Analyzing Art: Beneath the Canvas
June 20, 2007 — mhemmentAlthough nearly 10 years old, the Investigating the Renaissance project by Harvard’s Straus Center for Conservation remains a superb illustration of how imaging technologies such as infrared reflectography, x-radiography, and ultraviolet light can reveal a painting’s creation process, conservation history, materials and, in some cases, even authenticity.
Using infrared light, conservators can study the underdrawing beneath a painted surface and determine if the drawing was intended as a rigid model or loose concept for the final painting, what modifications were made at various stages of production, how shaded areas were represented in drawings, and other technical details.
Investigating the Renaissance illustrates how viewing the same painting under different kinds of light can reveal hidden information about the artist and his work. Painting details: Master of the 1540s. Netherlandish, active 1540-1551. Portait of a Man, 1541. Oil on wood, 40.3 x 35 cm. Fogg Art Museum. Loan by Vermeer Associates Ltd. 48.1992.
With a much shorter wavelength than visible light, X-radiography can be used to identify pigments, reveal changes in composition, and study a painting’s support and condition. X-rays can also reveal aspects of the artist’s technique and the order in which different pigments were likely applied to the canvas.
The conservation history of a painting can be revealed using ultraviolet light. Since UV light causes various colors of paint and layers of varnish to fluoresce in different ways, attempts at restoration and retouching using newly applied materials can easily be detected. UV examination can also help to identify specific pigments in certain cases.
Recently, Harvard curators and conservators have used a variety of advanced imaging technologies–including Raman spectroscopy, Laser Desorption Ionization–Time of Flight–Mass Spectroscopy, and Scanning Electron Microscopy Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy–to help determine the authenticity of three paintings attributed to Jackson Pollock. They concluded that some of the pigments used in the paintings appear to date from after Pollock’s death in 1956. For further details, see the Technical Analysis of Three Paintings Attributed to Jackson Pollock (PDF) report released by the Harvard University Art Museums.
The latest imaging technologies have totally revolutionized the field of art conservation and offer unprecedented activity-based learning opportunities for today’s students in both the sciences and the history of art. There is something inherently exciting about the prospect of going beneath the surface of a canvas to better understand the techniques of great artists, to chart the complex conservation history of art centuries old, and to identify the unique materials of a masterwork.
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