Technical Art History Research Articles

Blues from Tikuna/Magüta Masks and a Still Unknown Blue Colorant in Technical Art History and Conservation Science

Blues from Tikuna/Magüta Masks and a Still Unknown Blue Colorant in Technical Art History and Conservation Science

Interpreting the monochrome: how Li Yuan-chia, Piero Manzoni and Robert Ryman ascribe meaning to their white monochrome surfaces

Using methods from technical art history, this article presents new interpretations of three white monochrome paintings, by Li Yuan-chia, Piero Manzoni and Robert Ryman, through an investigation of the artists’ intentions, materials and methods of application.

Towards sustainable conservation science in cultural heritage: bridging the gap between contemporary conservation theory and the philosophy of science in approaches to authenticity questions

As contemporary artists’ practices evolve to incorporate ever-newer forms and approaches, conservators are encountering challenges not met before, that influence the development of sustainable and green treatment methods and materials. Many challenges stem from how we understand and articulate authenticity and cultural heritage. In approaching authenticity, the conservation field seeks to rely on reliable knowledge, supplied by science that has been playing an ever more critical role in conservation and technical art history. While conservation science techniques are relatively well-known to conservators, the foundational ethos of the scientific inquiry that distinguishes science from other intellectual pursuits needs to be clarified. Exploration of the foundational ethos of science and the philosophy of science has lacked in conservation, which creates communication problems for stakeholders with different backgrounds: curators, conservators, art historians, and scientists, who operate in different realms, but need to produce knowledge across disciplines and collectively. To bridge this knowledge gap in authenticity questions, the authors take the perspective of the philosophy of science and discuss what makes the scientific inquiry distinct from other intellectual pursuits in the context of conservation. As a workable solution for cultural heritage, the authors propose adopting a concept of scientific attitude as a science demarcation criterion, introduced by Lee McIntyre. The new demarcation criterion, based on values rather than methodology, offers a sustainable approach to defining the role of present-day science in cultural heritage and building sustainable connections with diverse frameworks of knowledge used in conservation and authenticity questions.

Toward spectral continuum: Multimodal non-invasive analysis of historical pastels

The material study of fragile graphic artworks requires adapted analytical methodologies to extract representative information without resorting to sampling. In this paper, a multimodal approach combining non-invasive techniques was developed to specifically characterize the artistic materials used (paper, pigment/filler and binder) in 3 pastel portraits by the famous French pastellist, Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788). The combination of elemental analyses using X-ray fluorescence and reflectance spectroscopies covering the entire energy range from 25,000 to 400 cm−1, has provided new insights into the nature and state of conservation of the paper support, as well as the composition and application of the pastel materials. Bridging technical art history, conservation science and analytical chemistry, this research offers a unique perspective on the choice of materials of the renown pastellist, and sheds new light on an artistic technique understudied until now.

Paint and Coloring Materials from the Brazilian Amazon Forest: Beyond Urucum and Jenipapo

The Brazilian Legal Amazon region is divided into at least 155 ethnic groups and has the largest concentration of Indigenous people globally. It represents one of the most extraordinary levels of human, cultural, and artistic diversity, but its material culture is one of the least well-studied. This is especially true in technical art history and conservation science, largely due to (1) the limited international awareness of the richness of materials and techniques used by these Indigenous people and (2) the limitations of knowledge access for many scientists to literature usually published in Portuguese within social sciences and humanities. One result is that these arts are marginalized within technical art history, conservation, and conservation science. To address this knowledge gap, the authors explore 70 materials—among them pigments, dyes, binding media, and varnishes—used for paint production and coloring processes, including syntheses. The authors facilitate research possibilities within technical art history, conservation, and conservation science by presenting data from historical texts from the 18th and 19th centuries and more recent scientific literature. The work aims to build a more global, inclusive, and decentralized vision of art history and to create a more pluralistic narrative of Indigenous art history from South America.

Regulation or Reputation? Evidence from the Art Market

This article investigates the role of regulation and reputation in the art trade. We look at attribution issues in the auction market, and in France in particular, where both regulatory and reputational mechanisms have been implemented. More specifically, we focus on the Marcus Decree—a pioneering decree that regulates the authentication process of artworks in France since 1981—and the self-regulated authentication systems developed by international top-tier auction houses. Our findings suggest that the implementation of the decree did neither significantly strengthen the market for autograph and non-autograph works, nor radically modify the landscape of attributions in France, whereas similar but stronger trends in prices and volumes are found in reputational markets (UK, US). We also attribute the moderate effects of the Marcus decree to the size and relative depth of the French art market, the concomitant globalization of the art trade and the development of technical art history, compliance mechanisms and legal compliance costs. Our results are supported by empirical evidence from a data set composed of 15th- and 16th-century Flemish paintings auctioned between 1972 and 2015 in a regulated market (FR), but also in reputational markets (UK, US, and other European countries).

The Colors of the Butterfly Wings: Non-Invasive Microanalytical Studies of Hand-Coloring Materials in 19th-Century Daguerreotypes

The public expected color from the early photographic images, yet, daguerreotypes—the first commercially available photographic process—failed to register the natural colors. Daguerreotypists developed several coloring methods to solve this inconvenience after 1840. Scientific analyses of the hand-colored daguerreotypes are limited, and the primary information sources available are manuals and patents. This study aims to contribute to the knowledge of hand-coloring techniques, which impacts conservation practices, mainly the cleaning procedures and complements technical art history investigations. We studied nine colored daguerreotypes with a non-invasive methodology based on three spectroscopic techniques: X-ray fluorescence (XRF), micro-Raman spectroscopy (μ-Raman), and micro-Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy in reflection mode (μ-rFTIR). The results revealed the different colorants and some of their mixtures employed by the colorist. It also adds information regarding the photographic production of three studios: Désiré François Millet, active in Paris between 1840 and 1868; Antoine Claudet (1797–1867), active in London; and the James E. McClees and Washington Lafayette Germon studio, operative between 1846 and 1855 in Philadelphia, USA. These technical details constitute a helpful comparison to future studies on Daguerreian studios and colored daguerreotypes.

Art in Translation: Parchment, Parchemin, Pergament: 18th-, 19th-, and 20th Century Authors on the History and Manufacture of Parchment (Issue 13.4, 2021)

ABSTRACT Art in Translation (AIT, www.artintranslation.org) is a quarterly e-journal that publishes scholarly art historical texts in English translation. Issue 13.4 (2021) features four texts about parchment and marks AIT’s inaugural foray into technical art history. The works, authored between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, were penned by authors possessing either comprehensive theoretical knowledge or direct practical experience. The selection of texts was informed by conservation and biocodicology experts. The translations were completed by Gay McAuley, Caroline Danforth, and Andrew Griebeler with considerable feedback and assistance from a variety of experts. Collectively, these translations make fascinating and significant works about parchment’s history, manufacture, and use more accessible for generations to come.

Building a material record of Singaporean art through technical art history: a case study of the paintings of Cheong Soo Pieng

With a greater awareness of the importance of context-driven research, there has been an emergence of technical art history studies of works of art from Southeast Asia. This article begins with an overview of the conservation research landscape in Singapore and discusses some of the key challenges which need to be overcome, such as a lack of a robust artist materials dataset and limited local resources for technical examination. Using a structured data collection methodology, data generated from various primary examination techniques were analysed cross-comparatively and the article presents a case study of the investigation of 59 works of art by a pioneering Singaporean artist, Cheong Soo Pieng (1917–1983). Patterns and trends from the study offer insights into the artist’s practice, including an incorporation of local materials marouflaged into traditional canvas preparation techniques. The findings report on the assimilation of art practices and localisation of Western art influences in Soo Pieng’s work, whilst demonstrating that art practices in Southeast Asia are not necessarily a product of Western colonisation. Understanding the artist’s materials and techniques enables the expansion of material knowledge and can serve as an anchor for future study of works of art between the 1940s and 1980s.

A transparent dialogue between iconography and chemical characterisation: a set of foreign stained glasses in Portugal

This work presents the first results of the iconographic study and analytical characterisation of a set of four stained-glass panels that are part of the collection of National Palace of Pena (Sintra, Portugal). These panels were collected by the King Ferdinand II in the mid-nineteenth century, for his main residence the Palace of Necessidades (Lisbon, Portugal), and only first presented to the general public in 2011. This study contributes with the knowledge of Technical Art History and Heritage Science to a better and deeper understanding of their history, materials and techniques used in the production, where an art-historical and a scientific approach are applied to attribute their origins. Based on the analysis of the formal and stylistic characteristic of the panels, it is proposed that the drawings used for the production of three of these panels may be based on the design and painting being carried out in the same workshop, and that the four panels have the same provenance (Germany). The composition of the glass and grisaille was determined and colourising elements were identified. Through this approach, conclusive correlation between the analysed glasses was possible: all are calcium rich or calcium–potassium rich types, and the results also suggest that the same source of silica was used for their production. A typical mixture of glass and lead oxide was found in the grisaille applied on the painted panels. However, less usual was the use of a copper oxide pigment for the black grisaille. All these findings support the proposals made regarding provenance and production period (fifteenth century).

Bringing Together the Digital with Research, Teaching, and Conservation

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum recognizes the increasing importance and use of Digital Humanities (DH) in Holocaust research, teaching, and conservation. To that end, the Museum instituted the Material Culture and the Holocaust Initiative (MCHI) in 2018 to explore the state-of-the-art approaches in material-culture research that could create new opportunities for Holocaust scholars, teachers, and conservators. MCHI requires large-scale collaboration to bring in a wide range of expertise from across the institution and beyond. MCHI explores the nexus of historical knowledge, technical art history, conservation, and archeological practices within emerging technologies. Specifically, the Initiative is investigating how digital collection and representation of artefacts can aid Holocaust scholars, teachers, and conservators in their work, recognizing that they all have different perspectives and demands in terms of resolution, interactivity, and capability. The three authors represent three different contributions to the cooperation and discuss the goals, objectives, and preliminary results of this collaboration. One of the program’s initial conclusions is to recognize the need to treat data as fully articulated data objects that can be used for computational and scientific analysis, technical history, and advanced instructional tools rather than as just surrogates of the originals. Equally important, is the construction of interoperable systems with equivalent approaches to data at other institutions, so that computer actionable datasets can be easily combined, mined, and used in collaborative projects among geographically distant teams. This effort would not only dramatically increase the research, teaching, and conservation value of these collections but also level the field between large and small institutions for access to the material culture of the Holocaust and eliminate the potentially controversial collection by any one institution of Holocaust-era artefacts, as well as respect national and international cultural heritage laws. MCHI also demonstrates the importance of pandisciplinary cooperation and the need to collaborate to create shared vocabulary and experimentation with new uses for old and new technologies.

Obras de arte podem ser feitas de algo que não seja “de arte”?

Entre 2015 e 2018, o Laboratório de Ciência da Conservação da EBA-UFMG desenvolveu um projeto denominado Arte Concreta no Brasil: Industrialismo e Vanguarda Latino Americana, através do apoio da Getty Foundation, o qual procurou analisar obras dessa vertente realizadas na década de 1950 a partir dos acervos do MAM-RJ, Pinacoteca-SP, MAP-BH e Coleção Tuiuiú-RJ, em correspondência com as obras da Coleção Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, estudadas pela equipe do Getty Conservation Institute. Por meio da interface entre a História da Arte Técnica e a História da Arte, o projeto produziu um estudo subsidiado das obras selecionadas pela Ciência da Conservação, promovendo novas relações conceituais. Este artigo explora a experimentação como processo a partir de questões postas pela referida pesquisa.

New challenges for frames conservation in Australia: a pragmatic vision of future hands-on training

Frames conservation is based as strongly on materials science and technical art history as on practical art and craft skills. Few conservation training courses prepare students for future work as a gilded/polychrome objects conservator, which also includes the role of a frame conservator. Preventive conservation and collection management activities are prioritised in institutions, and consequently are seen as progress of the profession impacting education and training of conservation students, diminishing the importance of hands-on practical training. The specialised conservation training gave the space to the cross-disciplinary knowledge and development of ‘general conservator’ skills. Shifting trends in cultural institutions and in conservation profession endangers the high-level conservation skills and undermine prospects to undertake future complex interventions. With a generation of senior conservators reaching retirement, it is inevitable tthe opportunities to learn the necessary skills for high-level hands-on conservation will be lost. Partnership and collaboration between the universities and the cultural institutions are proposed in defining the structured hands-on training of future conservators, particularly frames conservators. Through close partnership with universities, and by engaging in the education of future conservators, cultural institutions could take on an active role in promoting conservation to the community, while assuring that the collections will be appropriately treated.

Technical Art History as Method

Conservation science has raised a number of epistemological questions. Debates around time-based media and obsolescence have fostered a growing attention to the historiography of conservation. The problems that it has highlighted are vital for considering not only contemporary art but also disciplinary approaches to earlier periods, particularly the Renaissance.

Analytical characterization of 5,5\u2032-dibromoindigo and its first discovery in a museum textile

The exploitation of natural sources and later synthetic molecules to generate blue to purple coloration in textiles has a long history in the dyer’s craft. Natural indigoids such as indigo, woad, and Tyrian or shellfish purple served this purpose for millennia, but in the late 1800s synthetic analogs, in particular indigotin, quickly replaced natural sources. Halogenated versions of the dye were also created, and some like 5,5′-dibromoindigo were brought to market. Interestingly, these have not been significantly discussed in the literature, nor have they been found in forensic or technical art history investigations of textiles until now. This paper reports the first identification in a museum context of this unusual synthetic brominated analog of indigo, discovered on three twentieth century Japanese yukata. Analytical data collected on reference materials using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, UV–visible spectroscopy, Raman microspectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy are provided to assist with future identifications of this relatively unknown colorant. Density functional theory applied to 5,5′-dibromoindigo was used to confirm the experimental Raman spectrum.

Navigating Networks in the Victorian Age: Mary Philadelphia Merrifield’s Writing on the Arts

When Mary Philadelphia Merrifield (1804–1889) wrote her three major published works on the fine arts in the 1840s, she was simultaneously fulfilling several additional demanding roles. Married to a Brighton barrister with delicate health, and mother to five children between the ages of eight and eighteen living at home, Merrifield’s domestic management alone would have consumed the waking hours of most Victorian women. Her ageing mother also lived with the family, and the education of the younger children was undertaken at home. On the surface, this setting seems an unlikely one for a researcher whose investigation into the authentic materials and methods of the old masters would bring her to the attention of the Fine Arts Commission, convened in response to the challenge of rebuilding the Houses of Parliament after the fire of 1834. Close reading of Merrifield’s published works, together with her own correspondence and that of her broader family and associates, illuminates the complex networks that were fundamental to her ability to research, write, and publish. She was supported by strong and constant encouragement from her husband and collaboration from her family. At the same time, her non-official status seems to have allowed a degree of familiarity in her correspondence with some of the powerful figures in the art-political world, such as Sir Robert Peel or Sir Charles Eastlake, whose support was also key. The pursuit of her research missions on the Continent allowed her to develop her own network of specialist researchers. In the libraries, art academies, and galleries where her identity as a foreign woman seems to have mitigated the social censure normally expected for those of her sex who ventured into activities associated with the male sphere, she secured respect and even friendship. Merrifield’s publications on the materials of the old masters have stood the test of time extraordinarily well. Her writing is not only of note because the author was a woman. Merrifield is still an authoritative source often cited in the publications on technical art history, and her words retain scholarly value related closely to her original aims. Perhaps the informally collaborative nature of her research, writing, and publishing brought the components of opinion and rigorous argument into a just equilibrium.

Digital Tools and Technical Views: The Intersection of Digital Art History and Technical Art History in a Digital Archive on the Painting Technique of Caravaggio and His Followers

Digital art history is currently moving into a new phase. As a result of the ongoing digitization of artifacts and the creation of large digital repositories that bring together literary sources, images, as well as historical and technical data, new perspectives point to data mining and data/image processing. This article reviews some of the main data and image bases that deal with technical and material studies on works of art. The work-in-progress, Technical Data/Image Base on Caravaggio and His Followers, of the Max Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte/Bibliotheca Hertziana (Rome, Italy) is presented within a historical and theoretical framework, describing the establishment of technical research in art history and the role played as early as 1930 by the International Conference for the Study of Scientific Methods in the Examination and Conservation of Artworks (Rome). The state of the art of technical research on the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi, Il Caravaggio (1571–1610) and its critical issues are also sketched out, and the nature of the scientific information provided by digital multispectral imaging is considered within a brief review of the history of technical images.

Colouring of Pacific barkcloths: identification of the brown, red and yellow colourants used in the decoration of historic Pacific barkcloths

Barkcloth textiles made in the Pacific islands and collected by western explorers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries form part of many museum collections worldwide. Here high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) were used on cloths that were highly coloured or pigmented specifically focussing on identifying the red, yellow and brown colorants. The cloths studied came from collections held at the Hunterian, University of Glasgow, the Economic Botany Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History, University of Glasgow. HPLC analysis was carried out following a sequential extraction procedure to minimise changes to the colorants during extraction. A portable XRF was used so no invasive sampling was required. A small number of plant derived colorants were found, Morinda citrifolia, noni (morindin or morindone), Rubia tinctorum (madder), tree tannins and Curcuma longa (turmeric) plus an inorganic colorant, iron oxide. For 40 samples a single colorant was found while in the remaining 12 samples combinations of up to three colorants were found. Madder was found in only 2 samples on the same cloth. The morindone coloured samples were all red whereas morindin samples were both red and yellow. Morindin was used predominantly in combination with other colouring agents. A combination of iron ochre and organic colorant was found in 4 samples. These findings show that despite the numerous potential colorant sources for red, brown and yellow shades listed in the many accounts of historic barkcloth making, only five types of plant colourant and one inorganic pigment were found. There are a number of potential reasons for these findings. Some colours may have faded and so no longer appear coloured. It is also possible that, as some of these cloths were prepared specifically as gifts for visitors or for ceremonial uses, the makers used materials that they knew would retain their integrity over time. Perhaps, like artisans worldwide, experience had taught them that some colorants, although initially bright and vivid, faded over time.

In Dialogue with the Decorative Arts

ABSTRACTHow can museum educators create dialogical experiences with European decorative arts? This question frames my essay and stems from the challenges I have faced introducing objects whose original functions seem to overshadow their aesthetic and interpretive value. Repeated efforts to spark rich dialogue and collective interpretation around pieces of decorative art at The Frick Collection, specifically, has shown that, whereas painting and sculpture inspire responses that are not just formal in nature but also subjective and even phenomenological, clocks, commodes, porcelain and other such objects are seemingly less accessible, met with apparent discomfort, and confronted with the following questions: What was this used for? How was it made? How much did it cost? What is its provenance? Painting and sculpture, especially canonical examples of each, seem immune to this line of questioning and thus riper for dialogical engagement as defined by museum educators Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee. Without devaluing the importance of technical art history, functionality, materiality, and the history of collecting, I will explore how museum education – and the visitor experience broadly defined – is affected by the canon of art history’s hierarchical categorization of the fine and decorative arts.

Technical Art History and the First Conference on the Scientific Analysis of Works of Art (Rome, 1930)

AbstractTechnical studies made their disciplinary entrance in art history in the first half of the twentieth century. This development happened at different speeds in different Western countries. Whereas the situation in the United States is well known, the European context has received less attention. The first International Conference for the Study of Scientific Methods in the Examination and Conservation of Artworks, held in Rome in October 1930, was a crucial turning point for the establishment of technical art history. The French scholar Henri Focillon played a significant role by supporting technical studies within the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation. One of the few Italian scholars interested in the emerging methods of technical art history was Lionello Venturi, who had, during his exile in the United States, encountered the laboratory criticism of Alan Burroughs, responsible for x-ray examination at the Fogg Art Museum. Another scholar who promoted the new approach was Fernand...