On August 4, 2020, an accidental explosion with the equivalent of 1.1 kilotons of TNT ripped through the Port of Beirut, killing 220 and causing $15 billion in property damage in the most catastrophic non-nuclear blast in recent history. Situated within a few thousand feet of the blast site is Sursock Palace, a Levantine mansion built by Moïse Sursock in 1860 and still owned by the Sursock family, an influential clan dating to the Byzantine era. Within its walls were art treasures befitting the city’s most prestigious museum.
In the aftermath of the blast, art historian Gregory Buchakjian published an article identifying two paintings in the collection by renowned Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi—Penitent Magdalene, which barely suffered, and Hercules and Omphale, dating to the early 1630s, a large-scale work requiring artistic triage.
“It’s probably one of the most challenging conservation efforts I’ve ever had to undertake,” Getty conservator Ulrich Birkmaier tells Observer about a three-year trial that culminated in June with the exhibition “Artemisia’s Strong Women: Rescuing a Masterpiece” through Sept. 14. On display are Self-Portrait as a Female Martyr, Lucretia, the large-scale Bathsheba and David paired with Susanna and the Elders. Occupying the north wall is the newly restored Hercules and Omphale, measuring roughly six by eight feet.
It portrays a scene between the legendary demigod and Queen Omphale, to whom he is enslaved as punishment for killing Iphitus and stealing the Delphic tripod. Hercules is seated spinning thread while Omphale imperiously stands over him, wielding a wooden club and wearing the skin of the Nemean Lion. On his knee rests the head of a mischievous-looking child—Cupid at the moment Omphale and Hercules fall in love.
While there’s no reason to doubt filmmaker, artist and art historian Gregory Buchakjian, co-curator Davide Gasparotto tracked down the painting’s provenance just to be sure. Thanks to a payment receipt found in the Sursock family archive, he learned that the work was purchased in Naples by Alfred Sursock around 1920 through the Neapolitan painter-dealer Francesco Paolo Diodati shortly before or after Sursock’s marriage to Donna Maria Teresa Serra di Cassano. Diodati acquired the artwork from the Spinelli family, Marquess of Laino and Counts of Acerra, who had inherited these titles from the extinct de Cardenas family. Carlo de Cardenas recorded the painting in 1699, then titled Hercules Spinning, with the words “hand of Artemisia Gentilesca.”
“De Cardenas is a man who Artemisia had some commissions from,” says Gasparotto. “This is the oldest information about the work that we have. We can speculate that the painting might have been commissioned by Carlo’s father, Alfonso de Cardenas, possibly for his villa at Barra.”
The daughter of artist Orazio Gentileschi, Artemisia is the most successful female painter of the Renaissance. Heavily influenced by the father who raised her and by Caravaggio, she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence, and she had an international clientele, including commissions for King Charles I of England, King Philip IV of Spain and the Medici family. Often portraying violent biblical and classical scenes between the sexes, her work is thought to reflect the trauma of her rape at an early age by fellow artist Agostino Tassi and the publicized trial that followed.
When Birkmaier first laid eyes on Hercules and Omphale, it was torn and pocked with holes. “The scale and extent of the damage were just extreme. So much glass, plaster and even pieces of the window frame embedded in the surface of the painting. I had to scratch my head, ‘Am I going to be able to do this?’” recalls the 30-year veteran conservator.
The first step was to secure the existing paint by applying a thin protective layer of tissue using a water-solvent glue. Laying the painting face down, they removed, bit by bit, a secondary canvas more than 100 years old. Rome-based conservator Matteo Rossi Doria was brought in to reline the canvas and attach a wooden stretcher for greater flexibility as the artwork ages and responds to changes in air and humidity.
The holes in the canvas needed to be filled with jigsaw-like pieces that bore a matching surface created artificially through a silicone skin mimicking the texture of the surrounding area. At that point, the canvas was ready for cleaning. Imaging techniques included a stereo microscope, X-rays, infrared and UV illumination to determine various layers on the canvas and to separate original pigments from previous conservationist malfeasance. Using cotton swabs and custom organic solvents (a background in organic chemistry is more important than one in art), Birkmaier typically removes varnish coatings and paint from previous restoration efforts. In the process, pentimento is revealed—underdrawings and experimental variations.
“She always has pretty dramatic pentimento, which basically tells us that she didn’t do very careful underdrawing or preliminary composition of the painting, but she changed her mind during the painting process,” Birkmaier says of Gentileschi. “In all of her paintings, we see pretty dramatic changes. In this one, Hercules’ head is turned, Omphale’s hand is pointing at him and there are several more fingers. So there’s an earlier iteration of her hand. You can still see it. I tried to make it a little less visible.”
Holes in the canvas were spread across a foreground figure’s back and naked shoulders. Hercules’ knee was torn open, likewise Omphale’s arm. A piece of window frame lodged vertically in the canvas, leaving a fist-sized hole dividing the two main figures.
“Most of the losses in this painting are in areas that don’t concern the faces or features much,” Birkmaier says with relief. “Luckily, I was able to work on these losses without having to make anything up. This is something we don’t want to do because we only want to bring out the original work by the artist, and we don’t want to impart our own interpretation. It’s a difficult tightrope walk that we have to walk.”
For an area of the foreground figure’s foot, major reconstruction was required. So Birkmaier called on an old friend, artist and collector Federico Castelluccio. You might know him as Furio Giunta, the Neapolitan hitman on the HBO series The Sopranos.
“He’s an amazing painter,” Birkmaier says of the actor-artist. “The big toe was missing and parts of the tip of the foot were missing, as was some of the nose of Hercules and his proper right eye. So Federico made a painting of the foot and of his head. I used his painting as a guide for my retouching. You don’t want it to look like it was just painted. We don’t want to draw attention to our work. You want it to look good, but you don’t want it to look like it was just worked on. We want to be able to see what Artemisia did.”
He pauses, appreciating her work and his. “When you cannot see the conservator’s hand, that’s the best compliment you can get.”