The face in this 19th century portrait has been completely repainted. While this sort of thing is not that uncommon to find, what’s unusual in this case is how precisely the repaint matches the original underneath. As the cleaning progresses I am finding that the overpainted features are almost identical to what is being revealed. So whodunnit? Could it be that the artist himself who did the deed and reworked his own finished painting? And if so, then why? There is no obvious damage to the original portrait but there is significant cracking of the paint layer, and the dark ground that shows through creates a disfiguring network across the entire face. So perhaps the artist had access to the portrait as the dark cracking appeared and repainted the face in order to cover over these flaws. But that’s just a guess. The mystery remains. 

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