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Conservation Treatment of Seven Engraved Music Motets
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By Sylvia Albro
Background
The Music Division of the Library of Congress recently acquired a collection of seven allegorical engravings of musical motets.
Motets are unaccompanied choral compositions with sacred lyrics; which are intended to be sung as part of a church service. The motet musical form originated in the 13th century. The illustrator of the motets, Jan (Johannus) Sadeler I (1550-1600) engraved the Library’s prints after paintings by Flemish artists such as Marten de Vos and Petrus Candidus. Sadeler was part of a distinguished family of engravers from Belgium who collaborated with many prominent European painters and printers. The Music Division’s collection of seven motet engravings is quite rare as there are only thirteen in total known to exist from this period.
The Music Division asked the Conservation Division to examine, conserve, and house the prints in order to make them available for exhibition and use by scholars. The Division delivered the prints to Conservation in their original condition. The prints were glued around their edges to decorative window mats, lined onto layers of heavy backing paper. The thick adhesive caused the print, mat, and backing layers to be very stiff. Direct contact with the old discolored adhesive of the backings darkened the original print papers. Burnishing marks showed on the edges of the window mats from the earlier application of heavy pressure. Several of the images had disfiguring liquid stains or “tidelines”; while others had individual stains associated with insect droppings, ink marks, and surface soil.