Drag your mouse over the drawing’s recto and verso to see Madonna before and after treatment 
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The 1951 drawing by Martín Ramírez, Untitled (Madonna in Landscape with Cars), is one of about 500 known works of art and one of fifteen Madonna drawings by the self-taught artist. Thought to be one of his earliest surviving works, Ramírez used non-traditional materials to make Madonna, which was drawn on the back of 22 pieces of postal mail patched together using pastes he made by chewing starchy foods such as bread, oatmeal, and potatoes.
In 2009, an archivist discovered the drawing while processing the Library’s Charles and Ray Eames collection. The 36” x 25” drawing, which had been rolled up and stored in an Eames file box for many years, was rumpled and in poor condition, with deep creases, losses, and significant insect damage.
In 2013-2014, the Library unveiled the conserved drawing during the conference, A Celebration of Mexico, and highlighted it as a special, temporary feature in the Library’s ongoing exhibition, Exploring the Early Americas. Conservation treatment aimed to restore the drawing’s visual integrity – which was disrupted by its serious condition issues – but not obfuscate the history of its difficult journey from creation to its rediscovery at the Library of Congress.
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Related: "Treatment Considerations for a Newly-Discovered Drawing by Martín Ramírez," the Library's 74th Topic in Preservation Series lecture (with video streaming on demand).
