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The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Blue Beneath: An Immersive Look into Paintings Conservation

Tags for: The Blue Beneath: An Immersive Look into Paintings Conservation
  • Immersive Exhibition
Sunday, August 10, 2025–Sunday, August 30, 2026
Location:  115 Manuscripts and Textiles
Free; No Ticket Required
A conservator touching up a painting on an easel

Julianna Ly, associate conservator of paintings, reconstructing the large area of damage on Virgin and Child

About The Exhibition

Through a digital immersive experience, step into the conservation studio and get a behind-the-scenes look at the materials and techniques conservators use to preserve paintings in the CMA collection.

For almost 50 years, Pintoricchio’s Virgin and Child (c. 1490–1500) was in storage at the CMA, its last original layers of blue paint hidden beneath a mask of restoration treatments undertaken in the 1900s. Although considered one of the most significant paintings within the early Italian collection, its complicated restoration history and physical state rendered it largely unexhibitable.

In the most recent conservation treatment, original paint layers were revealed, allowing unparalleled access to Pintoricchio’s original composition, freed from past interventions. This allowed conservators to embark on the rediscovery and reexamination of one of the more damaged paintings within the CMA collection and use cutting-edge technologies to better understand the materials and techniques used by the artist. Through a large digital display, visitors can traverse the layers of the painting and its conservation treatment, examining changing details as if magnified under a microscope.

Sponsors

This exhibition is made possible with support from Carl M. Jenks.

All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank and the late Pat Snyder, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, the John and Jeanette Walton Exhibition Fund, and Margaret and Loyal Wilson. Major annual support is provided by the late Dick Blum and Harriet Warm and the Frankino-Dodero Family Fund for Exhibitions Endowment. Generous annual support is provided by two anonymous donors, Gini and Randy Barbato, Gary and Katy Brahler, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Brenda and Marshall Brown, Gail and Bill Calfee, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Joseph and Susan Corsaro, Ron and Cheryl Davis, Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Florence Kahane Goodman, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Robin Heiser, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., the estate of Walter and Jean Kalberer, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, the William S. Lipscomb Fund, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Lu Anne and the late Carl Morrison, Jeffrey Mostade and Eric Nilson and Varun Shetty, Sarah Nash, Courtney and Michael Novak, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Dr. Nicholas and Anne Ogan, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, Henry Ott-Hansen, the Pickering Foundation, Christine Fae Powell, Peter and Julie Raskind, Michael and Cindy Resch, Marguerite and James Rigby, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, Elizabeth and Tim Sheeler, Saundra K. Stemen, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia Woods and David Osage.