On Wednesday Sotheby's will open an art auction featuring a special work: a 17th‑century Rembrandt painting. Art scholars and restorers who worked on the painting discovered that it had been overpainted at some point. Rembrandt originally included a naked child and a man wearing a turban, but over the centuries the turban became a Dutch cap and the naked boy was given clothes.

Kaljundi said such extensive changes are rare in art history, but modern technical studies increasingly make it possible to uncover earlier layers of paintings.

"We know more and more about overpainting because infrared studies are much easier and cheaper today, and they are done often, including in Estonia. Usually these studies reveal different underdrawings, drafts and sketches. Artists often changed their final versions, but mostly to achieve better composition," she said.

Kaljundi said such studies are often done to confirm authorship or when a painting is being restored. She pointed to the well‑known research on Hermen Rode's high altar in Tallinn's Niguliste Church. Those studies revealed that one painting originally showed a cat with a mouse and a chamber pot under Emperor Constantine's bed, which the artist removed in the final version.

"Art historian Anu Mänd has studied this and discussed whether the artist wanted a cleaner, clearer composition or felt the picture would otherwise look too domestic," she said.

Kaljundi said restoration principles in Estonia have changed significantly in recent decades. Earlier, restorers tried to return works to their presumed original form. Now they intervene as little as possible and value the layers that have developed over time. She recalled the rare ceiling painting on canvas found in the Toompea Knighthood Building in 2022, where wear and damage were preserved during restoration.

Kaljundi stressed that modern professional conservators know how to work safely, and the greatest risk comes when amateurs start working on valuable finds on their own.

"We have examples from later periods in Estonia where congregation members or pastors have tried to restore works themselves, but usually this results in overpainting or attempts to decorate. I would not demonize this too much, because it is also interesting when people actively engage with heritage," she said.

Layers in artworks often reflect social and political changes. At the beginning of Soviet rule, many works depicting the War of Independence and the Republic of Estonia were destroyed. Today, debates focus more on how to display Soviet‑era art.

"A later example concerns Evald Okas's mural 'Rahvaste sõprus' (Friendship of Peoples) in Maarjamäe Palace, completed at the end of the Soviet era. It has received a lot of attention recently, and there has been much debate about whether it should be shown in the Estonian History Museum. There is a legend that Okas offered to replace the red flags and Soviet symbols with blue‑black‑white flags, but the museum said at the time that they did not want that," Kaljundi said. After conservation, Okas's work was covered with milky glass so it can be revealed or hidden as needed.

Kaljundi said Estonian society is now experiencing an intriguing process. "At the Mere culture center there are plans to cover a Stalinist ceiling painting, and after the full‑scale war in Ukraine there has been much discussion about whether and how to display Soviet‑era heritage — sculpture, painting — in public space, and whether it should be removed or covered," she said.

The Estonian Academy of Arts is working on this issue through the project "New Frames for Monuments," in which participants have proposed different solutions that allow art to remain.

"The idea is that removing art does not remove difficult history. But by adding artistic interventions or different exhibition elements and explanations, we can preserve heritage and also talk about the difficult history connected to it," Kaljundi said.

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