The Giotto's workshop in the XXI century: looking inside the “God the Father with Angels” gable

Abstract

Abstract God the Father with Angels (about 1330, tempera on panel) by Giotto is the Gable of the altarpiece of Baroncelli Chapel in the church of Santa Croce in Florence. Very little is known about its history since the separation from the so-called Baroncelli Polyptych. Now at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Gable had never been studied by means of scientific methods before our team took the opportunity to during the exhibition “Giotto, l’Italia”, held in Milan. Exploiting the integration of different knowledge, technologies and resources of our team, we were able to provide data for understanding the organizational model of Giotto's workshop performing non-invasive analyses with portable instruments during closing hours of exhibition (four diagnostic campaigns, six hours of work/campaign, no interruption of the exhibition). The achieved results confirm the painting technique based on different layers of pigments, a technique already used by Giotto. Combining the effectiveness of scanning MA-XRF with the responsive of IR reflectography and IR false colour, we moved step by step toward the discovery of Giotto's palette for the flesh tones in God the Father with Angels. FORS and XRF single point analyses were performed on some selected areas too. The IR reflectography results support the hypothesis of a detailed underdrawing with both thin and flat brushstrokes. By applying image-processing algorithms to the collected reflectograms, we obtained quantitative objective measures supporting the hypothesis that a guide could have been used in the realization of human figures; this means the use of sketches for the face of “God the Father” and for the faces of angels.