Restoring Hope Hygieia: A Preview

The fascinating methods of conserving and restoring classical antiquities as related to developments in modern science are the subjects of The Hope Hygieia: Restoring a Statue's History. This exhibition is on view exclusively at Malibu, California's Getty Villa from April 10 to September 8, 2008.

The Hope Hygieia: Recovery, Restoration and Residence

In 1797, the seven-foot-tall, nearly one-ton marble sculpture of Hygieia, the Roman goddess of health, was discovered 10 meters under the ancient Italian port of Ostia. Immediately discernible upon recovery was the fact that the imposing statue was missing its inlaid eyes, nose, right forearm, left hand, sections of drapery and parts of a serpent, including its head, that the figure originally grasped.

As was customary in the 19th Century, restorers made the statue more presentable (and marketable) by replacing its missing features with marble prosthetics, recreating the sculpture's original likeness as they imagined it to have been. Shortly thereafter, the Roman work was acquired by English designer, art collector and author Thomas Hope (1769-1830/31). It was later owned by industrialist Alfred Mond (1868-1930) and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951). The communications mogul donated the Hope Hygieia to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1950.

De-restoration and Reversal

At the dawn of the 20th Century, many museum conservators, supported by archaeologists, rejected previous restorations of classical sculptures. This minimalist aesthetic prevailed in 1973 when LACMA lent the Hope Hygieia to the J. Paul Getty Museum for de-restoration and exhibition. Stripping the statue of all additions that were not made of ancient marble revealed that the 19th-century restorers compromised the statue's integrity by having intentionally smoothed over the sculpture's naturally broken surfaces.

A new breed of conservators believes that once an ancient statue has been restored, the subsequent removal of its modern additions does not return the work to its lost original state. So in 2006, experts at the renowned Getty Conservation Institute reversed the de-restoration of the Hope Hygieia. The sculpture now appears as it did when Thomas Hope owned it in the 19th Century. Additions removed in the 1970s were reattached; those lost were fabricated from existing drawings and photographs.

Erik Risser, the Getty Museum's Assistant Conservator who completed the re-restoration of the Hope Hygieia, pointed out that the work is "... simultaneously an ancient statue and a reflection of 18th- and 19th-century attitudes toward antiquities." As changing tastes will prevail, Risser's present changes are capable of full reversal by future generations of scholars.

The Exhibition

The Hope Hygieia: Restoring a Statue's History features the statue, the Getty Research Institute's drawing of the sculpture completed soon after its initial restoration and an engraving of it in Thomas Hope's volume on ancient costume. Joining these works is a marble head of the Roman goddess from the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection.

Sources:

• Burnett Grossman, Janet, Jerry Podany and Marion True. History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003.
• Marvin, Miranda. The Language of the Muses: The Dialogue Between Roman and Greek Sculpture. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007.

Hope Hygieia, Roman (140-160 A.D.)

William Beechey, Thomas Hope (1799)

Hygieia, Roman (1st Century A.D.)

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