Strongbox (Nuremberg, Germany)

Núremberg (Alemania). Renacimiento, siglo XVI (Sala 37)

Salto de línea

Restoration is only the tip of a complex process of research to glean knowledge of the physical properties of a piece, its state of conservation and its history, including historic interventions.

This strongbox is an example of the variety of treatments performed on cultural assets and the different approaches to their restoration.

In the last intervention the iron base and opening mechanism were cleaned. This revealed that the original paint had been concealed by a retouching from an earlier date which the restorers decided to preserve for now, simply exposing a small sample of the box's original decoration. The work to recover the entire box will be resumed in the near future.

The museum holds another strongbox, on display in Room 29, which still has its original polychrome, and there is another one at the town hall in Alcalá de Henares where the retouching was successfully removed in the last intervention to reveal the original polychrome.