, material, very' appropriate for the face and hands. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Spanish court and the royal painters worked under French artistic influence, both for'large-size paintings and for miniatures. The picture under study is a miniature portrait which represents a young Valencian painter named Perez Vela. The portrait was painted in 1807 by the leading court painter to Fernando VII, Vicente L6pez' Portana. An exceptional and prolific portrait painter of the Spanish court, he was contemporary with and in certain respects a rival of the artistic genius Francisco de Goya. L6pez did not produce many miniature paintings but the quality of the small group which has survived to the present day confirms that he had a considerable talent for the genre. The state of preservation of the miniature was really very good, except fot small losses atthe edges, probably caused by the frame and the protective glass ..The work was signed and dedicated on a small wooden panel at the back which served as support for the frame. The size of the picture is 14cm x 19cm and the thickness, which is very 'irregular due to the preparation of the slice (cutting, lamination and polishing) is approximately Imm. The shade of the ivory is a pale green, which shows two importantthings: first, that the quality of the piece of ivory is very go<?dand second, that the artist took advantage of this green shade in order to realize the face and the hands. To identify the, ivory structure, it was only necessary to make an exhaustive study with the ,binocular magnifying glass; thus' it was not necessary to take a small sample for analysis. The pattern . of crossing linesw'as clearly visible on the unpainted back of the ivory sheet. ' During the study we were particularly concerned with specific characteristics of the support, especially considering the environmental conditions. Ivory is not only hygroscopic (with very similar parameters to wood) but anisotropic as well. This means that the ivory responds to changes in environmental conditions by contracting or expanding. The RH should not exceed 60% or fall below 50 %; in order to protect the ivory against future changes we considered the possibility of using a moisture barrier coating. In reference to the artist's technique, study with the binocular magnifying glass (lOx, 20 x , 30 x , 40 x) provided the most spectacular discovery. We saw very clearly the use of two different techniques: stippling for the hands and face; and the application of a' very compact filni of paint with a marten-hair brush and a ' scraper which was used before the paint film was dry, thus revealing the translucency of the ivory support. Studying the picture .with high-resolution X-radiography, we could observe that for some highlights the artist had used a white pigment (lead white oralbayalde). We could also observe the use of different materials: watercolour for the hands and face; gouache for the ground' and the robe; and small mastic retouchings in the hair. With this kind of technique, Vicente L6pez unites the tradition of stippling' with the new' one of gouache washes and retouching with mastic. Authors' address: Universidad Politecnica de .Valencia, Camino de Vera sin, 46071 Valencia, Spain.