Oil, tempera, fresco, enamel... materials and techniques have changed over time, and conservators need a vast amount of knowledge to preserve paintings.

Conserving Cuzco School Paintings
Follow the conservation treatment and research of “Emblem of Folly,” a painting from colonial Cuzco. Committed study of these works can help create a better understanding of Latinx cultural identity and history.

Conservation: portrait miniatures
Find out how the V&A investigates and analyzes the miniatures in order to understand more about what they were made of, when they were made, and how to conserve them.

Remaking a fourteenth-century triptych
Learn how early Renaissance artists made panel paintings from scratch.

Conserving a portrait of King Edward VI
This portrait was in good condition. Thanks to the removal of varnish and overpainting, it’s now cleaner than ever.

Painting Conservation of the Virgin of Guadalupe
A three-hundred year old painting required a lot of attention before it was ready for visitors to experience in the gallery.

Conservation of paintings
A restorer’s job is to make sense of a painting’s physical history and to stabilize its changeable materials.

Restoring Rothko
What happens when a painting is vandalized? See how conservators at Tate leapt into action to save a painting.

The Science of Van Gogh’s Bedrooms
The three versions of this bedroom scene may look similar, but technical analysis reveals differences between them.

Van Gogh’s Enclosed Field with Ploughman under raking light
Raking light reveals bulges and creases in a canvas, as well as the dynamism of van Gogh’s brushstrokes.

Conservation of Vincent van Gogh’s Field with Irises near Arles
Watch as a conservator removes decades-old varnish from a van Gogh landscape. Look at those stunning colors!

Michael Gallagher on Everhard Jabach and His Family
This painting took months of cleaning and structural work to revive—and posed several conservation challenges.

Conserving Flowers in a Glass Vase
Treating this still life involved reattaching paint, removing and reapplying varnish, and then retouching losses.