Getty Becomes a Refuge for Victims of War : Art: Conservators save damaged Romanian treasures.

The J. Paul Getty Trust may be known as an ivory tower, but it is developing a new image as an enlightened good neighbor. The Getty can’t care for the entire globe’s cultural heritage any more than it can buy all the treasures offered for sale, but it can become a catalyst for international cooperation as it adopts a world view of where its money should go, trust officials say.

“We can’t do it all, but we are constantly looking for ways that we can make a significant difference, and to get the most bang for the buck,” said Harold Williams, director of the trust. Going it alone is not necessarily the best answer, according to Williams, who speaks of “leveraging” resources and “collaborating” with other institutions as the Getty creates a distinctive place for itself in the international art community.

The latest example of this expansive point of view could hardly be more dramatic. Four Italian paintings from the National Art Museum of Romania in Bucharest that sustained drastic damage during the Romanian revolution last December are undergoing treatment in J. Paul Getty Museum’s conservation laboratory. Romanian conservator Simona Predescu, who has come to Malibu for six months, is working with Getty staff to restore these survivors of war.

The most highly revered--and the most severely damaged--is “Young Mother,” a luminous painting of a woman nursing a baby by Orazio Lomi Gentileschi. A strip of canvas about 3 or 4 inches wide was ripped out of the lower mid-section of the painting by a bullet that penetrated a wall of the museum. One section of the severed strip fell to the floor and was saved, but another portion burned up and must be re-created, Predescu explained. She will work with Getty associate conservator Elizabeth Mention to rejoin the salvaged piece and to make a replacement for the missing part.

The conservators must fashion a patch of canvas that matches the texture and weight of fabric used for the original painting, then join the patch and the salvaged piece by attaching threads around the edges with a synthetic resin. After building up a gesso background on exposed canvas areas, Mention will paint in the blank spots with the help of photographs. The treatment will also include a thorough cleaning, removing a border that was added to enlarge the painting and replacing a late 19th-Century canvas lining.

Daunting as the task appears to be, the situation could have been much worse, Mention said. If the mother’s and baby’s faces had been lost, the painting probably could not have been saved.

Another victim of the Romanian revolution, a Bolognese School “Allegoric Scene” attributed to Carlo Nuvolone, was torn by gunfire on its lower right corner. Genovese painter Luigi Miradori’s “The Guarding Angel,” in which an angel shows a kneeling man the differences between heaven and hell, was riddled by flying debris. Its entire surface was roughed up and dozens of holes appeared where paint got so hot that it blistered and dropped off. The fourth Romanian-owned painting at the Getty is Pietro da Cortona’s “Virgin With Child,” which was bombarded by particles of broken plaster and other materials when a shell exploded inside the museum.

The bullets that flew through Bucharest last December were aimed at human targets and many of them hit their marks. After a week of bloodletting that started in the western town of Timisoara and wound up in the capital city, thousands of Romanians had been felled and dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was destined to join the dead. But the uprising also wreaked havoc on cultural treasures, Predescu said. The country’s most valuable cache of art was in the National Art Museum of Romania, unfortunately located next to a prime target: the presidential palace in the heart of Bucharest.

This complex of government buildings was the site of intense combat. Machine guns battered the museum from the outside, ripping through paintings as they penetrated thick walls. Combatants who hid inside the museum were snuffed out with more firepower, which filled the galleries with shrapnel, smoke and flying debris.

When the fighting finally ceased, the museum’s four conservators were faced with the devastating sight of fried, pock-marked, shredded artworks. Hundreds of pieces were damaged--some beyond repair, others only in need of cleaning, Predescu said.

A delegation of Romanian cultural leaders subsequently came to the United States, seeking aid but also establishing contacts with American colleagues. Several Getty administrators and staff members have visited Central and Eastern Europe during the past year as well, to determine what help is needed. As a result of these exchanges, four paintings were selected for treatment at the Getty. Several Dutch paintings are undergoing conservation at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and some Italian works are expected to be treated in Italy.

Instead of mounting an independent salvage operation, the Getty invited a Romanian conservator to visit the laboratory and join in the work. Predescu prevailed over a senior colleague because she could speak English and drive a car--two important survival skills in Southern California.

“As important as these paintings are, it’s more important that the conservator has come here,” Williams said. Giving Predescu access to the latest in American conservation techniques and technology, an experience that she will take home to Bucharest and share with her colleagues, is a way of leveraging the Getty’s support, he said.

Predescu noted that her studio in Bucharest is too small to accommodate large artworks and that the museum’s equipment is relatively primitive. There are no X-ray facilities like the Getty’s which examined the damaged paintings. Instead of relining paintings with heat-activated adhesives on a modern vacuum table, as Getty conservators do, Predescu said she uses an iron and natural glue.

Predescu is highly skilled, however, and Getty conservators say they are benefiting from the exchange as well. “We don’t see damage like this. It’s a great experience for all of us,” said conservator Mark Leonard.

In an effort to learn all they can about the visiting paintings, Getty scientists will analyze microscopic samples of paint chips to determine the kinds of ground coats and pigments used, the structure of layers and disclose other information that may prove useful in the future.

“Our collection is quite well cared for, so we hope to do more of this,” Leonard said, pointing out two other painting conservation projects that have been accepted in exchange for showing the works at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

One, Agnolo Bronzino’s Mannerist “Portrait of a Young Man,” is already cleaned and on view at the museum. The painting, which belongs to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., was recently treated in the Getty lab by Nelson-Atkins conservator Scott Heffley. The other project concerns “Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan” by Paris Bordone, a large painting from the Staatliche Museen in West Berlin, which is awaiting treatment by Getty conservators.

These collaborations are typical of a trust-wide effort to find appropriate ways to be of service and advance scholarship, said Deborah Gribbon, associate director for curatorial affairs at the Getty. “It’s important to emphasize that we are not aiding the needy. These are genuine colleagues with whom we have been out of touch. We want to find out what help they think they need,” she said.

Determining what help is needed and establishing priorities can be difficult, however. Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty’s grant program, said that grants to Central European scholars are under consideration and noted that her program is being scrutinized to see if it suits the needs of such applicants.

“We are still sorting out the situation,” said Williams, who has visited Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. “It is traumatic to move into a free market because of inflation, problems with fuel oil and the specter of unemployment. A lot of institutions are over-staffed . . . and many are looking at a 20% cut (in spending power),” he said.

The severity of the problem was sharply illustrated by a visit to a university in Krakow, Williams recalled. “I asked if they would like significant support for the university library, and I was told, ‘Of course, but we have 750 art history students and we don’t even have a slide projector to show them artworks.’ ”

The Getty will probably provide the slide projector, but “there are no quick fixes,” Williams said. Still, “it’s clear that even a small amount of aid has a big impact in terms of morale,” he said.

One thing the trust plans to do is to co-host (with the Mellon Foundation in New York) a meeting of foundations that want to help Central Europe. “These are people who don’t talk to each other,” Williams said, expressing the hope that bringing them together “to exchange views might avoid duplication and make them more effective.”