The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden has received the Tefaf Museum Restoration Fund award for its ongoing restoration of Peter Paul Rubens's 17th-century painting 'The Boar Hunt'. The project involves removing discolored 19th-century varnish and undoing damaging 19th-century stabilization attempts that caused cracks in the wooden panel, aiming to reveal the work's original dynamism and palette.
The restoration is a centerpiece of a four-year research program into Rubens's nearly 40 works in Dresden and will culminate in a major exhibition, 'Rubens in Dresden', opening in June 2027 to mark the 450th anniversary of the artist's birth. The award highlights the complex, scholarly conservation of a historically significant painting that Rubens originally kept for himself, which later passed through royal collections and survived wartime displacement.