In Belgium, a revealing exhibit has viewers seeing red

What stand out in the wood panels of the Flemish Primitives are the immaculate precision of detail and the translucence that has survived the centuries from the pestilence-stricken Middle Ages to this day.

Now the Groeninge Museum, home to some of the greatest works of the 15th century Flemish masters, wants you to take a closer look. Some of the Primitives may not be what they seem.

A stunning new show, “Fake or Not Fake,” assesses the darker side of art restoration during the mid-20th century, when some great craftsmen stepped beyond the entrusted task of retouching and succumbed to “hyper-restoration” -- and, curators say, even painted sheer fakes.

The museum, together with the Catholic University of Louvain, took six Primitive panels and scientifically analyzed them down to the bare wood on which they were painted. Then they hung the original alongside a copy showing the “restored” areas in the harshest of reds.

It hurts the eyes.

“You lose your belief in authenticity, in the aura,” Till-Holger Borchert, the Groeninge’s conservator, says.

The “Renders Madonna” was long attributed to Rogier van der Weyden, one of the greatest Flemish Primitives. Now it bleeds the red of excessive restoration. The nose, mouth, chin and exposed breast were all scraped down to the wood, then repainted. The baby Jesus has nothing more authentic than his eyes peeking out of a sea of red and his toes protruding from the restoration.

“The Portrait of Architect Carnot,” long thought to be a late 15th century original, is exposed in the show as a fake by Jef van der Veken, Belgium’s standout restorer from the 1930s to the ‘60s. It was first scraped bare to the extent that scientific analysis could not make out what was originally underneath, then painted again from scratch.

Flemish Primitives often stun admirers with the way they can bring a lush garment to life -- fur, velvet and embroidery so real you can practically feel them.

In the case of the “Rest on the Flight to Egypt,” by an unknown 15th century master, the technique is beautifully shown on the Madonna’s forearm, where she cradles the child.

Too bad the detail is Van der Veken’s work.

Joseph with the donkey in the background? A figment of Van der Veken’s imagination.

“It might well have been that Van der Veken did not so much want to restore a damaged work as to increase the value of an average work,” the catalog says.

Van der Veken was behind the restorations of four of the six paintings in the show. But there were other restorers almost as accomplished as he. Without the help of science, it would be impossible to see the difference between the restorer’s touch and the historic master Petrus Christus in the two other paintings in the show.

“The use of the paintbrush is so virtuoso, the choice of coloring so perfect and the command of drawing so complete that one didn’t see the difference between the two-thirds the restorer was responsible for and the one-third from Petrus Christus,” the catalog says.

Van der Veken’s best known work from his long career is a total fake -- and known as such.

After the panel of the Just Judges of Jan Van Eyck’s masterpiece, “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,” was stolen in 1934, Van der Veken was called upon to paint a copy.

His work was so perfect that even now tourists gaze at the panel in the Cathedral of Ghent and find it impossible to spot differences in style between it and the other panels of the painting. Exactly how many Flemish Primitives Van der Veken restored during his long career, which ended with his death in 1964, is not known.

For many lovers of Flemish art, the exhibition raises troubling questions.

Some 40 years ago, this Associated Press reporter made regular visits as a young boy to the Groeninge, always stopping at Van Eyck’s “Madonna With Canon van der Paele,” perhaps the greatest Flemish Primitive work. I often gazed at the detail of Van der Paele’s glasses in front of a prayer book, the deviation supposedly showing the man’s myopia.

Across the centuries, it created a bond between me and history.

Now I learn from Borchert that Van der Veken worked on it too.

It is “shocking for those who believe in authenticity,” Borchert said. He said Van der Veken’s restoring of the Van der Paele work was less intrusive but added that a series of other restorers had also worked on it in the past.

Excessive restoration of the type exposed in the Groeninge exhibition was specifically a phenomenon of the 1930s to ‘50s. “We had a group of extremely talented conservators who in their restorations crossed what we would consider an ethical line,” Borchert said.

But kings and churches through the ages have had nudity painted over in times of religious intolerance. More recently, the luminous restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel has rent the art world, with critics saying the retouching inevitably washed away original brushstrokes and added elements of creative interpretation.

In the Groeninge exhibition, the half-dozen paintings with the incriminating red would hardly be the exception for the Van der Veken era.

“We now have six paintings, which is not a lot at all,” Borchert said. “We could have shown hundreds.”

Even if some may be outraged, a younger generation raised on digital enhancers may well take it in stride.

A school group was swarming all over the exhibit recently, but few raised an eyebrow.

“You would not know the difference,” said Robert van Parijs, 16. “I don’t feel cheated.”

“Fake or Not Fake” runs at the Groeninge Museum through Feb. 28.