National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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494 PAINTING OF BUDDHIST LEGEND CH. XLIV
by the violent winds made the light so poor that prolonged
exposure was needed, with the attendant risk of seeing the
result spoilt by the camera shaking in the gusts. To
examine the correctness of negatives so exposed would
have required development of each plate on the spot. But
in the intense cold still prevailing this could not be done
at night without risk of the plate freezing while drying in
the tent. In order to reduce the risk of total failure I
laboriously took several complete rounds of the frescoes
with varying light and exposure,—only to find in the end,
when development became possible, some four months later,
that my efforts had failed to secure an adequate record.
But even if the photographs had been more successful,
I should still have keenly regretted that I had no means
of reproducing those fine paintings in colour. The only
alternative was to remove the frescoes themselves. In
spite of my reluctance to cut up these fine wall paintings
into panels of manageable size I should have felt bound to
attempt it, had not a carefully conducted experiment proved
that, with the means and time at my disposal, the execution
of such a plan would have meant almost certain destruction.
The plaster of this wall differed materially from that in
the other temple. It consisted of two layers, of which the
outer one was remarkably well finished and smooth, but
only a quarter of an inch thick and exceedingly brittle.
The inner layer, about three-quarters of an inch thick and
softer, had very little admixture of straw, and consequently
broke far more easily than the wall surface of the other
temple, where the plaster, being uniform in substance and
full of chopped straw, possessed a good deal of cohesion.
When with all due precautions I had removed a detached
Putto head and one of the already injured male busts from
the dado, I found it impossible to prevent parts of the
thin outer layer breaking off in fragments as the plaster
behind was being loosened. So I reluctantly realized that
there was here no hope of safely detaching any larger
piece of frescoed surface, unless the wall behind were
systematically tunnelled and special appliances used for
lifting off and strengthening the curving planes of stucco.
Italian fresco restorers, working with the accumulated
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