A tale of two works of art on one canvas

The painting Shooting Hostages, 13 October 1942 by Tonet Kral of the Museum of Contemporary and Modern History of Slovenia (MNSZS) was accepted by the Restoration Centre (RC) of the Slovenian Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (ZVKDS) at the end of 2020. The unusual painting came to us not because of its poor condition, as is usually the case, but because of the need to remove the coating from its painted back side, if this is feasible. The grey coating made a detailed art-historical analysis of the otherwise partly familiar motif impossible.

The painting, which was originally larger in size and with a motif that was clearly visible in places and more or less seeping out from under the paint, was painted by Kralj out of his own impulses during the Second World War. The painting survived the war intact, but after it ended, Kralj used it to create a new work with a commissioned motif of the shooting of hostages by the Italian authorities on 13 October 1942 in response to the murder of Marko Natlačen, the ban of the Drava Banovina. On three sides, Kralj deliberately cropped the painting to give it a smaller, recumbent rectangular format, applied a lining to the unpainted side of the canvas, stretched it over a new smaller sub-frame and painted it. Image Hostage shooting, 13 October 1942 was on show at the first temporary exhibition Ljubljana in the national liberation struggle Museum of National Liberation in Cekin's Castle in Ljubljana in 1952.

The picture has been discussed in two sections. In the Natural Sciences Department, samples of the image layers taken from both sides of the image were examined using selected methods. The materials used and their degradation products in the image layers of the samples were determined. We determined that King used linen canvas with a protein-based impregnation already applied and a thin layer of lead oil undercoat, i.e. industrially prepared painter's canvas, and painted it with oil paints. On the other side of the canvas, he applied a two-layer zinc oil undercoat and painted it with oil paints, which were applied in a thicker layer than in the interwar painting. The post-war painting is covered with oil varnish, while the unvarnished inter-war painting has a grey emulsion coating and an emulsion putty used in the past to stabilise two dents in the edge of the painting.

In the easel painting department, we managed to remove the coating, which was a delicate operation due to the uneven thickness of the application and the damaged extremely thin layers of paint underneath. The as yet unnamed motif, cleaned of the coating, was given the title "The painting is still in its original state" after a part of the preserved inscription on the edge of the painting, which was hidden under the sub-frame. Panem et circenses (Bread and games). In addition to naming a very complex motif in terms of its content and composition, the curators of the MNSZS were able to make an art historical and historical study of the remnant of a once completed painting, which outlines the political situation of the time and the position of individuals within it. The double-sided painting could only be conserved and restored after the coating had been removed. The handling of the painting was challenging, especially because of the delicate paint layers on one side and the extremely soft varnish on the other. Only the most essential work was carried out: removing the painting from its subframe, straightening the raised edges of the painting, removing surface dirt on the varnish of the hostage shooting motif, locally consolidating the damaged layers of the painting (underpainting and paint) on the panem et circenses motif, which had suffered damage from rubbing against the subframe, and filling in missing parts of the canvas at the edges of the painting, which had either been cut off to make it easier for the King to stretch the painting on the subframe or damaged by past fixings. The side of the painting with the hostage shooting motif that is not painted all the way to the edge of the painting allowed us to glue the canvas strips. These were used to reattach the painting to the new subframe so that the cropped panem et circenses motif is visible in all its preserved size. The missing lining was filled in with putty and the missing paint retouched, completing the restoration of the double-sided painting. The naturalistic results and observations made during the work were brought together to reconstruct the painter's construction of the painting from both sides, and the events that marked the painting after the creation of the two paintings: from the appearance of the damage to the first restoration interventions.

The double-sided painting was handed over to the Museum after the conservation-restoration process, which took place between 4 October 2021 and 8 October 2022. From 14 June 2023, the painting was Shooting of hostages, 13 October 1942 / Panem et Circenses as the central exhibit of the exhibition Bread and Games: the Paintings of Toneta Kralja 1941-1945 on public display for the first time. The painting, which is displayed in such a way that it can be walked around and viewed from both sides, can be seen at the Koper Regional Museum until 15 December this year, where the MNSZ is hosting the exhibition.

We are delighted that 2024 has brought two awards. The Slovenian Museum Association awarded the authors of the exhibition, curators Tina Fortič Jakopič and Marek Ličina, who, among other things, included a presentation of natural history and conservation and restoration work on a double-sided painting, with the Valvasor Award for Unique Achievements. The Slovenian Society of Conservators and Restorers awarded both curators and conservators-restorers Zoja Bajdè and Petra Bešlagić the Mirko Šubic Award for their outstanding interdisciplinary work and significant contribution to the conservation and presentation of the double-sided painting. Hostage shootings, 13 October 1942 / Panem et circenses Toneta Kralja.

Two years have passed since the conservation-restoration of the double-sided painting, and our work is far from over. In the meantime, alongside our other regular work, we have been investigating whether the double-sided painting has already been restored at the RC, or our predecessor, the Institute for Monument Conservation. We could find no records of work on the painting in question. However, we have collected scattered archival material which shows that five unvarnished oil paintings by Tonet Kralje were restored between 1950 and 2005. For the documentation gathered for one of the paintings, restored in 1953 and recorded as Village composition, without the dimensions given, we are still trying to determine to which Royal Picture it might belong.

The atypically varnished younger motif of the hostages being shot - the varnish was applied after the double-sided painting had already been framed - raised the question of whether the varnish was originally by the King or whether it was a later non-authorial intervention, e.g. a restoration. The survey of the painter's oeuvre, held in the collections of Slovenian museums and galleries, is still ongoing and will continue in the coming year. In the meantime, we have discovered that several paintings have been varnished with an oil varnish identical to that identified in the painting. Hostage shooting, 13 October 1942 and it is, we can already confirm, undoubtedly a Royal act. Such systematic research contributes to a better knowledge of the King's painting technology and, consequently, to the choice of more appropriate methodological approaches for the conservation-restoration of his works in the future.