Authenticity loss of wall-painting heritage: an ever expanding caseload

Abstract

The attempt, for a few decades since establishing the modern principles of heritage protection, to maintain the authenticity criterion as decisive for the preservation and restoration process of a work of art in its vastest meaning, had to face one of the most controversial and at the same time vital issues for the artwork’s reception: the issue of emerging lacunae in the fi eld of the image. In order to understand what was gained and what was lost in the few decade-long Romanian experience of artwork restoration related to the authenticity criterion, the authors elaborate a comment on the theory of Cesare Brandi, whom we owe the modern methodology for reintegration of the image lacunae.