Inside the Getty's rigorous effort to fix a 500-year-old broken masterpiece
LOS ANGELES — After 2½ years of rigorous, sometimes hair-raising effort, the conservation studio at the J. Paul Getty Museum has completed work on one of the key treasures of European art in Los Angeles. Lucas Cranach the Elder's pair of panel paintings, "Adam" and "Eve" (circa 1530) at the Norton Simon Museum, beautifully restored, go on view Tuesday at the Getty in a special three-month exhibition, before returning to the duo's permanent home in Pasadena.
The German Renaissance masterpiece is one of those great have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too images. Cranach (1472-1553), a pal of Martin Luther, was a signature artist of the Protestant Reformation — court painter of the Elector of Saxony, a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Adam and Eve's cautionary tale of humanity's fall from grace in the Garden of Eden could provide a patron the public veneer of biblical piety. At the same time — and ideal for an artist whose capacities for sophisticated decorative design were unmatched among German artists in his day — those two life-size naked bodies offered something more:
