Conservation of a Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout painting

Riitta Fager, ConservatorGerbrand van den Eeckhout’s large oil painting Abraham Meets Melchizedek, one of the key works of the Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation, was conserved and thoroughly studied in 2020–2025.

The painting, completed in 1648, has been conserved several times over the centuries. It has undergone, among other things, the repair of a large tear and has also twice been lined, i.e. supporting the painted canvas by affixing new canvas to the back. At the same time, the lining fabric has been used to create new folded edges to replace those that had frayed during numerous canvas tightenings. During the procedure, peeling paint has also been reattached to the underlayer.

The painting has been restored in areas where paint is missing, and the sky area was completely painted over in the 19th century. Darkened varnish has been removed many times and the work revarnished. Moreover, the painting has been conserved before while in the ownership of the Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation. By the coming of the 21st century, varnish once again formed a dark layer over the painting.

The latest conservation work at Serlachius was launched by conservator Salla Koskiniemi in 2020, by documenting the work and taking research photographs of it in ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light. Varnish layers of different thicknesses and restoration paintings are distinguished in the UV images. The IR images revealed, among other things, another dog, which the artist had covered up, painting a slightly different dog in front of it.

Removing varnish and overpainting is slow work

Surface dirt was first cleaned from the painting, after which varnish removal was initiated using the gel cleaning method. In the method, a solvent gel selected through tests is applied to small swabs, which are allowed to act on the surface of the varnish for a short time.

A thin layer of varnish is absorbed into the gel and the swab, and by repeating the process, the varnish can be removed in a controlled manner, layer by layer, while ensuring that the paint layer underneath is not damaged by the solvent.

The same method, but with a different solvent combination, was also selected to remove overpainting. The greenish paint in the sky area turned out to be firmly attached to the original paint layer underneath.

Material studies investigated colour pigments

Material studies were conducted on the painting to determine the pigments used by Eeckhout. X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and polarisation microscopy revealed, among other things, that the artist used three different blues, one of which is smalt.

Smalt is a blue pigment derived from cobalt glass that was used in the 17th century to replace expensive ultramarine. Later, it was observed that blue layers painted with smalt changed over time to grey or brown and translucent. When mixed with lead white, the blue colour of smalt is preserved better. For this reason, the light areas of Melchizedek’s cloak, for example, are still blue but the shadow areas are brown.

Degraded sky caused problems

In 2021, conservator Anne Muszynski continued to remove the varnish and overpainting. In the sky area, no layer of blue paint was found beneath the overpainting, even though material studies had revealed the presence of cobalt in that area.

The paint layers were so degraded and had become so translucent that the double priming foundation of ochre and grey was visible. This was surely the reason why the sky was covered with a new layer of paint.

Removing the overpainting was slow and could only be done with the aid of a microscope. Further pigment studies were also needed to better determine what the different layers and areas of varying degrees of degradation had originally been. XRF measurements were also continued at a later stage to support restoration decisions.

In 2025, Eeckhout’s painting was moved to the studio of conservator Maija Santala. Santala removed the remaining green paint and carried out new restoration painting. Everything that has been degraded over time from the work will not be restored by repainting; the idea is above all to preserve the original material and image.

Damage is masked only to the extent that this does not distract the viewer when looking at the image. The aim of restoration painting is to bring the preserved and degraded parts of the painting together into a unified whole. The materials used today can be easily removed if so desired in the future.