Centuries-old varnish disappears from an oil painting in a matter of minutes in two videos of a restoration that are going viral.
British art dealer and historian Philip Mould shared astonishing footage of the partial transformation of a 17th-century piece to Twitter on Monday.
In the clips, the person restoring the painting uses a swab to remove the thick layer of varnish that had been applied to protect the Jacobean-era painting of an unidentified 36-year-old woman in red.
Slowly but surely, the vivid colors of the 1618 work by an artist, also unidentified, begin to shine through.
“Still a way to go, but what a transformation,” wrote Mould.
For comparison, Mould also shared this snap of the painting in its original state:
He promised to post an image of the completed piece “as soon as it is ready.” We’ll update this story when that happens.
- This article originally appeared on HuffPost.