano.”

This image shows the five steps of Straehle's conservation treatment of the back side of one of the shutter doors—the one depicting Saint Blaise. This door had been sawn into three pieces when the triptych was dismantled in the early 19th century. The fully restored panel is on the far right.