Pranidhi: Wall Painting from Bezeklik Monastery

On 28 May, 2002, an exhibition was opened in room N dedicated to the new restoration of the 10th century wall painting Pranidhi performed in 1999-2001 by the Monumental Painting Restoration Laboratory. This is one of the central pieces in the Hermitage collection of wall paintings on loess plaster from East Turkestan. The painting was fixed on gypsum slabs 4 cm thick, reinforced with iron rods; the paint was coated with water glue. The monument was damaged during the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
In 1953-1954, the plaster and paint of Pranidhi were fixed without dismantling the gypsum slabs. To make the painting look coherent, lost sections were covered with paint differing from the original. However, the 1954 restoration did not remove the principal cause of the painting's ''chronic disease'', the ongoing disintegration of the plaster layer of uneven thickness lying on hygroscopic gypsum slabs. In 1999 the program ''Restoration and Conservation of Unique Wall Paintings from the Turfan Oasis'' initiated a new restoration of Pranidhi with the use of modern examination procedures, materials and methods.
Restorers carried out a complicated work removing the paintings from the gypsum slabs and leveling and fully fixing the plaster and paint to make the color of all painting fragments equally deep. Numerous deformations and displacements of the design were corrected. Fragments were assembled on polystyrene foam plastic slabs and set together to reduce junctions.
This rarest monument of Buddhist art (only two such compositions have survived to this day) has finally returned to the public.

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Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky at the opening of the exhibition

A.M.Blyaher Chief Monumental Painting Restoration Laboratory

Exhibition's curator M.L. Pchelina at the opening of the exhibition