Faculdade

Destaques

Palestra no DCR com Leslie Carlyle

05-11-2014

Abstract 

Early analytical work on historical materials and the technology of oil paintings concentrated primarily on the identification of materials, mainly inorganic pigments, since sample size for the characterization of organic binder was prohibitively large. While this early work allowed researchers to distinguish ingredients, the role of these materials and their function was yet to be considered in depth.

When Joyce Plesters was pioneering the microscopic examination of cross sections from oil paintings at the National Gallery in London, visual information was complimented by chemical analyses. This relied largely on crushing the cross section and extracting the chemical components. Painstaking work to physically separate layers was carried out but it was time consuming and challenging especially in relation to avoiding contamination from surrounding materials.

This talk will explore the development in our thinking and understanding of information from cross sections as a result of the ever increasing sophistication of analytic techniques which has led to materials identification in situ, layer by layer. The role of the HART (historically accurate reconstructions techniques) methodology which combines scientific and documentary analysis with reconstructions based on historically appropriate materials will be explored.