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"It was, in fact, during the waning decades of the ancien râegime that several enterprising and hugely ego-centric craftsmen developed transfer and lining techniques that were to put some of the Crown's greatest masterpieces at unconscionable risk. Not painters by training, the Hacquins, páere et fils, the Picaults, páere et fils, the widow Godefroid, to mention the most prominent, plied their trade well into the museum age, each promoting his or her own special and very secret techniques. This coincided roughly with the fall of the monarchy and the establishment of the Musâee National (later Musâee Napolâeon, and later still, Musâee du Louvre). It was the first public gallery to open its doors, and although artists of the stature of Jacques-Louis David were still very much involved in the new enterprise, the museum consecrated the roles of restorer, curator, and administrator. The "kitchen of art" is born. This essay collection, comprised of submissions to the New Criterion from over the years, will explore the "kitchen of art" from the point of view of an Italian-born American amateur art-historian"--
About the author
Marco Grassi, of a Florentine family long active as collectors, dealers, and scholars of Renaissance art, completed undergraduate studies at Princeton. After military service, he trained as a fine arts conservator at the Uffizi in Florence, as well as in Rome and Zürich. His first professional practice was in his native city, and he later served as a visiting and consulting conservator to a number of prominent private collectors, including H. H. Thyssen-Bornemisza in Lugano and Norton Simon in Pasadena. Beginning in the early 1970s, he continued his conservation practice, dividing his time between New York and Europe, where, to this day, he serves a diverse clientele of collectors and dealers. He now also partners with his son Matteo, a dealer of European Old Master paintings based in Paris. Marco and his wife Cristina Sanpaolesi Grassi, a pastel artist, have homes in New York and Florence.
