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Let’s be Van Eyck

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How many times have we talked about how diagnostics helps to understand the process of making a work of art? About how it is essential to discriminate an original work from a fake. About how it is necessary to understand the autography of an artefact through the layers not visible to our eye. How it is a fun time machine that takes us back to the very moment in which the artist created the artwork. Is like if we sat next to him and watched him. But what happens if we are the artist?  Indeed, what happens if we could recreate a work by a given artist in the same way that he himself did it?

For example, we can reproduce a work by following step by step all what we know about Van Eyck and his art.

Do you want to try? You could try to search for Jan Bustin, or other artists that shared their experience. 

Some things can only be understood by doing!

(Emanuela Massa)
(Emanuela Massa)
garofalo intero

When do you need an InfraRed reflectography?

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The emotion one feels when analysing a painting with infrared reflectography and discovering the preparatory drawing is terrific

Each time it is a unique experience, discovering a secret kept under the layers of painting, a moment that the artist never thought would be revealed.

This is not needed only when the painting … is not finished! Only in this case it is possible to see perfectly with the naked eye which tools were used, how the painting is built, if e.g. a means of carrying over from a composition previously made elsewhere was used or not.

This is the case of the painting here illustrated  and of the painting on the cover, attributed to Garofalo.

The MET of New York a few years ago, proposed an entire exhibition on the unfinished artworks (UNFINISHED). Undoubtedly an interesting path that allows you to understand so much about the modus operandi of each artist.

But when the painting is completed we just have to rely on technology and infrared radiation.

Depending on the type of instrument and in particular the sensor used, there will be a different ability to penetrate inside the pictorial layers and to read any underlying preparatory drawing.

In the past, special cameras and films were used. Currently the best performing sensors are the InGaAs sensors, which are indeed generally mounted on the most advanced instruments. An intermediate way is represented by CCD or CMOS sensors, normally used by digital cameras, even scientific ones.

Infrared reflectography analysis also allows you to identify any underlying paint compositions, reuse of the support and retouching.

Depending on the budget and the result you are looking for, we will be able to suggest which technique is the most suitable for you!

Art–Test has the most varied and most advanced instrumentation. Our quadruple resolution InGaAs scanner achieves unprecedented results. To learn more, read here.

If there is something to discover under your painting, we will find it!

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!!!SOLVED!!

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It wasn’t that difficult to solve the quiz we proposed for last summer.

Many of you answered, but the fastest was Giorgio Foresti, together with Guerrino Lovato.

Art-Test will give them the opportunity to have a reflectography performed with our IntraVedo scanner with InGaAs sensor, still the best technology in this type of analysis.


For those who haven’t guessed yet, here are the paintings:

Lamentation  by Antonio Allegri, il Correggio (1524)

Penitent Magdalen, El Greco, 1578

Magdalene in ecstasy, (from) Caravaggio, 1606

Martha and Magdalene, (from) Rubens (1620)

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Sweet travels

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Day after day more and more borders are reopened allowing all of us to travel again.

Just like people, works of art have also suffered significant limitations due to cancellations of fairs and exhibitions or reduced activity of the offices in charge of documentation for imports or exports.

In recent years, the transport of works of art has won the right attention in the conservation and protection process. Now the topic is also the subject of conferences, where this particular form of logistics is treated with a scientific approach.

Synergy between transporters and insurance companies, transporters and restorers, transporters and collectors, transporters and gallery owners. Such has been the development in this field that it has been necessary to distinguish between the transport of artefacts of ancient and modern art from that of contemporary art which often, especially for installations, requires a different, new sensibility in the approach to “packaging”.

With the return “to normality” but with uneven limits in the freedom of movement for people and therefore for collections, merchants and restorers, artworks were those to travel the most.

The world of fineart logistics is sometimes criticized for offering services at rather expensive costs, in some cases the cost estimate does not correspond to the final balance. Perhaps it is also for this reason that many companies have begun to advertise service packages with clear and definitive costs.

But can diagnostics play a role in all this? Of course! Diagnostics can support all actors! The transporter, the owner of the artwork, the gallery owner, the insurance company. A super partes checking of the objects capable of producing a synthetic but effective transport document for assessing the state of conservation of the artwork in a very short time. This is especially necessary if the artwork has critical issues that require particular attention to transport. The travelling document differs from the condition report, which is a more detailed document, drawn up and checked at the beginning and at the end of the trip.

A mapping of what the eye cannot see is added to the transport document. For example, for a panel painting, the presence of micro or macro lessons inside the boards could be monitored with an X-ray that highlights their presence / absence. A scientific fluorescence image could detect a deterioration of paints or retouching during a long stay in an exhibition or could highligh the presence of new retouching performed as maintenance. Diagnostic support in the field of logistics is a huge support if disputes arise, wherever they come from.

(Emanuela Massa)
(Emanuela Massa)
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What will they destroy this time?

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Afghanistan: how the nation can defend itself from the iconoclastic fury of the Taliban, including a list of items NOT TO BUY

In Afghanistan, the arrival of the Taliban will bring an abrupt setback to a nation who had seemed to be able to strike a delicate balance.

In addition to the great changes that the numerous restrictions imposed by the new government will inevitably bring, a great threat looms over the numerous archaeological sites and art objects that make up the cultural heritage of a country rich in history. For example the “Bactrian Treasure” a collection of more than 20,000 artifacts, many made of gold, that were found in 2,000-year-old graves at a site called Tillya Tepe in 1978.

Despite 20 years have passed, no one can have forgotten the destruction of the two Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban. There are still discrepancies on what was the motivation, but it is well established that there has been a real abomination against Afghan people and the world’s artistic heritage as well.In 2001 the great tragedy of the destruction of the two imposing statues, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and dated between the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ, shook all of Europe.

In 2001, thanks to photogrammetry, (an analysis allowing to obtain extremely accurate 3D measurements and reconstructions from photographs taken at different angles), with the help of images taken by tourists, downloaded from the web, it was possible to reconstruct the 3D model of the two statues, and to print some scale copies. Recently, holograms have been projected to recreate the impression that the huge Buddhas had to make on site.

But clearly no one will be able to go back in time.

In anticipation of an awakening of the iconoclastic fury, a project was set to protect the immense, and partly unknown, Afghan artistic heritage. Many art objects belonging to different museum collections have in fact been removed from their seats and hidden in unknown places but so far there is no news of any transfer abroad.

In fact, the AAMD (Association Art Museum Directors) has established several protocols for the protection of cultural heritage even providing, when necessary, that museums of other nations take custody of these objects until the crisis is over.

But already on the third day since they returned to power in Afghanistan, the Taliban blew up the statue of Abdul Azi Mazari, former leader of the Hazara, an Afghan Shiite minority, killed by the Taliban in 1995 and considered a hero of the resistance against the armed group.

ICOMM has published a list of objects at risk on its website.

It is very likely that in Afghanistan culture and heritage will be attacked and annihilated. Without its artistic memory a country will be left unable to renew itself. It will remain blocked; it will probably regress denying itself a motivated and, above all, free future.

Even when such an extreme situation may not arise, the diagnostician, the restorer, the archaeologist, and all other professional roles related to the world of cultural heritage play an important part, as they are the custodians of what has been. Their main task is to preserve, safeguard and disseminate with the aim of transmitting the cultural and artistic legacy of humanity to posterity especially when we could be facing the destruction of masterpieces and archeological sites.

With science and perseverance, we try to find a way not to deprive future generations of the beauty that our ancestors created and were able to admire. We can only condemn with dismay, those who with no scruples whatsoever, annihilate all traces of the past.

Alice Fusco
Simone_Martini_-_frontespizio_per_codice_Virgilio_-_Biblioteca_Ambrosiana_-_Milano

Diagnostics meets poetry

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Petrarch (Arezzo, 20 July 1304 – Arquà, 19 July 1374) was born into a Florentine family in exile (due to his father’s belonging to the white Guelphs). 

He had an adventurous life and had no respite in his wanderings, even after his death.

His tomb was in fact desecrated in 1630, probably to resell some bones of this famous poet, that remain unfound.

Diagnostic analyses on what was left, surprisingly, revealed that the skull was not his own, but that of a woman who lived in 1200.

The skeleton, on the other hand, seems authentic: in addition to a compatible dating, it reports some fractures in the ribs, which corresponds to the reported news that he was kicked by a horse.

In the illustration, the miniature by Simone Martini, for the cover of the “Ambrosian Virgil”, by Petrarch, now preserved at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.

The work testifies to the friendship between the two artists and literates, who both attended the court of Pope Benedict XII in Avignon.

This illuminated page shows the Latin commentator Servius, pulling back a curtain to show the supreme poet lying down. He seems to draw inspiration by looking up at the sky, pen and book in hand.

The act of pulling the curtain aside is a clear metaphor for the commentator’s disclosure role.

A soldier, a shepherd and a farmer attend the scene, alluding to the epic, pastoral and bucolic themes sung in the poet’s work.

By Simone Martini Art–Test analysed the Polyptych of Santa Caterina. We will talk about it soon! Stay tuned!

(Anna Pelagotti)
(Anna Pelagotti)
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Learning by doing

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Benvenuta Vera!

After having sadly but affectionately greeted Cintia, our Erasmus trainee from Tenerife, who with her Hispanic and sunny spirit made the days in the offices sparkling, we are ready to meet Vera, arriving from Moscow, and to welcome her.

Coming from an even different training curriculum, specializing in the history of art and restoration of canvases and tables, she has decided to deepen her diagnostic knowledge, an aspect that as a restorer you will have to often deal with.

Thanks to the collaboration that Art–Test has been undertaking for years with Palazzo Spinelli, the demand for internships in our laboratories from this Institute is always increasing. Regardless of the origin, however each trainee, although he or she may come from a different professional and geographical background, is offered to personally conduct the different analyzes foreseen by a diagnostic campaign -after a first but brief and concise theoretical approach.

It is certainly not immediate for an art historian and/or restorer to understand how to use diagnostics. For us artworks primarily have composite material side, and one must not be influenced by the apparent style and/or any attributions based solely on historical-artistic study.

As has already happened before, also in this case it will be a two-way exchange of notions that will be enriching for both parties over the next few months.

Let’s rock on!

Alice Fusco
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In Memoriam

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Susanna Bracci

Susanna Bracci, principal scientist of the Institute for the Conservation and Valorization of Cultural Heritage of the Italian National Research Council was a pillar of our sector.

Her contribution to science for conservation has been important and continuous, her presence has been a point of reference for more than thirty years.

She was open minded and curious, always smiling and positive.

Despite the fact that she had been struggling for some time with a terrible disease, she seemed invincible.

But she left, leaving a professional and human void that will be impossible to fill. We will never forget you.

With Love Your friends

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A package for every occasion

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Vi state chiedendo quali analisi da richiedere? Ecco una guida

When you come across an artwork, perhaps in the attic or in grandparents’ cellar, you may wonder “Will it be original or is it a copy?” and above all, “Can it be worth anything?” and it is precisely to answer these questions that Art-Test decided to create the specific “Standard” test package.

It is especially recommended for artefacts for which previous scientific documentation is completely absent, and it gives concrete initial answers to the above questions and allows to reveal possible recent fakes.

In the specific case of a painting, for example, the package includes four different non-invasive diagnostic analyses:

  • UltraViolet fluorescence (UV): allows you to highlight any retouching present on the painted surface, it is also excellent for detecting previous restorations or additions not belonging to the original painting.
  • InfraRed reflectography (IR): allows you to observe, if present, the preparatory drawing, giving specific information about the technique of realization of the work.
  • Digital microscope: allows you to observe the surface of the work at various magnifications, allowing you to highlight the painting technique, state of conservation and inspect the craquelure.
  • XRF analysis: reveals the chemical nature of the pigments, allowing to differentiate the ancient pigments from the industrial ones.

These analyses can be performed both in the company’s laboratories and at the customer’s premises, as the instruments included in the standard are all portable, thus allowing the tests to be performed directly on site when required.

The package comprises a Scientific Report, a document in which all the information regarding the work is reported, including a detailed Condition Report drawn up according to the Object ID scheme, the description of purpose of the campaign diagnostics, the methods of analysis and the instrumentation used, the results and their critical reading.

This is just one of the five packages that the company offers, in fact, thanks to the vast experience gained over the years, Art-Test is able to advise and think in every situation which is the most appropriate package for you;  we always treats each new work as unique and different from all the previous ones, which is why each new diagnostic campaign will be designed and will follow an ad hoc plan.

It should also be noted that all the investigation techniques available are applicable to any type of product, of any invoice, size, material, technique and execution period.

Are you curious to know what the other four packages consist of?

Then visit our website: Services – Art-Test • Art & Technology

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Why an internship at Art-Test?

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here are those who talk about doing something for young people and those who do it!

Forget about making photocopies!

Coming from two different path – restoration and diagnostics-, and two distant countries (Tenerife, through an Erasmus, and Sesto Fiorentino), we found at Art-Test an efficient but helpful tutor, who between a coffee and an anecdote about past works, she confronted us with the environment of diagnostics by presenting it to us in all its infinite facets.

Never working as an individual but always as a team, combining our knowledge and skills where one filled the gaps of the other, we were able to gain experience on multiple works, during months in which the company put its resources at our complete disposal, allowing us to learn and perform the different analyses, accompanying and supporting us, always ready to help us but at the same time also to be silent observers who from a distance made sure that we would fix any hitches independently.

Furthermore, it was possible to see and understand the internal management of the company and how professionalism and complete dedication are indispensable factors.

Undoubtedly an internship that allows you to improve your training and learn a new one and therefore useful both for those who have studied diagnostics and for those who meet it for the first time.

Cintia Gonzales
Alice Fusco

 

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