The Ravished Image : An Introduction to the Art of Restoring Paintings (Rev. ed.)

Why do some Old Masters shout at you from gallery walls like colours on a TV screen?

Do these paintings still represent what the artist intended?The pictures we see today are frequently a world away from what they looked like when they left the easel.

Partly it is the effects of time. More often than not, it is dubious restoration that has destroyed what the artist most prized: the intricate perspectives, the balance of tone and colour, the subtle glazings. The Ravished Image is written both for experts and art lovers.

It explains accessibly how the enjoyment of works of art may be interfered with by modern technology.

Authoritatively it shows how the dogma of new techniques has in many cases caused irreversible damage, reducing canvases in national collections--of Britain and America especially--to pale imitations of their original conception.

The Ravished Image is a key text for students of art, restorers and, for anyone who enjoys looking at pictures and wishes to understand more about them. This new and entirely revised edition includes key writings and unpublished letters by Sir Ernst Gombrich, showing that he maintained his concern about paintings restored by the National Gallery and elsewhere till his last years.

His foreword, updated just before his death, points out that new research had proved him right in the famous 'cleaning controversy' with the Gallery forty years ago (key texts are reproduced here).