Wikipedia:Valued picture candidates/Falstaff

Falstaff

Original - An image from the first production of Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff, printed very soon after the premiêre, - the opera premièred on the 9th, this was published on the 18th - in a London Newspaper. When you figure in transport times, and how long it takes to prepare a woodblock engraving, that means this was exceptionally rushed, and it shows in some major flaws - note the beam on the far right that cuts off mid-air, and the funny scratches on the left side, near the top. This'll be an interesting restoration as it moves into its final cleanup, and I have to decide what to fix and what to leave alone, because, judging by intent, a lot of this should go, but I don't want to remove all signs of the rush job. What I'll probably do is remove the misalignments between the woodblocks - which was the fault of the printers, not the artist - clean up the over-inking/bleed through, and then think long and hard before going any further. However, that's going to take a while: This is a very big, high-quality image, from my personal collection, and it'll take quite a lot of time just to fix the over-inking and bleed-through.

Reason: An image of the original production of a major opera, and one of the very few images we have that can be described that way. I intend to push this up to featured picture, but... I've put about 100 hours into this, it's going to need at least that again... That's not going to be soon.
Articles this image appears in: Falstaff (opera), The Merry Wives of Windsor. [Could reasonably be added to the main page on Verdi, but has been stable on those pages for nearly a year]
Creator: Ettore Tito

Support as nominator --Shoemaker's Holiday ^talk 07:38, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nominator.--Mbz1 (talk) 16:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very high EV. --Elekhh (talk) 02:17, 25 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I really like the engraving style used here. upstate NYer 02:55, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Ettore Tito -The Production of Verdi's Falstaff at Milan - Falstaff Concealed in the Buck-Basket in Ford's House.jpg --Bradjamesbrown (talk) 02:28, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]