The Forgotten Work of Josep Arrau i Barba on the Cleaning and Restoration of Paintings (1834).

Abstract

In 1853 in Madrid, Vicente Poleró y Toledo published Arte de la Restauración. Observaciones relativas a la restauración de cuadros, considered to be the first work on restoration published in Spain. However, in 1834 Josep Arrau i Barba wrote Memoria sobre la limpia y restauración de pinturas, a text which helped him get into the Barcelona Royal Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts and which was published in 1847 in the same city. Even though these are two very different documents in terms of length, the limited circulation of the Arrau i Barba report means that this text has been all but forgotten. It is now time to rethink whether the work by Vicente Poleró is the first on restoration published in Spain, given that a work is a written account or discussion on a specific subject, irrespective of length.