2008 - Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

The classical marble
statue “Antinous” at
the J. Paul Getty
Museum, Los Angeles
The court costume of Elector Moritz of Saxony (1521 – 1553), restored at the Abegg-Stiftung
in Riggisberg, Switzerland
ed in paintings by Titian, Hans Holbein the
Younger and the Cranachs. No other original
costume belonging to a ruler of this
period has been preserved anywhere else.
The detective work in the archives and the
meticulous study of the costume itself,
which brought several surprises to light,
as well as the subsequent careful restoration
work, have reinstated the costume’s
authenticity as a piece of historical testimony
and as a memorial to one of the
most important Wettin rulers. The court
costume will be presented to the public in
a special exhibition during 2009.
skulpturensammlung
• Restoration of the »Dresden Zeus«
As in the previous year, a large amount of
restoration work was begun, continued or
completed in preparation for the collection’s
new permanent exhibition and for
the exhibition “Unter Göttern und Menschen”
(Among Gods and Men) at the
Prado in Madrid, which opened on 4th November
2008. A great deal of restoration
work is still needed on the classical sculptures
and their Baroque additions. One
of the larger projects is the statue known
as the “Dresden Zeus”, the restoration of
which was completed. In addition to the
cleaning of the statue and its investigation
for traces of ancient painting, the
19th-century plaster additions were removed
and replaced by new ones. Finally,
the additions were made to match the
colour of the original statue and the plaster
arms were not replaced, because
according to the latest research findings
they did not conform to the original.
• The classical marble statue »Antinous«
A further focal point of the museum’s restoration
work – the larger than life-sized
classical sculpture depicting “Antinous” –
was restored in association with the J.
Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. This
sculpture had been damaged when the
Dresden works of art were returned from
During restoration work on “Antinous” at the
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
the former Soviet Union and since then
it had been conserved in the storerooms
of Skulpturensammlung. The cooperative
partnership with the Getty Museum made
it possible to undertake the extremely
complex restoration of the statue, including
the necessary scientific analyses. In
the restoration workshops of the Getty
the statue was completely de-restored, i.e.
it was taken apart and its more than 80
original fragments were then carefully
cleaned. After removing connecting irons
from the fragments, some of which were
very fragile, the statue was reversibly
reassembled, filled in and retouched. This
work was performed jointly by the restorers
of the Skulpturensammlung and the
restorers of the Getty Museum. From December
2008 until June 2009 the statue
is on display in the exhibition “Reconstructing
Identity: A Statue of a God from
Dresden”.
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