In the June 2009 issue of this Magazine, the first of a series of articles was published that re-reviewed a selection of the most influential contributions to art history published in the twentieth century. That series was subsequently collected in a much-admired anthology.1 In this issue, we are beginning an equally ambitious project that extends much further chronologically – but, like the previous enterprise, attempts to capture the key episodes in a particular perspective on the art of the past. Here, we shall attempt to survey the history of the technical study and conservation of paintings through an examination of the principal players in this long, largely (but not exclusively) European narrative. Key individuals and groups will be identified and studied: their lives and contexts; details of their work and achievements, successes and challenges; their philosophies and principles; their influence and legacy. In compiling such a chronicle of conservators, scientists and art historians, we hope that the outlines of an essential ­discipline will become clear – an alternative historiography that addresses the material study, the preservation and the physical restoration of works of art.

One of this year’s most fascinating exhibitions is The Red That Colored The World, seen by this reviewer at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe (closed 13th September).1 The exhibition and its accompanying book, with essays by forty international scholars,2 reveal how the brilliant red dye extracted from the parasitic cochineal insect, discovered first in Mexico and Peru and then imported to Europe by the Spaniards, spread all over the civilised world to be incorporated in paintings, textiles and decorative arts. The aim of the exhibition is to ‘explore cochineal’s epic story from multiple angles, including art, history, science and economics [. . . ] to consider the big impact of a tiny bug on the world’s comprehension and expression of red’.