Painting techniques

- Diligenza e prestezza.è uno studio sulla tecnica della pittura attraverso l’analisi incrociata dei testi letterari e delle opere d’arte. Dopo aver ripercorsa la fortuna critica dei testi dei principali autori – Leonardo, Vasari, Armenini, Borghini, Lomazzo – ne vengono messe a confronto le informazioni sul disegno e sulla pittura, analizzandone il lessico specifico e individuando i materiali e i procedimenti esecutivi. Al tempo stesso alcuni temi centrali del dibattito teorico – il disegno l’invenzione, il paragone tra le arti – sono esaminati alla luce del loro rapporto con la tecnica. Infine alcuni dipinti del museo di Capodimonte, scelti come casi esemplificativi, sono stati analizzati sulla base degli studi scientifici e delle fonti.

This study explains the history and painting technique of one of Pollock's drip and poured paintings from1947, a turning point in his work. Technical investigation of the painting has presented much information, giving a better insight view of the development of Pollock's work, his choice of metals and the layering of the painting.

The 2018 technical examination project The Girl in the Spotlight aimed to characterise the materials and techniques that Johannes Vermeer used to paint Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665, Mauritshuis). Five research questions guided the micro-and macro-scale analyses: What can we find out about layers beneath the surface? What steps did Vermeer take to create the painting? Which materials did Vermeer use and where did they come from? Which techniques did Vermeer use to create subtle optical effects? What did the painting look like originally, and how has it changed? This paper concludes the special issue of Heritage Science by summarising the results and putting them in an art-historical and materials history context. Non-invasive macroscopic imaging methods were used to examine the Girl, in conjunction with the (re)analysis of microscopic samples. Here, Vermeer's painting techniques are revealed using microphoto-graphs made using a high-resolution 3D digital microscope at 140× ...

This book explores the life and work of the celebrated eighteenth-century English naturalist, explorer, artist and author Mark Catesby (1683-1749). During Catesby’s lifetime, science was poised to shift from a world of amateur virtuosi to one of professional experts. Working against a backdrop of global travel that incorporated collecting and direct observation of nature, Catesby spent two prolonged periods in the New World – in Virginia (1712-19) and South Carolina and the Bahamas (1722-26). In his majestic two-volume The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731-43), esteemed by his contemporary John Bartram as ‘an ornament for the finest library in the world’, he reflected the excitement, drama and beauty of the natural world. Interweaving elements of art history, history of science, natural history illustration, painting materials, book history, paper studies, garden history, and colonial history, this volume brings together a wealth of unpublished images as well as newly discovered letters by Catesby, which with their first-hand accounts of his collecting and encounters in the wild bring the story of this extraordinary pioneer naturalist vividly to life.
The volume was published by the Paul Mellon Centre/Yale, London, on 22 June 2021. It won the 2022 Award of Excellence in Biography from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries; the Historians of British Art award for a single-author book with a subject between 1600 and 1800 (2022); and the Society for the History of Natural History, John Thackray Medal (2023).

Se trata de una novedosa aproximación al mundo del artista medieval, cuya obra se debatía entre la autoría divina y la firma individual. Temas como la formación del artista, su estatus laico o eclesiástico, el recurso a los modelos o la importancia de la itinerancia en su aprendizaje son abordados con rigor en esta publicación. Asimismo, los distintos roles profesionales desempeñados en los talleres medievales nos permiten conocer mejor cómo se construía y decoraba una catedral en la Edad Media. En esta visión sociológica de la obra de arte no puede faltar el papel omnipotente de los patronos medievales, personajes normalmente relacionados con la realeza y el estamento eclesiástico, que en muchos casos son los verdaderos “autores” de estas empresas, en la que las mujeres tuvieron también un destacable protagonismo.
En el libro participan 20 autores procedentes  de diversas universidades e instituciones museísticas de toda Europa. La publicación es el resultado del proyecto de investigación “Artistas, patronos y público. Catalunya y el Mediterráneo. Siglos XI-XV” (MICINN HAR2011-23015.
Se trata de una novedosa aproximación al mundo del artista medieval, cuya obra se debatía entre la autoría divina y la firma individual. Temas como la formación del artista, su estatus laico o eclesiástico, el recurso a los modelos o la importancia de la itinerancia en su aprendizaje son abordados con rigor en esta publicación. Asimismo, los distintos roles profesionales desempeñados en los talleres medievales nos permiten conocer mejor cómo se construía y decoraba una catedral en la Edad Media. En esta visión sociológica de la obra de arte no puede faltar el papel omnipotente de los patronos medievales, personajes normalmente relacionados con la realeza y el estamento eclesiástico, que en muchos casos son los verdaderos “autores” de estas empresas, en la que las mujeres tuvieron también un destacable protagonismo.
En el libro participan 17 autores procedentes  de diversas universidades e instituciones museísticas de toda Europa. La publicación es el resultado de los proyectos de investigación “Artistas, patronos y público. Catalunya y el Mediterráneo. Siglos XI-XV”-Magistri Cataloniae (MICINN HAR2011-23015.) y "Movilidad y transferencia artística en el Mediterráneo Medieval (1187-1388). Artistas, objetos y modelos-Magistri Mediterranei (MICINN-HAR2015-63883-P)
http://editorialcirculorojo.com/entre-la-letra-y-el-pincel-el-artista-medieval-leyenda-identidad-y-estatus/

A broad reserch dedicated to the painting technique of Titian's late activity, after c. 1550. The essay, based on a specific diagnostic campaign carried out on many works by the author, focuses mainly on the building of the images, starting from the underdrawing, but also involving pigments and methods, up to Titian's last manner.
(Black and white version, but originally published in colour)

Sneeuw kan modderig zijn en grijs of bruin worden. Het lijkt paars of blauwig in de schaduw en warmgeel tot oranje in zon- of lamplicht. In sommige gebieden kleurt sneeuw rood door algengroei (‘Blutschnee’, bloedsneeuw). Maar ‘zo wit als sneeuw’ is niet voor niets een uitdrukking: in smetteloze vorm reflecteren de ijskristallen overdag zoveel licht dat er slechts wit te zien is. Ook in schilderkunst geldt sneeuw als het witste wit. Maar: zelden is sneeuw sneeuwwit op schilderijen.
Nog zo’n kunstschildercliché: loodwit is het mooiste wit. Hoewel er al lang alternatieven zijn voor de giftige verf, zweren veel kunstschilders erbij. Dit hangt samen met de verwerkingseigenschappen van het materiaal, maar zeker ook met het feit dat dit wit off-white is.

In his contribution to the 1995 exhibition catalogue 'Johannes Vermeer ', Jorgen Wadum, then chief paintings conservator at the Mauritshuis, has provided a study on the artist's use of perspective in which he reveals new evidence of Vermeer's working methods, the direct result of his examination of the paintings exhibited.

Richard Gerstl (1883-1908) war ein Porträt- und Landschaftsmaler und ein Pionier des österreichischen Expressionismus. Die Diplomarbeit ist der Konvoluterfassung und materialtechnologischen Untersuchung von 21 Gemälden aus dem Bestand der Leopold Museum Privatstiftung und des Wien Museums gewidmet. Für jedes Gemälde wird eine mehrseitige, von Fotomaterial begleitete Dokumentation erstellt, in der die Erkenntnisse bezüglich der Maltechnik, des technologischen Aufbaus, des Erhaltungszustandes und der (Restaurierungs-) Geschichte zusammenfasst werden. Bei der Untersuchung entnommene Materialproben werden teilweise in Form von Querschliffen ausgewertet. Einige werden für die instrumentell-analytische Untersuchung (FTIR; GC/MS) der Bindemittelanteile in der Malschicht herangezogen und zur Bestimmung später eingebrachter Materialien. Dank der zerstörungsfrei durchgeführten Röntgenfluoreszenzanalyse (RFA) kann ein Teil der verwendeten Pigmentpalette charakterisiert werden. Alle Untersuchungsergebnisse werden anschließend in Hinblick auf das Gesamtoeuvre und die chronologische Entwicklung der Maltechnik zusammengefasst. An dem Gemälde Mutter und Tochter aus dem Bestand des Wien Museums wurden neben den technologischen Untersuchungen auch konservatorische und restauratorische Maßnahmen durchgeführt (Schwerpunkt: Abnahme von Fettsäureausblühungen in den dunklen Malschichtpartien).

This article is both a re-examination of Walter Sickert’s post-1910s work, and a study in artist versus critic (or word versus image) rivalries. The later work of Walter Sickert has often been a problem for critics and historians, with many writing off its oddities as a result of flippancy or even madness. The article uses Sickert’s lifelong dialogue with Roger Fry to show how Sickert’s work and actions in the 1920s and 1930s can be seen as deliberate and highly significant, defending his own vision of modern art through writing, prints, and portraiture in a way that in fact brought him unprecedented popular success. Fry’s rival account of artistic production nonetheless allowed the critic to cast Sickert as an artist ‘in spite of himself’ whose writing and claims about his own work should be ignored, a view adopted by subsequent historians who paid little or no attention Sickert’s own views and the success of his strategies.

This paper traces the migration patterns and artistic itineraries of Concrete artists active in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Switzerland, France and Germany from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. Given the impediments posed by the physical distance between the two continents, the artists’ exchanges were surprisingly active and multidirectional. The flow of ideas will be shown to have been particularly fertile between Georges Vantongerloo in Paris and some members of the Buenos Aires-based Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención (AACI), who began to flock to Paris on their ‘Concrete Grand Tour’ from the late 1940s. New research on Vantongerloo’s artistic theories and painting technique illuminates how he came to play such a prominent role in their artistic careers. The essay also examines how the nexus created at the relatively short-lived Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, where Max Bill, Josef Albers and Tomás Maldonado educated students from both continents, came to exert such long-lasting effects. And lastly, new insights are offered on the highly idiosyncratic trajectory of Hungarian-born Kázmér Fejér who, as a sculptor, painter and industrial chemist, occupied a crucial role in São Paulo-based Grupo Ruptura’s experimentation with new materials. He not only introduced a new decorative gilding technique for a Brazilian porcelain manufacturer, but also continued to be engaged in innovative industrial and artisanal paint production after his return to Europe in 1970.

Giovanni Santi (Colbordolo ca. 1439–Urbino 1494) was one of the most important painters active in Urbino (Marche region, Italy) during the last decades of the fifteenth century, where he was employed at the court of the celebrated Federico da Montefeltro. He is known mainly as the father of Raphael, but he had a remarkable production of paintings, especially on wood but also on canvas and on wall. This paper focuses on technical peculiarities related to Santi’s paintings on canvas, including some practices that have not yet been noted in relation to his panel paintings. In particular, two works painted on herringbone-weave linen canvases were investigated: Tobias and the Archangel Raphael and Saint Roch (both dated ca. 1490–94), in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. The results presented are a part of a large research project based on noninvasive and micro-invasive investigations carried out on twenty-eight works attributed to Giovanni Santi, only partially published in a recent exhibition catalog dedicated to the artist (Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, 2018). Black underdrawing, characterized by a thinly applied network of close hatching for some of the shadows, was observed and, regarding the different hues, a complex use of pigments. The binder detected is siccative oil, with the addition of a large amount of transparent glass particles, which would have been added both to give body to the pigment without using white fillers and to improve drying, a technique that Santi presumably learned from the Flemish painter Justus van Ghent (act. Urbino ca. 1473–1475) and something that he possibly transmitted to his son Raphael as a workshop practice. In fact, Giovanni Santi’s workshop survived his death.

This article examines a selection of paintings by Guido Reni (1575–1642) and his studio that display comparable stylistic, compositional, and technical characteristics, all of which have been ascribed dates loosely between 1620 and 1630. The works that form the primary focus of discussion include the recently restored Toilet of Venus at the National Gallery, London, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife from the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, two versions of the Penitent Magdalene—one in a private collection, the other a later work in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Rome—and Venus and Cupid from the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. By means of visual analysis and, where available, the study of technical imaging, links between these works become apparent, which, in turn, provide insight into Reni’s production process and studio practices during this period of his career.

The scientific goal of the article is to describe relevant interdisciplinary research in order to identify the technology and painting materials of selected Caravaggisti works only from Polish collections,
established in the time period between the turn
of the 16th and 17th centuries and the middle of the 17th
century. The research covers the development of issues combining analytical results of the history of art,
conservation, and painting techniques.

Nel museo di Capodimonte sono presenti due opere
sartesche: la copia del Ritratto di Leone X di Ra3aello,
commissionata ad Andrea del Sarto da Ottaviano de
Medici, e una buona replica di bottega della Madonna
della Wallace Collection a Londra. Nella copia del ritratto
di Raffaello lo studio tecnico condotto ha evidenziato
un’esecuzione molto accurata e, allo stesso tempo, molto
fluida che denota le eccezionali doti tecniche del pittore
nell’approntare una copia precisa sin nei minimi dettagli
di un’opera altrui. Relativamente al disegno preparatorio,
si segnala in quest’opera l’uso di
riferimenti costruttivi realizzati con incisioni. Come
generalmente avviene nei dipinti su tavola di Andrea,
anche nella copia napoletana  della Wallace Madonna è
stato riscontrato il trasporto del disegno mediante ricalco
da cartone. Oltre allo studio dell’underdrawing questo
dipinto è stato oggetto di una campagna diagnostica
mediante analisi XRF, che ha consentito di indagare  la composizione della
tavolozza utilizzata.

ANDREA DEL SARTO IN THE MUSEO OF CAPODIMONTE:
A WORKSHOP REPLICA AND AN ARTIST’S COPY
In the Museo di Capodimonte there are two Sartesque
works: a copy of Raphael’s Portrait of Leo X, commissioned
from Andrea del Sarto by Ottaviano de Medici, and a good
replica of the Wallace Madonna. In the copy of Raphael’s
portrait, the technical study conducted showed a very
accurate and, at the same time, very fluid execution that
denotes the exceptional technical skills of the painter in
providing a precise copy of the details of the work of another
artist. With regard to the preparatory drawing, in this
work we note the use of incised lines used
as guide-lines for the construction of the composition. As
is generally the case in Andrea del Sarto’s paintings, and
is also the case in the Neapolitan copy of the Wallace Madonna,
the underdrawing consists in a tracing (calco) from
the cartoon. In addition to the study of the underdrawing,
this painting was also the object of investigation by XRF
analysis, which allowed one to establish to some degree
the composition of the palette employed.

The article discusses Andrea del Sarto's use of cartoons throughout his career and gradual transition to the involvement of members of the workshop in the design process. Presented here for the first time with an attribution to Andrea del Sarto is a large-scale fragment of a drawing of a young boy looking and pointing toward the right, the only surviving example of a fully autograph cartoon for a painting within the artist’s corpus of drawings and a crucial missing link for the full understanding of his working method.

Nella scarsità di notizie certe in merito alle opere dipinte da Giorgione, le analisi scientifiche di tipo fisico o chimico hanno offerto negli ultimi decenni nuovi spunti di ragionamento per gli storici dell'arte, assecondando il desiderio di ottenere ulteriori dati, se non certificazioni - ma anche confutazioni talvolta - rispetto alle ipotesi o teorie in merito all'attribuzione al maestro di Castelfranco. Desiderio che diviene in qualche caso necessità o, più semplicemente, curiosità...
... Da qui la scelta di proseguire, per questa mostra, nel solco della tradizione diagnostica che accompagna il pittore almeno dal (presunto) cinquecentenario della nascita, rivedendo documentazioni tecniche edite e inedite, esaminando altre opere o riesaminando con più moderne tecnologie opere già in parte analizzate. Nell'occasione di questo saggio concentrandosi sul nucleo di dipinti che la critica indica in genere come giovanili e della prima maturità, ca-ratterizzati dalla presenza di figure in un paesaggio, collocabili tra la fine del XV secolo e il 1505 circa, e privilegiando un percorso che si snoda tra le opere esposte in mostra.

Gianluca Poldi

Susan Frances Jones, Bart Fransen, Christina Currie and Geert van der Snickt, ‘Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Margaret van Eyck: new imaging by the VERONA Project (Van Eyck Research in OpeN Access)’, La Ciencia y el Arte VII. Ciencias experimentales y conservación del patrimonio/ Science and Art VII, Experimental Sciences and Heritage Conservation (Madrid, October 24, 25 and 26, 2018), Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, 2021, pp. 85-95

Pictorial technique and materials in some paintings by Jacopo Bellini, Bartolomeo Montagna, Lazzaro Bastiani, Bonsignori, Antonio Balestra, Paris Bordon, Tiepolo, Francesco Guardi and others, belonging to the collection of the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo. Evidences through scientific examinations