I know most of you have probably already seen this through other sites since I’m a little late posting it. (It’s been a rough week packing up my office and lab at work to move before some renovations… the upshot is that I’ll finally get a window office!)
From the National Portrait Gallery:
This important portrait of Anne Boleyn is in urgent need of conservation treatment. It is in a particularly vulnerable and unstable condition as a result of structural problems with the wooden panel. Vertical cracking has occurred across the picture causing minor paint loss where the wood has split (see the photograph taken in raking light alongside). We need to act now as the damage is being caused by the long term effects of an unsuitable cradle (an applied wooden panel support) which must be removed. Therefore this important and much loved painting needs urgent conservation treatment to ensure it can be put back on public display.
The Gallery hopes to raise
Yikes!!! Is it really splitting down the middle like that, or are my eyes playing tricks on me??? That is awful!
I’ve noticed for a while that there was a line starting to show down the middle (it shows up in some of the larger reproductions of it in books). The raking light image exaggerates it, but shows that it really is in need of some work!
I can’t say that I noticed the line when I saw the portrait in May 2008. It may have been the lighting in the gallery keeping it from being pronounced?
And it could be that the lighting used for the photos for reproductions makes it stand out more. It’s mostly the line along the outer edge of the eye on the right (Anne’s left eye) that I’ve noticed in reprodutions. Unfortunately I haven’t seen the portrait in person since 2003 but I don’t recall being able to see it.