Paintings in Topkapı Palace storage to be displayed
ISTANBUL
The National Palaces Administration, which is temporarily closed to visitors in efforts to protect public health within the measures taken against the novel coronavirus, continues its restoration works within alternating and flexible working hours.
In the National Palaces Painting Restoration Workshop, 200 of the 270 works that were brought from Topkapı Palace are being restored first.
In the temporary workshop set up in the basement of the Painting Museum for restoration, the paintings are photographed for documentation, their condition is tested and ultraviolet (UV) and infrared shots are taken. At the same time, tips about the artist, signature and century of the work are evaluated.
The restoration of the new paintings is carried out in two workshops in the Yıldız Şale and the Painting Museum, with a team of six people working alternately.
Some 200 selected works will meet art lovers in the new section of the Painting Museum of the National Palaces, which has modern museum accessories.
While the works are being prepared to be exhibited in the new period with a brand-new arrangement, in this context, the lighting, promotion, display and furnishing are also being renewed in accordance with the criteria of modern museology. The museum is set to open in the near future.
The National Palaces Administration, having Turkey’s richest collection of paintings, included the priceless paintings of the Topkapı Palace in its inventory, too.
As 2,270 artworks have come from the Topkapı Palace to the National Palaces Painting Museum, Turkey’s richest sultans’ portraits collection has been formed at the Painting Museum.
Among the new paintings are the sultan portraits made by Halil Pasha, the paintings of the last caliph Abdulmecid Efendi, Sultan III painting of the painter Rafael Manas while he was a prince. There are also paintings that will be displayed for the first time in the collection.
Hatice Biga, who is in charge of the National Palaces Painting Restoration and Conservation Workshop, said that the restoration and conservation works of the paintings continued and some of them have been moved to the exhibition area.
“The paintings we got are the portraits between the 16th and 20th centuries in different concepts, belonging to local and foreign painters, landscapes, documented family trees... There is a very different and very beautiful collection. We hope to exhibit them this year,” she added.
