In 1998, Hercules and Deianira, painted by the Florentine artist Antonio Pollaiuolo, was chosen for cleaning and restoration. Much of its originally intended atmospheric illusion was obscured by a grayish layer of varnish and previous retouches that had discolored. Research conducted before treating the painting revealed that at least four restorations had been done since James Jackson Jarves acquired the picture in the 1850s. Visual records for four of these early restorations exist.
Earliest Known Image, ca. 1857

The earliest visual record of the painting is an etching published in 1861. It gives no sense of the picture’s tonal range, but is a rough approximation of how the painting looked in the mid-nineteenth century. Note that Nessus is depicted with one arm crossing Deianira’s belly. Deianira’s left arm and hand are bent back towards her body. Hercules’ loincloth is shown as a lion skin with a clearly apparent face, and the cliff at right is composed of a series of slab-like rocks stacked on top of one another.

  Earliest Surviving Photograph, ca. 1906

The first known photograph of the painting was published in The Burlington Magazine in 1906. In this image Nessus is shown with two hands on Deianira’s belly. Whoever restored the picture between the 1850s and this photograph decided to add some indication of Nessus’s left arm. His left-hand fingers were painted in just above his right hand and below Deianira’s right elbow. The photograph also suggests that the river surface was once more fully painted than it appears today.

  The 1915 Restoration

The earliest known color photograph of the painting, although taken in the 1920s, records work on the painting done in 1915, when Yale employed Harry Augustus Hammond Smith to restore the Jarves collection of Italian paintings. This photograph shows that Hammond Smith changed several of the details documented in the 1861 engraving and the 1906 photograph. Most notably, Deianira’s left arm no longer bends back but rather gestures forward toward Hercules. Nessus’s left hand is now below his right hand, and the lion’s face on Hercules' loincloth is considerably blurred.
  The 1954–64 Treatment

A restoration done over a ten-year period between 1954 and 1964 returned Nessus to the configuration depicted in the 1861 etching of the painting. Most of the 1950s retouching was rendered in an easily distinguishable manner. Additionally, Deianira’s left arm was ambiguously resolved—both an arm reaching forward towards Hercules and the ghost of one bent back towards her are clearly visible. The diaphanous drape across Deianira’s body almost disappears as it crosses the landscape but then reappears at right, where a fragment of the original still exists. The restoration of this area is a visually amorphous form attached neither to her body nor to the background landscape. The loss in Hercules’ midriff was retouched with hatched, and now purplish paint. A varnish applied sometime in the late 1950s had since discolored giving the painting a somewhat hazy yellowish-gray tonality. The aging of this ten-year restoration resulted in a picture with a pale and under saturated look in which the figures and landscape are compressed into a very narrow picture plane.
  Strip-state Photo

Stripped-state photographs are taken mid-treatment to document a painting with all previous restorations removed. They serve as important tools for scholars, since they record the actual condition of the painting before missing paint is replaced during a restoration. Additionally, restorers use strip-state photographs to keep track of the progress of their own restorations.

In this painting, the most extensive losses are on and to the right of Deianira’s belly, her upraised arms, part of Nessus’s forearm and hand, Hercules’ midriff and loincloth, and the final glazes that completed the river’s surface. The amount of damage makes it difficult to determine how Pollaiuolo originally drew parts of the composition, which accounts for the variety of previous restorations. In a case such as this, historical research critically informs conservation decisions.
 

After the 1998 Treatment

In 1998, we removed the restoration done in the 1950s. The painting was cleaned, revarnished and its many losses were reconstructed. As in both the 1850 and 1950s restorations, our recent project reconstructed the sizable loss to Deianira and Nessus by showing Nessus with only one hand stretched out across Deianira’s stomach. This solution was determined most plausible after examining the existing visual, microscopic, and textual evidence. The restoration began with a layer of gouache and watercolor followed by layers of pigments ground in non-yellowing synthetic resin, all of which can be easily removed. The new varnish saturated the painting, which helped restore a better sense of Pollaiuolo’s atmospheric perspective and vivid palette.