History Of Painting Research Articles

Molecular Characterization of Adhesives (Glue Lining Pastes) Used in Restoration.

The molecular characterization of samples from works of art can provide valuable insights into the composition of ancient restoration materials and their conservation state. Here, we present a novel analytical protocol for the molecular characterization of a specific adhesive used in historical painting restoration, known as "glue lining pastes." Due to the high molecular complexity of these adhesives, we propose a multistep extraction protocol to recover and fractionate from a single microsample the three main classes of biomolecules contained in glue pastes (lipids, polysaccharides, and proteins). High-performance separation coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) techniques were applied to the isolated fractions to identify specific components. The proposed method was optimized using test specimens of various traditional glue pastes applied to canvases and successfully applied to a historical glue paste sample from the 17th-century painting "La fuga in Egitto," part of the Pagliara collection at the University Suor Orsola Benincasa (Naples, Italy). The data collected in this work provide insights into the specific recipe used for adhesive preparation, supporting artistic and historical interpretations and contributing to a broader understanding of old restoration practices. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with the identifier PXD051480.

Overturning the Narrative: Steele and Goldie's Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand, 1899

New Zealand’s best-known historical painting, Louis John Steele and Charles Frederick Goldie’s Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand (1899), has influenced the way Māori history has been (mis)understood. Through a detailed examination of the historical, anthropological and artistic sources that informed the painting, a new understanding emerges. Rather than a generic imagined depiction of Māori arrival, a long-overlooked source for the narrative is found in the voyage of the Arawa waka and its encounter with the “throat of Te Parata.” The analysis gives new insight into the artists’ intent, enabling us to begin to address the uncomfortable place Arrival occupies in New Zealand art history and culture.

Painting the Past in the 19th Century: Materials, Methods, and Perspectives in Watercolour Replicas

This study focuses on the material characterisation of a collection of 19th-century watercolour replicas that reproduce ancient Egyptian mural paintings and illuminated decorations from medieval manuscripts. Non-contact analyses, including macro-X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and fibre-optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), were employed to examine the composition of the painting materials, particularly the pigments. The findings are contextualised through archival research into 19th-century technical sources on historical painting and illuminating practices, as well as contemporaneous pigment catalogues that reported commercial prices. Ultimately, this research aimed to explore whether 19th-century artists engaged with historical material practices beyond mere visual representation in their depictions of historical subjects. The results obtained from the replicas of medieval illuminations are groundbreaking, as they challenge prevailing scholarly assumptions. Notably, the use of pigments such as minium and ultramarine blue, which were held in high regard during the Middle Ages, along with the use of chalk in the preparation of the support, suggest that, in an industrialised world where engagement with material culture was increasingly driven by commercial profit, some academic circles still sought to explore and preserve selected historical material practices in the art of painting.

The Bastard Child of Historicism? Realisms Roots in History Painting

Summary In her classic 1974 study Realism, art historian Linda Nochlin claims that by the mid-nineteenth century, realism and realism esthetics so had permeated the art world that it also had affected the academic history painters. But what if this is wrong, if it wasn’t the history painters that were affected by the realists, but rather the other way around? In this article, I will make the case that Realism, the esthetical movement of the mid-nineteenth century, had its roots in the historicism of the early nineteenth century and that the realist claims to give a truthful, objective and impartial representation of the real world, based on meticulous observation, were already present in discussions of history and how to represent history in the arts from the years around 1800. Secondly, the study is also a contribution to the research concerning how the idea and concept of history changed in the early nineteenth century.

The artists’ colony of Ekensund

The Museumsberg Flensburg, a museum for art and culture at the northern border of Germany, collects especially objects of fine art made around the Flensburg Fjord. The landscape at this part of the Baltic Sea is characterized by sandy beaches, forests which grow directly at the brink of the water and smooth rising hills. The specific profile of the region became popular among landscape painters in the late nineteenth century. They founded an artists’ colony and their paintings created and spread the image of this place. Today, visitors can experience this image, which is a suggestion of maritime lifestyle and the mixture of German and Danish culture, in the picture gallery at the Museumsberg. Even tourist agencies still use photos, films and other media to advertise the fjord as an idyllic paradise for outdoor activities. Telling the history of landscape painting at the Flensburg Fjord and how these artworks became an integral part of a museum collection reveals how the image of this region was born 150 years ago and developed until today.

2 X Anna Korda - an Introspective Radiography of Two Historical Paintings. The Portraits of the Last Two Women of Their Kin

2 X Anna Korda - an Introspective Radiography of Two Historical Paintings. The Portraits of the Last Two Women of Their Kin

PAINTING HISTORY: PICTURE, WITNESS, AND ANCIENT HISTORIOGRAPHY

ABSTRACTThis article treats an analogy that is used persistently in the history of historiography: the equation of historiography with painting and the identification of the historiographer with the painter. In examining the conceptual stakes of this (auto)identification, the article mobilizes the analogy in order to explore larger issues of historical theory and, through the prism of historical painting, reflects on the problem of representation and narrativist approaches to history as text. The article argues that the historiographic desire surfacing in a comparison with painting does not concern painting's ability to capture the past; rather, it concerns its ability to capture the viewer. Opening with a brief survey of the ut pictura historia analogy in the history of historiography, the article makes this claim by analyzing historiographical engagements with the analogy in antiquity (turning to Herodotus and Polybius) and by exploring ancient history painting itself (offering pride of place to the Alexander Mosaic). In thus engaging with the theory of historiography via concrete historical material, the article leverages a historical episode of interaction between textual media and visual media to find that they are structured by the same simple desire that continues to exert its force today: the desire to see for oneself.

Memorialising Keats: Severn, Headstones and Hyperion

For obvious reasons, Keats's biographers have focused primarily on the last five months of the poet’s life and on the making of his reputation in the later nineteenth century. They have spent very little time, however, on the two uncertain years that followed the poet’s death when his legacy, largely in the hands of Brown, Taylor and Severn, hung in the balance. As Severn was recovering from Keats's death, he fought to establish his own livelihood as a painter and find an adequate means of memorialising his friend. He was preoccupied with two works of art, The Death of Alcibiades and the headstone for Keats's grave. I argue that these artworks represent complex expressions of Severn's grief and in this sense are both memorials, though Alcibiades disguises its aims in a conventional historical painting. In the strong reading of Hyperion embedded in the picture, Severn finds a way of coming to terms with the traumatic aftermath of Keats's death as well as the critical attacks on his poetry. My recent rediscovery of two key manuscript letters of this time by members of the Keats Circle lends support to the argument.

Vasily Surikov: the Power of the Unexperienced

The article is devoted to the work of the outstanding Russian painter V.I. Surikov. The author reveals the meaning of historical painting, which is usually associated with the artist. Surikov is not the one who addresses history as the past, but the one who explores the pain points of our self-awareness through history. Surikov is among the artists who transformed Russian painting, by analogy with Russian iconography, into our «thinking in colors», that is, into our philosophy, which develops beyond the boundaries of philosophy proper. In this sense, Surikov’s painting is of interest not only from the point of view of aesthetics, but from the point of view of studying the specifi cs of the Russian mindset. The article examines in detail the principal paintings of Surikov, such as “Boyarina Morozova”, “The Conquest of Siberia by Ermak Timofeevich”, “Suvorov’s Crossing the Alps”, etc., and shows that they represent an attempt to formalize the Russian consciousness.

The artistic tradition of Russian Academism in Mongolian contemporary art (a study of the historical paintings by Mongolian artist B. Otgontuvden)

The artistic tradition of Russian Academism in Mongolian contemporary art (a study of the historical paintings by Mongolian artist B. Otgontuvden)

Digital 3D models for medieval heritage: diachronic analysis and documentation of its architecture and paintings

In this paper, we discuss the requirements and technical challenges within the EHEM project, Enhancement of Heritage Experiences: The Middle Ages, an ongoing research program for the acquisition, analysis, documentation, interpretation, digital restoration, and communication of medieval artistic heritage. The project involves multidisciplinary teams comprising art historians and visual computing experts. Despite the vast literature on digital 3D models in support of Cultural Heritage, the field is so rich and diverse that specific projects often imply distinct, unique requirements which often challenge the computational technologies and suggest new research opportunities. As good representatives of such diversity, we describe the three monuments that serve as test cases for the project, all of them with a rich history of architecture and paintings. We discuss the art historians’ view of how digital models can support their research, the expertise and technological solutions adopted so far, as well as the technical challenges in multiple areas spanning geometry and appearance acquisition, color analysis and digital restitution, as well as the representation of the profound transformations due to the alterations suffered over the centuries.

ColorNetVis: An Interactive Color Network Analysis System for Exploring the Color Composition of Traditional Chinese Painting.

In the field of digital humanities, color research aims to discover explanations for painting history and color usage habits. However, researchers analyzing color relationships is challenging and time-consuming, as it requires color extraction and a detailed review of many painting images for reference and comparison of color relationships. In our work, we propose ColorNetVis, an interactive color network analysis tool that enables researchers to explore color relationships through color networks. The core of ColorNetVis is a bipartite network model that establishes a bipartite relationship between colors and Chinese painting within a scope based on color difference measurement. It constructs a one-mode color network through projection algorithms and similarity calculation methods to discover the relationship between colors. We propose a coordinated set of views to demonstrate the combination of determined color networks with painting types and real-world attributes. We use color space view, color attribute distribution view, and single color query components to assist researchers in conducting detailed color analysis and validation. Through case studies, researcher reviews, and user studies, we demonstrate that ColorNetVis can effectively help researchers discover knowledge of color relationships and potential color research directions.

Historical Pigments and Paint Layers: Raman Spectral Library with 852 nm Excitation Laser

Raman spectroscopy (RS), for its robust analytical capabilities under constant development, is a powerful method for the identification of various materials, in particular pigments in cultural heritage. Characterization of the artist’s palette is of fundamental importance for the correct formulation of restoration intervention as well as for preventive conservation of artworks. Here we examine the number and variability of research studies exploiting Bravo handheld Raman spectrophotometer relying on the excitation of Raman signal with temperature-shifted diode lasers emitting at 852 and 785 nm. To this end, we explore the spectral features of common historical pigments examined as powders and in the paint layer. We show that some materials may exhibit slightly different spectra as concerns especially the relative intensity of Raman lines with 852 nm laser excitation wavelength as compared to the standard 785 nm. The aim is to provide the research community with a reference spectral database that facilitates the identification of unknown pigments using the 852 nm excitation source.

Micromorphology characterization of crystal calcium carbonate and exopolysaccharides quantification carbonatogenic bacterial LTP4-d isolated from historical painting of Maros-Pangkep karst area, Indonesia

Abstract. Zhafirah NA, Haedar N, Sentosa S, Gani F. 2024. Micromorphology characterization of crystal calcium carbonate and exopolysaccharides quantification carbonatogenic bacterial LTP4-d isolated from historical painting of Maros-Pangkep karst area, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 25: 2139-2147. Indonesia possesses the second-largest limestone/karst region globally, trailing only China. Among Indonesia’s limestone region, the Maros-Pangkep karst area in South Sulawesi stands out which obtained prehistoric rock art dating back at least 45.5 thousand years ago. However, over time, those paintings have begun to deteriorate due to many causes, one of which caused by overlayering of the deposition of calcium carbonate precipitates covering the surface of the paintings. This can occur due to the presence of microorganism with the ability to precipitate calcium carbonate on the surface of those paintings. Microorganism that have the ability to precipitate calcium carbonate are usually known as carbonatogenic bacteria or ureolytic bacteria. This study aimed to isolate the carbonatogenic bacteria and then assess how effectively it precipitates calcium carbonate, also to determine the production of EPS and characteristic micro-morfology of CaCO3 produced by carbonatogenic bacteria isolated from historical painting of Maros-Pangkep karst, Indonesia. Results showed that sixty bacterial isolates were successfully isolated from prehistoric paintings in Maros-Pangkep karst, which 24 isolates were confirmed as carbonatogenic bacteria. The highest amount of CaCO3 precipitate was recorded from LTP4-d isolates which able to precipitate 37.62±0.12 mgmL-1 calcium carbonate. The highest amounts of ammonia and EPS production were also from LTP4-d. The SEM results showed that CaCO3 precipitate from LTP4-d has a type of vaterite with element contents including C 0.32%; O 15.24%; Ca 84.53%. This study presents novel findings on the capability of carbonatogenic bacteria from prehistoric paintings in Maros-Pangkep karst to induce calcium carbonate precipitation which can be utilized as a reference for repairing and preserving prehistoric paintings found in the Maros-Pangkep karst area.

A smartphone image-based method for the colorimetric characterization of historical pigments in mural paintings

In this article, the detailed description of a smartphone-based analytical method to turn a smartphone into a colorimeter is described and applied to mural painting replicas. The method consists of a camera characterization process, to estimate CIELAB values from RGB camera responses, correcting for potential experimental interferences, like the effect of the lighting/capture geometry or software for color modification and enhancement. Next, the estimated CIELAB descriptors were used to build a chemometric Support Vector Classifier to objectively distinguish among the colors of the different pigments. The method was validated in terms of color reproduction and classification performance.•A smartphone-based method is described to capture mural painting color.•A color gamut-specific camera characterization procedure is developed and the performance of the smartphone-based colorimeter is compared with a spectrophotometer.•A classification method based on the estimated CIELAB descriptors is validated in terms of classification performance.

A screening method for heavy metals in consumer goods using reactive desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry.

Contamination of everyday goods with heavy metals such as nickel, cadmium, and lead known to be hazardous to the health of customers is an ongoing problem. Here, a mass spectrometric screening method based on reactive desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) is presented for the analysis of metals in consumer goods such as jewelry, tableware, and paintings. The method detects oxidized species of lead, nickel, cadmium, copper, and iron from the surface of objects without sample preparation. Positively charged metal ions form singly and doubly negatively charged complexes with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid added to the DESI solvent, which are analyzed by a mass spectrometer. Qualitative and quantitative performance of the method was elucidated with metal salt standards. Subsequently, authentic samples were analyzed qualitatively. Reactive DESI-MS was able to detect lead and cadmium in eight out of nine consumer goods. For tableware, these heavy metals were found to be localized in the print as determined by reactive DESI imaging. In addition, mockup paintings generated from modern and historical pigments of Pb, Cu, Cd, and Fe in various media (acrylic binder, egg tempera, and linseed oil) were measured to show the suitability of the method for art authentication and conservation. The developed method expands the range of analytes accessible by DESI-MS to metal ions. Hence, DESI becomes a suitable ionization technique for an increasing number of analyte classes, which are of interest in chemical screening of consumer goods.

An analysis of the creation of the theme of the ladies in Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty ladies are of great significance in the history of Chinese painting, and the development of figure painting in this era reached its peak, blending the roughness of the north and the delicacy of the south. Since the Tang Dynasty, it has been found that both men and women are fat as beauty, women are full of breasts and fat buttocks, and their outfits are even more daring. The aesthetics of the Tang Dynasty were different from those of previous dynasties, and it was no longer weak for beauty, but mainly for health. Throughout the Tang Dynasty. Regardless of the differences in age and craftsmanship of the women depicted, most of the women in the works have curved eyebrows and plump cheeks. They have moon-like faces, round waists, and bare clothes, and their personalities are bold and confident. Aesthetically speaking, the aesthetics of the Tang Dynasty are contrary to the slender waist and gentle beauty that people have been admiring in other dynasties before this, but the charm of this plump and bold beauty is not at all inferior to the weak and boneless morbid beauty that the traditional concept yearns for, but makes people feel the vigorous vitality and self-confidence more clearly. This transformation from "thin beauty" to "plump beauty" was also an essential part of the Tang Dynasty.

The Status and Changes of the Relationship between Ink and Color in Traditional Landscape Painting

Color has always played a key role in the evolution of Chinese painting history. With the rise of ink painting and the development of literati painting, the expression of landscape painting gradually transformed, green and heavy colors gradually lost their dominant position, and ink painting gradually became the dominant style in the Chinese painting world, with the use of color gradually weakening. Especially in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. The change and application of color in landscape painting is in line with the changes in society and aesthetic concepts, reflecting the aesthetic interests and cultural backgrounds of different times.

Historical space painting art: Its important role on the creation of space-age era in 1950s

The major purpose of this paper is to study the important role of historical painting art on the creation of space-age era eight decades ago in 1950s. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first known use of “space age” was in 1946. In the Collins Dictionary, the space age is the present period in the history of the world when travel in space has become possible, and people use “space-age” to describe something that is very modern and makes you think of the technology of the space age. In American English, space age is the period in modern history characterized by space exploration, usually considered as beginning on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit around the Earth. In the ancient time, many artists including Giovanni di Paolo, Albrecht Dürer, Étienne Léopold Trouvelot and Vincent van Gogh created masterpieces of space related paintings. Even in the extreme ancient era, the cave art already evidenced humans’ astronomical knowledge. Besides the technological research and development for space explorations, groups of workers and artists in the areas of culture, painting, architects, installation artwork, etc. had done many contributions in the development of space-age cultural and aesthetic art before 1950s. They not only created so many masterpieces with plenty of space-age aesthetics, but witnessed and recorded the development history of the space age. It goes without doubt that historical space painting art played an important role on the creation of space-age era in 1950s. Therefore, it is mandatory to investigate and reveal the fact.

Correlation of Visible Reflectance Spectrometry and Portable Raman Data for Red Pigment Identification

The accurate identification of pigments is of principal relevance in the field of cultural heritage conservation and restoration practices. In this preliminary study, a first attempt to set up a procedure for accurate red pigment identification, based on the assessment of the correlations existing between visible reflectance spectrometry (vis-RS) and Raman data, is presented. The proposed approach involved the realization of a library consisting of data acquired on a set of 35 pure red historical pigments supplied by ©Kremer Pigmente. In particular, vis-RS data, collected through a Konica Minolta CM-2600d spectrophotometer, were registered, together with the position of the Extrema Points (E.P.s) encompassing both the maximum and minimum points of the first derivative of the % spectral reflectance factor (SRF%) curves. Portable Raman spectroscopy measurements were collected by a B&W Tek Inc. portable Raman spectrometer equipped with a 785 nm laser. For each tested pigment, the positions and relative intensities of the characteristic Raman peaks were considered. The library was then tested for the characterization of the red/reddish painted areas of the medieval wall painting located within The Norman Castle of Aci Castello (Catania, Italy), and was shown to be essential for the unambiguous identification of the pigment used. It is worth noting that this study represents the first novel attempt to establish a reliable and efficient methodology for pigment identification, offering promising prospects in reducing uncertainties and ambiguities arising from the application of a single stand-alone approach.