La restauration du Saint Georges d'Abbeville: entre archives, analyses et historire de l'art

The Restoration of Saint Georges d'Abbeville: between archives, analyzes and art history. Carried out in the spring of 2015 in the workshops of C2RMF, the restoration of "Saint Georges d'Abeville" is representative of current practices in the matter of preservation-restoration of polychrome wood sculpture. Relying on exhaustive documentary research led to better situating the work in the body of the Tryolean "Schreinwachten" from the end of the 15th century. Unpulished archives dating from the 1960s made it easier to understand its physical state before the intervention. At the same time scientific imagery and analyses of the polychrome, strengthened the observations that the restorers made during the preliminary studies. This latter allowed defining a part of the restoration as only minimally interventionist, highlighting the condition of the polychrome that was the most coherent and best preserved. The operations of restoration remained classic: cleaning and verification of the structure of the work associated with voluntarily limiting the retouching. This restoration, exemplary in many ways, was the occasion for a detailed study and a fructuous collaborative effort among specialists serving a better presentation of the work.