ABSTRACT
The great architect-restorer, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, referring to the Latin terms “reficere”, “instaurare”, “renovare”, immediately specifies that these terms do not mean to restore, but to recover or make afresh. He observes, with a conscious self-satisfaction in his own set of values so characteristic of the nineteenth century, that both the concept and the practice [of restoration] are modern. The conclusions of the great architect-restorer are not belied by Pliny’s accounts of the various events and misadventures surrounding the conservation of famous works of art: when we examine the sources, they would seem to indicate that works of art were considered more as trifles (“ludicrae”) to delight the ear and the eye (“ad voluptatem aurum atque oculorum”), as Seneca observed, rather than being instances of a figurative discourse, bearing a cultural message.1
