If you saw someone dying before your eyes, wouldn’t you do everything possible to save them? Is there ever a case when saving someone (or something) is the wrong choice? In a recent article on Art Watch UK titled “What Price a Smile? The Louvre Leonardo Mouths that are Now at Risk,” Michael Daley raises the issues surrounding what he calls “a wid[ening] international art conservation faultline” between conservative conservators who refuse to risk doing harm to great works of the past through cleanings and restorations and more aggressive conservators who feel that the benefits of modern conservation outweigh the (to them, minimal) risks. What raises Daley’s hackles the most is the shift from conservative conservation to almost radical change at the Louvre, the granddaddy of all art museums and past champion of the “do no harm” school. Not only has the philosophy changed at the Louvre, but, as Daley notes, some paintings by Leonardo da Vinci have already been changed with no debate on the issue. The Mona Lisa’s smile (cracking and faded, but still there, above) hasn’t undergone cosmetic surgery yet, but it seems the next step. Knowing the risks, should the Mona Lisa’s smile be saved?

How is it possible that the status of paintings hundreds of years old is suddenly changing before our eyes? How can works deemed too fragile for alteration can be touched now? Daley points to the resignations from the Louvre’s own international advisory committee of Sègoléne Bergeon Langle, former director of conservation at the Louvre and France’s national museums, and Jean-Pierre Cuzin, former director of paintings at the Louvre. Those two key figures quit essentially over what they saw as the overcleaning of the Louvre’s Virgin and Child with St. Anne. “Restorations never take place in antiseptic clinical spaces,” Daley explains. “They always reflect philosophies, interests and professional inclinations or disinclinations towards radical interventions. Conflicts in this arena are far from trivial and it is desirable that they should not take place in the dark.” Apparently factions within the Louvre decided to “fix” the da Vinci without fully consulting with the factions that disagreed with them. (Daley’s article illustrates the changes.) That secrecy seems to stretch to the public, as Daley notes that “[n]ews of the Louvre resignations comes just seven months after the shocking disclosure of its cosmetic facial exercises and at the point where the cleaning of the ‘St. Anne’ is completed and the perilous stage of retouching begins.” The schism between those in-house groups at the Louvre (and the art world in general) may be as irreversible as the actions taken on Leonardo’s depictions of the Virgin Mary and St. Anne.