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Peter Farrugia’s feature ‘Canvases and coronets’ (The Sunday Times, May 6) might give readers the wrong impression.

I found it strange that my name, together with that of RoccoBuhagiar, was singled out in connection with the generic claim that the Erardi painting, TheVirgin of Divine Grace at the Capuchin church in Victoria, was “retouched by various painters”.

Historically, the painting was enlarged by Rocco Buhagiar, who was also commissioned to paint the two vertical paintings of St Anne and St Joachim which flank the altarpiece.

For the record I will narrate the exact circumstances surrounding my involvement in the painting’s restoration process. I was contacted by the then Capuchin convent superior, Fr Spiridione Galea, and his successor Fr Joe Mallia after the crowns of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus were pulled from the canvas and stolen in the mid-1970s. As a result, the canvas suffered minute cuts because the crowns were forcibly pulled together with the screws and bolts which secured them to it.

It was eventually agreed that the painting would be carried to my temporary studio at home in Victoria. I was charged with the elimination of the cuts and reintegrating the minute perforations originally done for the passing of the screws holding the respective crowns. My involvement was solely limited to this and in no way did I ‘retouch’ the whole painting as claimed in the article.

I am including a close-up photo of the damage suffered by the painting prior to my intervention. When, some years later, the crowns were stolen again, I was not consulted and hence any restoration interventions were carried out by others.

I used the restoration technique I learned during my years atthe Accademia in Perugia under Prof. Lanciotto Fumi, and by exploiting other techniques as applied by old masters such as the painters Giuseppe Briffa and Toussant Busuttil, who were also restorers at the Malta Museum of Fine Arts.

They were both close friends of my father, the sculptor Wistinu Camilleri, and the three of them grew and collaborated together in all spheres of art. Eventually they took me under their wing and instructed me in the art of restoration. I also obtained further expertise in conservation and restoration from Raimondo Boenni, who led a team of restorers for the restoration project on Mattia Preti’s St John’s Co-Cathedral vaults in the early 1960s.

It was the Capuchin, Fr Faustino Testaferrata, who retouched the whole painting prior to the first crowning ceremony of the Erardi painting.

I do not know of anybody else who might have retouched the painting.

As an experienced artist, I see a huge leap in art appreciationeven by the lay person. Even restoration technology has made huge strides.

However, I believe that technical examination rarely solves attribution issues in a definitive manner. It often shows that our questions and presumptions are much too simple and stereotyped.

It is time to move the debateabout restoration which is intricately tied up with questions of scientific analysis.

Let us detach the quest to examine works of art scientifically from the process of restoration.

Knowing and intervening are different things.