
This past Saturday, a remarkable 330-year-old ceiling painting was hoisted up to the ceiling at the Estonian Knighthood House in Tallinn. While the painter behind it is unknown, they likely weren’t from Estonia.
Two years ago, the ceiling painting, or plafond, was discovered quite by accident between several layers of ceiling, debris and cobwebs at the Knighthood House. On Saturday morning, the massive canvas-mounted piece was back on the floor of the very room where it had been found.
Lifting a 60-square-meter canvas composed of nine panels up to the ceiling was no easy feat.
A preliminary test run was conducted Friday evening, in which the plafond was raised half a meter up from the floor. Everything went smoothly, so on Saturday the painting was hoisted up to the ceiling, meter by meter, using a system of ropes.

According to Hilkka Hiiop, a professor at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), nothing of the sort has ever been done in Estonia before.
“Let’s just say we’ve all had a week full of sleepless nights,” Hiiop admitted. “Anything could go wrong. We don’t know for sure if everything will work as planned. We’ve been thinking about, planning, fine-tuning every last detail for the past year and a half, but we’ll only find everything out on site.”
Originally, the panels had been nailed to the ceiling. Now, the plafond is supported by a frame structure built in Estonia, where the skills now exist for hoisting such a large ceiling painting.
Pooled expertise, experiments
The odds of finding another 60-square-meter canvas painting like this are slim. This one continues to surprise viewers, however.
One such surprise is optical – viewed from the floor, the proportions of the figures featured in the painting shift with even the slightest change in position.
Hiiop acknowledged that restoring this work was both challenging and fascinating.
“We received a lot of help from restorers in other fields – paper restorers, restorers of wall paintings, panel paintings and canvas paintings,” she highlighted. “In that sense, yes, it was an interesting combination of expertise. We had to invent or experiment a lot throughout the process too.”
This week, the restored plafond will also be framed with a frame incorporating a preserved part of the original baroque one.
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