Art restorer Roberta Tironzelli restores a damaged 17th-century painting for one of her clients, a Rome art gallery, at her home studio in Rome, Italy on April 21, 2021. " (Xinhua)
ROME, May 1 (Xinhua) -- One way to look at art restoration, according to Roberta Tironzelli, is as a process of making something beautiful that over time has become damaged and obscured and to help it recover its former splendor.
Over an art restoration career lasting more than 30 years, the Rome-based and Umbria-born Tironzelli carried out that process hundreds of times. But she still struggles to identify the qualities at the center of her profession.
"Every art restorer is part artist, part scientist, part art historian, part technician, and part iconographer," the 55-year-old Tironzelli told Xinhua. "You have to understand a work of art the way a doctor understands the human body."
She said that even after years of work, the satisfaction of making progress on a restoration project remains.
"It's a multi-faceted kind of work that requires a diverse set of skills and a great attention to detail," she said. "It's challenging, but I love doing it. I still get a thrill from seeing a work of art come back to life."
Tironzelli's work was confronted by a new set of challenges during the coronavirus pandemic. Italy was hit hard by the pandemic last year and the country is now fighting to emerge from so that life return to the way it was before masks, quarantines, and social distancing became part of every resident's vocabulary -- in that way, the country is not unlike a work of art in the process of being restored.
At first glance, Tironzelli said, things did not change too much for her during the pandemic. Her work has always been solitary, which did not change. But her teenage son spent much of the pandemic home from school, which meant that her responsibilities as a mother and her work had to mix in new ways.
There was also less contact with friends and people she worked with. The economic slowdown sparked by the pandemic also had a negative impact on art galleries and collectors, her main source of work.
All that meant there were fewer commissions, though she said the pandemic only sped up a trend that had already started.
"Compared to when I first started restoring paintings the technology and the materials available have improved," Tironzelli said. "But the downside is that the trends in the art world are moving away from classical art that needs to be restored."
She went on: "There are fewer people who want a work of art that was painted hundreds of years ago hanging in their home," Tironzelli said. "Television and other aspects of popular culture have changed peoples' tastes. More modern styles of art are now in fashion."
Tironzelli predicted the trends would change in the future, noting that history has shown that specific art styles move in and out of fashion in cycles. She said that over time she believes more people will return to admiring the ancient artwork that is part of the foundation of European culture -- and as any Italian resident who looks forward to a return to the pre-pandemic lifestyle can attest, nostalgia is a powerful emotion. Enditem
