PARIS (AFP) – It looks like the lair of a Bond villain: behind armoured doors, buried underground below the Louvre in Paris, lies one of the most high-tech art labs in the world.
Across three floors and nearly 6,000 square metres, the Centre for Research and Restoration of Museums of France (C2RMF) includes its own particle accelerator called AGLAE, and is bustling with radiologists, chemists, geologists, metallurgists, archaeologists and engineers.
The 150-strong team examines around 1,000 artworks per year, discovering precisely which materials and methods went into making them, their origin and age, and how the years have altered them.
Their analyses inform restoration teams within the centre, at the Louvre, Versailles and beyond. Many great artworks have passed through the lab since its creation in 1999, including the Mona Lisa, the stained-glass windows of Notre-Dame Cathedral or Napoleon’s sabre.
When AFP was granted a rare visit recently, an 11th Century bronze sculpture of the Hindu deity Vishnu had recently arrived from Cambodia ahead of exhibitions in France and the United States next year.
A masterpiece of Khmer art, the ‘Vishnu of Western Mebon’ was found at Angkor Wat in 1936, a rare reclining depiction of the Hindu deity that would have measured some six metres when it was complete.
Behind thick, lead doors, a team of 10 specialists was carrying out X-rays and 3D scanning on the statue.
