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1. Investigative Work
This panel painting by Theodoric is at present to be found
in the restorer's studio of the National Gallery, where
it has undergone thorough investigative work. This was
carried out by the restorers of the National Gallery entrusted
with the restoring of this painting, Academic Painters
Zora Grohmannová and Hana Kohlová. The chemical analysis
of the pigments, bonding media and ground layers, including
spectral analyses, was carried out by Dorothea Pechová
of the chemical laboratory of the National Gallery, and
individual types of wood were determined by Ivana Vernerová.
The largest panel painting from the Chapel of the Holy
Rood at Karlštejn Castle is situated in the centre of
the North wall at the top of the broken arch. The original
beechwood panel is made up of six boards roughly 1.8 cm
thick; the joints are pasted over on the front side with
strips of canvas (16 x 14 threads per cm2).
The state of the support, heavily attacked by woodworm,
was clearly so catastrophic in the past that it was reduced
on all four sides, including the frame, and strengthened
all round with new wood. The vertical parts of the additions
are of fir and the horizontal of linden material. The
original reduced panel, measuring 170 x 142 cm, is on
the side of the painting set close to the additions, which
on the rear side overlap it considerably inwards. The
original disintegrating wood is glued to this overlap
with strong bone glue and thus partly supported. The large
area of the panel was thus fixed by this measure and the
results of this unfavourable operation showed in the occurence
of cracks which are most frequent along the edges of the
additions. The cracks mostly follow the original joints
in the boards of the panel, elsewhere they are not connected
with them. The panel clearly cracked long ago, it suffices
to look at the rear side covered with horizontal and vertical
oak, linden and pine binding strips, some of which appear
from the way they are worked to be extremely old. The
surface of the wood around the joints is covered by layers
of size and canvas patch es. The wormwood attacked wood
has never been petrified. The body of the removable newer
frame and the wooden grid on which the panel is supported
are of pinewood.
At first sight it is obvious that painting has suffered
a great deal over the centuries. The non-original
live-grey background behind the figures of the saints
is unpleasantly cold, without pastiglias and without gilding.
The outlines of the saints have been roughly overpainted
several times and the flesh colour of Christ's body is
so damaged that it lays bare the black brush-drawing and
the chalk ground. The coloured layer of the painting is
loose or has fallen away, especially around the cracks,
and it is covered by a layer of dirt and yellowed
varnishes.
All the arginai ground layers in the background and under
the haloes are missing. The ground was cut out and removed
right down to the wood. On it there was applied a yellowish-brown
oil based layer with a trace of protein. It overlaps
all the outlines of the original painting and the older
overpainting and the additional wood at the left edge
of the panel.

Detail of Christ's figure in IR light Foto NG Praha, S.
Divišová
The gilded haloes of the Holy Virgin, St John and Jesus
Christ are not original. They consist of a thick
a layer of gypsum gilded with leaf on a thin
layer of light red bole. The layer is considerably cracked
with a darkened deposit of varnish and additional
repairs of gold on yellow oil mordant. The edges of the
haloes have the outer edge cut away. Beneath the plaster
halo of the Virgin Mary was found a yellow-brown
oil-starch layer with tiny remnants of gold; in composition,
including binding medium, it differs from the layer applied
to the entire area of the background of the Crucifixion,
but is similar to the type of glue under the non-original
pastiglias on many of the Theodoric panels in the Chapel
(St Agnes of Rome, the Holy Bishop, St Anthory and others)
1.
For technical reasons X-ray photographs have been made
so far only of the heads of the Holy Virgin, Stjohn the
Evangelist and Christ. On all of them we observe a large
number of escape holes made in the material of the wood
by woodworm which have not, however, penetrated the plaster
layer on the surface of the gilding.
Close round the internal outlines of the heads of the
saints there were found placed at regular intervals (4-4.5
cm) wooden pegs, as could be expected from a panel
on the main wall of the Chapel 2.
Apart from this the X-ray
photograph of Christ's halo showed in three places a fragment
of the original painting and ground which forms the shape
of a red cross of the halo 3.
Its placing corresponds
to the red streams of Christ's blood preserved in the
overpainting.
Under the painting of the figures the entire surface is
covered by the original two-layer ground with black brush
underdrawing covered by a layer of lead white. The
proportions of the drawings are slightly smaller than
the actual painting (infrared photos). The method of painting
the carnation of the of faces of Mary and John has typical
characteristics of 'Theodoric 's painting – the large
forms of the eyes, noses and lips, emphasised by the structural
strokes of the brush. The light ochre of the flesh is
supplemented by grey-brown non-transparent shadows with
light red emphasis on the curve of the nose. The paint
is applied a la prima. The unsolid modelling of Christ's
face, hair and beard is very different from that described
above and gives the impression of more later overpaintings,
which have already been confirmed in cross-sections. The
reason for these operations was undoubtedly the state
of the orginal painting. The irreplaceable damage to the
Christ's carnation parts probably occurred during careless
cleaning of the picture in the past.

Theodorik, State before restoration, luminiscence
photo Soňa Divišová

Photograph from Neuwirth's publication, 1896, Pi. XXXI
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Master Theodoric, The Crucifixion. A large panel picture
from the altar wall of the Holy Rood Chapel; detail during
investigative works
The blue of Mary's cloak is formed in the lower layer
of azurite mixed with lead white or azurite alone, the
final layer is in the shadowed parts laid down with natural
ultramarine and in the light parts with lead white. All
the overpaintings from various periods of time contain
Prussian blue. The oldest of these, with an emulsion medium
and difficult to dissolve, has flowed into the cracked
and loose painting on the edges of the figures so that
it will be extremely difficult to remove. The green and
red robe of St John the Evangelist lacks in places in
the micro-sections the thin layer of lead white. The green
of the painting of the cloak is composed of a lower
intensely green layer which contains copper mixed with
malachite and a light-green layer with a large
admixture of yellow ochres. The painting of the red lining
of the saint's robe is based on a layer of vermilion
and finished with red organic lake.
Some Notes on the State of the Picture over the
Centuries
The damaging and cutting away of the layers of the background
and the haloes together with the probable plastic decorative
elements must have taken place around the beginning of
the 15th century 4.
It is difficult to determine
the exact period of the oldest repairs to the haloes –
the application of the brown-ochre oil ground and its
gilding. Perhaps also connected with this is the very
old repainting of the hair, the Crown of Thorns and the
flesh of Christ. The origin of the gilded plaster haloes
could be dated by the repairs at the beginning of the
18th century. A very concrete fact appears to be the great
restoration of the picture, which certainly occurred after
1779 when, on the orders of Maria Theresa, the Crucifixion
together with the pictures of St Ambrose and St Augustine
and the Triptych of Tommas of Modena, was taken away to
Vienna to investigate the technique of Theodoric's painting
5.
The repairs to the panels were general, i. e. they
concerned not only the damaged parts of the painting,
but also the reconstruction of the plastic ornaments on
the pictures of the Church Fathers and of the Holy Virgin
between St Palmatius and St Václav (Wenceslas). The results
of this repair are documented by high quality phototypes
from Neuwirth's publication on Karlštejn Castle from 1896
6.
In a somewhat aged form we can still see these operations
on the paintings today. On the reproduction of the painting
with the Crucifixion there can clearly be seen the already
reduced and supplemented size of the panel, which is completed
in rectangular form at the top.

The rear side of the picture
The painting is crossed by cracks which show through
the filling and overpain ting. The head of Christ is completely
repainted – eyes, beard and hair in such a way that
the preparatory drawing does not shine through under the
skin. The picture thus repaired hung in the Belvedere
in Vienna up to 1901, when the Austrian Emperor permitted
the panels to be returned with the proviso that copies
would be made for Karlštejn Castle and then they would
be taken back to Vienna again. Luckily this did not happen
and the pictures were finally hung once again in their
original places in the Chapel. At this time the upper
part of the additional wood frame was cut away to allow
the panel to fit under the top of the arch. A new frame
was prepared, decorated with pastigliasi and a grid
which supported the panel. In professional literature
we can read that in the years 1927-1930 the repair of
24 of the Theodoric 's panels was carried out by the restorers
B. Slánský, A Bělohoubek, J. Jeníšek andj. Hlavín. It
would interest us to know when the Vienna overpainting
was removed from our picture and by whom, because on the
coloured reproduction of 1938 in Matějček's Czech Gothic
Painting, published by Melantrich that same year, the
Crucifixion is already without the overpaintings (in particular
the head and body of Christ have roughly the same appearance
that they have today)7,8.
There has also been preserved a restorers' report
on the partial restoration of the picture by B. Slánský,
L Slánská and D. Blažková in the archives of the Central
Bohemian, Institute for the Care of Historical Monuments
from the year I960, unfortunately not in detail, but only
in connection with the conservation and surface cleaning
of the painting of a whole series of the Theodoric
panels, which the restorers realised in situ.
Because the present restoration of the painting is just
beginning – apart from the investigative work only partial
probes have been made - further interesting discoveries
may be made in the course of the work or existing findings
may be corrected.
author
Zora Grohmannová, AHVT B 038 (J.D.)
1 Laboratorní zprávy průzkumů
jednotlivých desek Mistra Theodorika uložené v rest.
oddělení Národní galerie.
2 Z. Grohmanová, Současné výsledky průzkumu Theodorikových
desek Umění XXXVIII/1990, str. 547 8.
3 Restaurátorská zpráva o restaurování desky
Mistra Theodorika sv. Jan Křtitel, Národní galerie, Z.
Grohmanová.
4 M. Tomek, Dějiny Prahy, IV. d„ Praha 1879, s.
64
5 A. Sedláček, Hrady, zámky a tvrze Království
českého, VI d., s. 30-31.
6 Neuwirth, Mittelalterliche Wandgemälde und die
Tafelbilder der Burg Karlstein in Böhmen, Prag 1896, ta.
XXXI, XLI.
7 Česká malba gotická, deskové malířství 1350 -1450,
úvodní stať A. Matějček, Praha 1938, tab. č. 54.
8 Overpaintings made in Vienna, to our surprise,
were removed only partially - in the upper part of Christ's
figure. On other places these over paintings remained
without change. We can suppose therefore local, non-professional
treatment of the time about 1901, soon after the return
of the picture.
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