Removal of Varnish on Edvard Munch's Vampire

In 2023, the conservation department at the Munch Museum treated Vampire (1893), one of the earliest painted versions of this motif and a key work within The Frieze of Life. The primary aim was to stabilise the painting and to restore colour balance through the removal of degraded surface layers, including wax, varnish, and discoloured retouchings. The objective of this project was to identify a cleaning method that would allow for the painting to remain unvarnished, in line with Edvard Munch′s original intent. Analytical investigations confirmed the presence of a polycyclohexanone resin (AW2) as recorded in previous conservation reports, while also revealing the use of wax together with discoloured retouchings, forming a complex, degraded surface that reduced tonal contrast and colour saturation. Two cleaning systems were evaluated against predefined criteria: Nanorestore Cleaning® systems and Carbopol®–Ethomeen C-25 solvent gels. While nanostructured hydrogels have shown promising results in previous studies, they proved unsuitable in this case. The complex coating responded unevenly, and partial dewetting required a level of mechanical action incompatible with the fragile paint structure. A modified solvent-gel system enabled more controlled removal with less mechanical intervention. However, residues are likely to remain within the crack network, and the long-term effects remain uncertain.