Heritage. Catacombs, Jumièges abbey, Lascaux cave… 6 challenges taken up by restorers
Challenge #1: deal with materials
In the heart of Paris, 20 m underground, masons are building “walls” like no other: piles of human bones from cemeteries and placed at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries in these quarries which would become the famous catacombs. , today very visited. However, these walls – called “hagues” – collapse under the pressure of infiltration.
“We bring our eye and our expertise as restorers of dry stone walls,” explains Florent Bastaroli, entrepreneur in Saint-Victor-la-Coste (Gard). Because reassembly is quite similar: you must respect the plumbness, the alignment; place the bones staggered for greater strength; tilt slightly to push pressure towards the inside of the hag. »
Who would have thought that an ossuary would need the knowledge of such specialists? Today, “the field of heritage has expanded infinitely, and with it our work,” notes Régis Bertholon, professor at the Haute École Arc, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and conservation-restoration theorist. He gives the example of bottles containing plants, stored in many natural history museums: “After a century or two, the glass tends to crack, the liquids age… It is a complex problem of succeed in saving a collection which may sometimes include the remains of an extinct species. » Even the works of contemporary video artists are aging, and museums are starting to call on restorers to be able to continue showing them.
For dry stone walls or old frames, the challenge is rather to preserve traditional gestures and tools. For other materials, restorers are looking in the industry for more efficient products or new techniques. Always with the obsession that they clean, stick, seal, support… without harmful effects. Thus, in the 1970s, laser cleaning appeared which took a long time, out of caution, to be adopted on various materials: “We are the first workshop in France to use it on old fabrics when simple scrubbing is not enough not dissolve dirt molecules,” proudly testifies the founder of the workshop that bears her name, restaurateur Martina Galli.
Challenge no. 2: assess the heritage value
In a bend of the Seine, near Rouen, magnificent white towers are revealed… This is the Jumièges Abbey, a masterpiece of Romanesque art. The abbey church, however, has come down to us without a roof. “The question arose at one point of reconstituting its cover to better preserve it,” says Philippe Bonnet, former chief curator of heritage and president of the Grand Prix Pèlerin du Patrimoine. It was technically feasible and historically justifiable. » But now, in the 19th century, Jumièges became “the most beautiful ruin in France”, and this romantic image still delights visitors. So much so that the decision was made to only carry out work to consolidate and protect the masonry of this listed monument.
The essential thing is to ask the question of the value carried by the monument or the object for the men of our time, believes Régis Bertholon. “Each of us has a box of objects that we don’t want to forget, where we find a family ring, a dried flower witnessing a moment of happiness and a pebble with an original color… On a collective scale, it is the same, compares the professor to the Haute École Arc: society decides to preserve a work because it grants it an aesthetic, historical, symbolic, memorial value or even because the traditional object is still in use. » In Jumièges, the aesthetic value promoted since the 19th century has prevailed, for the moment, over the historical value of a medieval building.
Challenge n°3: confronting permanent choices
Although it has been based since 1964 on the Venice Charter (read box at end of article), restoration remains a “case by case” matter: thus, in the Saint-Martin church, in Morlaix (Finistère), Philippe Bonnet, then inspector of historical monuments, freed himself from it. Where the international framework text proposes to preserve the last state of a work or monument, it asked the restorers to remove a wash of whitewash which covered a sculpted wooden group from 1558, representing an entombment : “Its original bright colors, which we knew were well preserved, then reappeared and the sculptures regained all their expressiveness,” he says. Which does not prevent him from defending the Venice Charter: it obliges us to ask the right questions before intervening.
An evaluation which takes into account another reality: we never restore completely “identically”. Thus at the catacombs: “Our predecessors had decorated the crest of the hague with skulls,” says Florent Bastaroli. But visitors were tempted to manipulate them. So they were cemented. A disaster, because we can no longer restore the wall without damaging them! So much so that we chose to slightly modify the original aesthetic by placing the “decorative” lines of skulls lower in the rebuilt wall. »
Challenge No. 4: treating the diagnosis
Intervene, perhaps, but wisely. A long work is required beforehand, as in Chartres (Eure-et-Loir) where, during the very recent restoration of the Saint-Piat chapel, dependent on the cathedral, 14th century wall paintings reappeared. Claire Dandrel recalls the stages: “We took more than two years to carry out what we call a “state report”, that is to say a complete study involving different specialists to understand the situation: different settings did they overlap? how were the pigments and binders applied and how did they evolve? where did the humidity in the walls come from? Then we made a diagnosis of the state of the work in its context and what we could do to save it. Finally, after consultation with the architects and curators of the monument, we took action.” And the curator-restorer of mural paintings emphasizes the first part of her title: “We are first and foremost curators. We only restore if necessary! »
It is about the ethics of the profession, adds Amélie Méthivier, curator-restorer of sculptures and deputy director of studies at the National Heritage Institute. She insists on the need to constantly explain this “invisible” part of the work. His counterparts have been campaigning for years to have specialized training certified by the State.
Behind a successful restoration, good intelligence work was carried out. Florent Bastaroli, who presents himself as a craftsman, is on the same line: “A good restoration is defined by several people, with the owners of the place, the heritage architect in charge of the overall work, the architect of the buildings of France if the monument is classified…” At the catacombs, he collaborates with a curator-restorer who developed the program. He also works on construction sites with the Rempart association to train volunteers: “Learning to bake tiles as in the Middle Ages, to reassemble frames cut in the old-fashioned way is a way of making the citizen an actor in the transmission of its heritage”, adds Olivier Lenoir, general delegate of Rempart, for whom restoration, whether we try a technique or watch, is an “excellent vector of popular education”.
Challenge n°5: involve the public
Making the work accessible (in every sense of the word) to the public without lying about its authenticity remains a dilemma. In the extreme, the conservation of a heritage place can involve its closure in order to prevent visitors’ breathing from promoting humidity, moss and fungi which degrade it. This was the case of the Lascaux cave (Dordogne), inaccessible since 1963. To alleviate public frustration, the ambitious solution consisted of building a quality facsimile, Lascaux II, open to visitors since 1983. .
Easier to implement, light projections also allow restitutions: a pioneer in this area is the cathedral of Amiens (Somme), whose specialists have rediscovered the medieval polychromy. It was unimaginable to repaint the gates in very bright colors! Also, since 1999, a “sound and light” show restores, in summer and at Christmas, the sculptures on the facade to their Gothic appearance.
Often a compromise is necessary. This is how the “tratteggio” technique was born, to restore works damaged by the floods of Florence (Italy) in 1966. It consists of filling the gaps in a painting with light streaks of the same color: our eye will find the overall image, but by looking closely we can distinguish what is original and what has been repainted. Since then, other processes have been added to the range of professionals. “Hearing the music reproduced by a copy of an 18th century automaton is fantastic. But seeing the original workings on display alongside is essential. Let’s not forget that this is also what brings out emotion,” warns Régis Bertholon.
Challenge n°6: fighting against time
A race against time is what each operation intended to extend the life of a work or monument is like. The Neuchâtel specialist was consulted a few years ago to find out how to stop the slow destruction of cars in the martyred village of Oradour-sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne) frozen, for memorial reasons, in its state of ruin after the massacre of the inhabitants by the Germans in 1944. “Little by little, their color disappears, and they will end up looking like a pile of scrap metal. The alternative would be to protect them with some sort of black anti-corrosion varnish which would change their appearance. Unthinkable! The conservatives have decided to let the rust take hold…” For him, the “good solution” in the long term was the creation of a Memory Center where visitors can now see images and understand what Oradour was, before 1944 and after.
Does this mean that any attempt at restoration is somewhat futile? “Like the doctor, the restaurateur always loses in the end,” smiles Régis Bertholon. But like the doctor, with his scientific decisions and his own sensitivity, with the tools and knowledge of his time, he can help one or more generations to delay the deadline and to benefit from the rich heritage which has been bequeathed to him.
