The resurrection

A 200-year-old painting gets a new lease of life.

Never in its over-200-year history has “The Last Supper” had as much a to-do made about it as in the past month or so. The painting by German neo-classical painter Johann Zoffany, which hangs above the altar at the St John’s Church near Dalhousie Square, was unveiled recently after being painstakingly restored by the Goethe-Institut and the local chapter of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).

The excitement in the city was understandable. Zoffany (1733-1810) was, after all, a leading painter of his age, a founder member of the Royal Academy in 1769 and greatly in demand to paint portraits of the British royalty, London high society and leading actors and actresses of his age. “The Last Supper” is a large, 2.44mx1.6m oil on canvas, and was painted in 1787, almost on the last leg of Zoffany’s four-year stay in India. It is considered one of his most prominent works, valued at the time at Rs 13,000, and was gifted to the church and Zoffany’s patron Warren Hastings, then governor-general of Bengal who had laid the foundation stone of the church.

 

Despite all its importance, however, “The Last Supper” had been in a bad shape. The Kolkata damp and a few previous attempts at restoration had greatly damaged the painting. In recent years it had been completely overlooked because placed over the altar where it seldom caught the light, it was difficult to be appreciated.

The present restoration effort, led by a team of five local, INTACH restorers and headed by Renate Kant, a German conservation and restoration specialist, took six months to complete and cost approximately Rs 12 lakhs, most of the funds coming from the Goethe-Institut.

Incidentally, INTACH is one of the very few private institutions working in the area of art restoration in the city (there are also The Victoria Memorial and Indian Museum who restore art works, but they are too busy looking after their own art and that of other museums around the country to cater to private collections). Recently, the INTACH conservation centre also restored 10 paintings for the Calcutta Club, some of which were up to 300 years old and in very bad condition.