Investigation of the Hermeneutical Approach to Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage

In this article restoration is studied within a hermeneutic outlook. Hermeneutics, as a technique of interpretation, includes a general range of cases and text goes far beyond its classic sense and could include different issues such as art works. Thus, art work is considered as a text having an interpretational status and could be interpreted within different hermeneutical approaches. Hermeneutics in recognition stage functions by rendering the signs existing in the work and interpreting them by different scientific methods for identifying the material, technologies and the damages of it. Different hermeneutic approaches are originally determined on the considerable issue of authorial intent, so that the goal of restoring an art work is to restore it to its original form which conforms to the intent of its creator, or understands the work within the here and now paradigm and with an interpreter-oriented interpretation, i.e., the past is preserved as overlaid by the present. Thus, the restoration process carried on for assessing reliability level in interpretation could be analyzed, criticized and studied through a hermeneutic approach.