[June 18, 2025] For several years, I’ve been watching art restoration videos undertaken by Julian Baumgartner a professional fine art restorer, where he takes us through the entire step-by-step process. The reason for today’s article is to reinforce my thoughts on the cultural impact of art. Julian’s website can be found here.
The restoration itself is an educational journey. Julian has the insane level of patience required to successfully make a proper, recoverable restoration. After a close inspection and evaluation of the artwork, he stabilizes it, cleans, repairs, adds paint to fill in destroyed areas, varnishes, and ensures the frame is also repaired.
In a classic video published six months ago, he takes us through the restoration of an oil painting that he calls “Salvation.” In it is the baby Jesus next to His mother Mary. The subject is a classic and found often in pre-twentieth century religious art.
“We can now see the image and the composition, not just the surface [that has been restored] and after healing all the wounds from the past conservation attempts, we no longer see them as scars violating the artist’s intent.” — Julian Baumgartner
As I have emphasized in the past, we must remain alert to beauty and that is so captured in art. When the nature of life is murky and tragic, we can look and see where things are still beautiful and that can be sustaining. By being alert to beauty , we can make the world a better place. This is what Julian is doing by restoring old and damaged artwork.
The time and emotional effort that Julian invests into this painting has now given the world back a wonderful masterpiece that speaks to a time of great artists and strong devotion to Christ. As typical,whenever I watch his YouTube videos, I am impressed. So were others. His videos have been watched nearly 200 million times.
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Gen. Satterfield has done it again with this article which harks back to the time we did consider art to be close to godliness. Today, in our modern and “yes” hedonistic Western culture, we reject that which is “old” and call it worthless because it is old and for a purely infantile reasoning to say so. But, the past should be preserved because that is what our successful American and Western societies are built upon. Let us be vigilant about saving past art and publically show its value to us all.
I’m glad to hear that there are folks dedicated to preserving our culture.
Powerful works!
Hi Northeast. Just my two cents worth. Art (good art) helps set us right with the world. It is real, and so real, that art and beauty helps us overcome the suffering from tragedies and malevolence that life throws at us.
“We can now see the image and the composition, not just the surface [that has been restored] and after healing all the wounds from the past conservation attempts, we no longer see them as scars violating the artist’s intent.” — Julian Baumgartner
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Wow, you can see that Mr. Julian has his soul vested in his work. He is restoring our culture. Very much unlike the “Lefties” that others have written about. Too many on the Left want to tear down the West and yet have nothing to add. They are mentally ill.
Great article reminding us of our humanness.
Recreations of Historical Beauty: be Alert to Beauty
https://www.theleadermaker.com/recreations-of-historical-beauty-be-alert-to-beauty/
“One of the lessons from life is that we must be alert to the beauty in life, for there is little of greater value. Such a statement may seem nonsensical and naïve, but to see beauty for its value is on the same intellectual plane of discriminating between good and evil. This is a form of wisdom, and we all possess that ability, but we suppress it, unfortunately. We are fortunate today that there are artists with great skill, both intellectually, artistically, and with a depth of knowledge about historical artworks that recreate historical beauty. This is most noticeable in the West, where traditional art meets modern technology. Looking for beauty in the past from paintings (one of many forms of beauty) is difficult. ” — Gen. Doug Satterfield
Such beauty being saved, warms my heart. ❤️
I’m happy that there are those in our society who are both skilled enough and dedicated enough to undertake the restoration of damaged antique paintings. These classics deserve saving because they show the good of our society. Too many crazies today are only interested in destroying art in order to destroy America and the West. I
Exactly … except that you forgot to say that these “crazies” are almost all Political Lefties with mommy issues and a blender full of mental problems.
Doubling down on stupid is what they do. And you know what Forrest Gump said? “Stupid is, as stupid does!”
COOL, I SAW SOME OF HIS WORK.