140 The painting “Purgatory” of the Mary retable the entire plane so that the flaking layer of paint could be laid down. For further treatment and the required stretching, all holes, tears, and fragile areas of the canvas and stretching margins were stabilised with inserts and patches attached with BEVA 371. A strip lining with BEVA 371 was applied to all four sides with canvas strips. All small holes in the canvas were filled with a cellulose fibre pulp mixture.94 As a supplementary treatment, prepared Beva 371®-coated linen threads were stretched over these fillings and heat-sealed with a small hot spatula (Fig. 210). Larger holes in the canvas were filled with inlays of linen fabric whose structure was close to that of the original canvas.95 Thusly prepared, the canvas could be stretched on a temporary stretcher to work on the consolidation of local tenting areas (Fig. 211, 212). For the consolidation of the tented paint flakes, hide glue (approximately 5.5 wt %) was used as an adhesive in combination with the “light bulb” method.96 The consolidation of the paint flakes was difficult, because there was not enough space for the tented paint flakes on the shrunken canvas. The “light bulb” method was used to solve this problem locally: The warm light bulb (regulated by a dimmer to approx. 40-50°C) is pressed towards the reverse of the canvas with slight pressure. Due to the Fig. 210: Application of bridging threads. The canvas is prepared by extracting threads in one direction. The resulting parallel threads are coated with BEVA. After the heat-sealing of the bridging threads, the excess of canvas will be cut off Fig. 211: Front view of an insert Fig. 212: Reverse side of the painting (stretched onto a temporary working stretcher).
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