it's a painting by antoine watteau. it's of ceres, who was the roman goddess of agriculture. and watteau did a group of 4 paintings, which represented the 4 seasons, and this painting was representative of summer. can anyone tell me what they see? girl: i see that one side is darker than the other. richard: exactly. on the left side the old discolored varnish which, with age, turns yellow and ultimately a brown is still on the painting. on the right-hand side the varnish has been removed. about how long does it take to remove the varnish? richard: in some cases, one may be able to take the varnish off in just several days. but in many instances, it actually takes many weeks of work in order to do the process. how do you remove the varnish and not the paint underneath? we have to make many tests in advance in order to find out what solvents we can safely use, because every painting's different. we also have to make tests of the paint itself to ensure that what we're using won't affect the paint as well. one of the earliest scientific tools that was applied to the conservation