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COPY (Letter from Richard D. Buck, re BOURDICHON minature, May 4th '48)

Dear Mr. Seligman:

Your letter of May 1st has just arrived as I was finishing a report to you. I hope you can forgive our lack of courtesy. We have to borrow time from the laboratory in order to carry on our desk work, and quite frankly we try to keep the latter at a minimum. 

Our preliminary examination of your miniature registered here as loan no. 8050 is now complete, and we can write to you intelligently about its condition and treatment. 

Although it cannot yet be examined thoroughly, the support appears to be vellum. But it is an extremely thin piece. One measurement was taken and at that one place the vellum was 0.05 millimeters thick. Specimens of vellum in our collection range from 0.15 to 0.50 mm., the average being near 0.20 mm. Early vellum often was very thin. This fact is noted here because of its bearing on the problems of condition and conservation.

The paint is relatively thick, and has suffered some small losses through flaking. These spots have been retouched with later paint. The blue pigment, incidentally, appears to be azurite, which according to Laurie, often found in fine quality as here, in manuscripts of France and Flanders during the last half of the fifteenth century. In the blue areas are found the greatest loss and repair. in the faces, hands of the Virgin, etc, there are some repaired losses, and also a few spots of cleavage where edges of tiny islands of paint are curling away from the vellum.

The tears in the vellum appear to be the direct result of the mounting. The thin skin, adhered at the edges to the heavy board has not been able to withstand normal shrinkage stresses. Unlike paper, vellum is not entirely homogenous in structure and such interior tears as those in the miniature can occur at points or lines of weakness. 

In order to put the painting in the best possible condition it would be necessary first to reattach all loose paint.  After removing the vellum from the board backing, two processes would have to be carried on interdependently. With the ultimate aim of mending the tears, it would first be necessary to do what can be done to flatten the vellum and to draw the edges of the tear together. I need not remind you the the success of this operation cannot be predicted because the opposite edges of the tears have been unevenly stretched. However, at what is judged to be a best possible reduction of the tears, reinforcing fibers will be attached to the back. These repairs may very well leave some blemish which interrupts the continuity of the design in the paint. It would then be our practice to carry out some compensatory treatment aimed towards minimizing these interruptions. 

We rarely mount drawings or paintings in contact with glass, but in the case of miniatures on vellum there does not seem to be any good alternative. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Ehrlich, of our department, had a report the other day regarding two Flemish paintings on vellum which were repaired and sealed between two pieces of glass in 1941, and the owner reported that the manuscripts appeared to be in perfect condition. In order to do this, however, I would recommend hinging the vellum to a piece of rag board before sealing between the glass. This would hide the back of the vellum, but it would provide considerable security in the remote possibility that the glass should be broken. I also suggest sealing the two sheets of glass together to keep out the humidity for which the skin has such a great affinity. 

You may want to consider this treatment at some length before authorizing it. In the meantime, why do not we arrange to have three photographs made, one panchromatic, one by raking light to show the surface conformation, and one by ultra violet fluorescence which locates the old repairs, - and send them to you for reference?

I hope this gives you some reasonable basis for further instructions.
                                                   
Yours sincerely,(Signed: Richard D. Buck)

AIRMAIL

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