Salome. Uncovering the Mystery
Vardges Surenyants created not just a painting, but a profound meditation on the human condition. With its captivating beauty and emotional resonance, Salome testifies to the enduring power of art. Why? Because it is able both to enchant and to provoke.
Surenyants’ Salome is not merely a portrait of a woman. It is a work filled with symbolism and riddles. In the corner of the painting stands the figure of Salome, embodying beauty, mystery, and power. Her gaze and gestures capture the viewer’s attention, prompting reflection on her inner world and destiny.
Did you know
Created in 1907, Salome is one of the most impressive and influential masterpieces of Vardges Surenyants. At the end of the nineteenth century, due to the growing European interest in the East, the legend of Salome gained new life. The play Salome by English symbolist playwright Oscar Wilde, written in 1891, caused a great sensation and became a source of inspiration for painters, sculptors, and musicians. According to the New Testament, Herod Antipas, king of the Jews, married Herodias, his brother’s wife. John the Baptist condemned this sinful union, and Herodias’ daughter, at her mother’s urging, demanded the head of John the Baptist from Herod in exchange for her dance of the seven veils. In Wilde’s play, Salome is a teenage girl in love with John the Baptist. Rejected by him repeatedly and consumed by a thirst for revenge, she demands his head in return for her dance.
Interesting to know
Surenyants deliberately abandoned the traditional iconography of Salome by depicting her without the head of John the Baptist. Before us stands a woman filled with stormy emotions and inner turmoil, which she tries to conceal by lowering her gaze. A master of subtle psychological expression, Surenyants conveyed this through compositional structure, rhythm of lines and ornaments, posture, gaze, and color palette. The low viewing angle, asymmetrical composition, and fine dotted brushstrokes that fill the entire canvas intensify the drama and imbue the painting with restless tension. This highly valuable artistic work rightfully ranks among the finest depictions of Salome and of the female image in world art.
Important
Before finding its home in the National Gallery, Salome traveled a long road. It was exhibited at the 34th exhibition of the Peredvizhniki in 1908, at the 11th International Exhibition in Munich’s Glass Palace in 1913, and after the exhibition of Russian artists in Rome in 1914, it was not returned to Surenyants due to the outbreak of the First World War. A letter from Martiros Saryan to Lev Kamenev, the USSR’s plenipotentiary representative in Italy, has been preserved, in which he requested that the painting be sent to Armenia. Thanks to Saryan’s efforts, Salome finally arrived at the National Gallery in 1929.
The Restoration Process
Due to climate fluctuations, flaking of the paint layer on the surface of the canvas became the first alarm, after which Salome was immediately transferred to the restoration and conservation department of the National Gallery of Armenia.
In 2019, the council of restorers unanimously confirmed that the painting required fundamental restoration. At first glance, the 112 year old canvas, studied many times before, concealed numerous secrets, the discovery of which later formed the basis of the restoration work. The painting had various damages including canvas deformations and weakening, tears along the edges, small losses of paint and ground layers, surface contamination, previous retouchings, and compositional distortion caused by framing, all of which required long term and comprehensive restoration interventions.
During the initial examination, it was revealed that the frame covered the original paint layer by three centimeters at the bottom. The richly ornamented wooden frame, in which the painting had been displayed for many years, also suffered from damage and contamination. In the four corner sections, parts of the plaster ornaments had loosened, some were missing, and others had been painted over with bronze paint. Thus, the restoration of Salome began with the frame. By recreating the ornaments, the vertical sections of the frame were extended, making it possible not only to preserve the valuable frame but also to later display the work without a crude alteration of the canvas composition.
As a result of visual examination and material testing, various pigments found in the paint layer, oil paint, tempera, pencil, and oil pastel, made it possible to accurately determine the technique of execution and posed new challenges for the restorers.
More information can be discovered by visiting the National Gallery of Armenia. Next to the restored painting, a summary video and working photographs with explanations are displayed, presenting the long restoration process. The first exhibition hall recreates a corner of the restoration workshop with a worktable, easel, tools, and materials. Among the most interesting exhibits in the subspace are the microscope and ultraviolet lamp, which allow visitors to independently examine restored areas, retouchings, and other interventions. The exhibition also features a tactile replica of Salome created for people with visual impairments.