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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)
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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)

Tentazioni di Sant'Antonio

Primitives, plagues and other current issues

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Not too long ago, the so-called “primitives” were the highest aspiration. Billionaires did everything (even buying fakes) to have an artwork of the Italian Middle Ages, to feel and appear cultured and refined.

Then the decline.

But is it true that they have nothing more to say nowadays?

To try to subvert this perception, the Frick Collection took the opportunity of the temporary transfer of their headquarters to Madison Avenue, in New York, to redesign the setting and encourage visitors to see with new eyes. Not only the paintings, furniture, enamels, bronzes, porcelain and carpets that previously coexisted with each other in sumptuous environments, are now exhibited in a linear and almost Spartan place, but have also been reduced to little more half, and grouped for the first time by origin, type and chronology.

After all, there are many artworks, many images, that we have available online 24/7. What can museums add, what food for thought and interest can they offer, apart from being the physical container of a collection?

Frick Museum’s idea is the opposite to that of returning the works to the places for which they were created. Rather, they choose to isolate them to allow visitors to focus their attention on each one.

To illustrate this approach and its advantages, for example, the case of the panel depicting the Temptation of Christ on the mountain, from the Gospel of Matthew, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, has been perfectly described here.

If instead of moving on, overwhelmed by too many stimuli offered by overcrowded settings or by the thousands of images on Instagram, we are invited to stop and look, and a world of knowledge opens up, beyond the appreciation of the narrative pleasantness of the composition.

In fact, one can learn that the painting was part of the predella on the back of the Majesty of the Cathedral of Siena, dismembered and sold almost 5 centuries after its creation, in 1771. We can discover that it illustrated the always-current dialogue between good and evil, personified by Christ and a devil. Devil who has bat wings, because these, nocturnal animals, half mammals and half birds, represented the loss of clarity, which is an attribute of the good side.

Once a key is offered to the viewer, all the painter’s choices in rendering a subject so full of symbolism become clearer. Choices that reflect the novelty of Italian art, which frees itself from the Byzantine one, for example in the realism of the face of Christ and also in representing these turreted cities, in pastel tones, on steep mountains and almost devoid of vegetation.

To such clues, more layers are added, like those that are the result of having gone through so many centuries and so many fashions. The two angels on the right, for example, were painted later by another hand, profoundly changing the balance of the composition.

Now that you’ve seen it up close, aren’t you in love with it?

Duccio di Buoninsegna is one of the masters that Art-Test had the pleasure and honor to study and therefore who has become part of “Sotto l’oro”, a database that includes 100 paintings from the Pinacoteca of Siena. The first collection of diagnostic and scholar data on such artworks.

During this work, we also investigated the panel on the cover, by Sassetta, the displays other devils, so impressive that they have been disfigured by some faithful soul in the past, to try to annihilate their powers (if you look carefully you can decipher the inscription). And where gold leaves the background and the pretence of imitating the goldsmith to become a true pigment.

The struggle between good and evil is always fascinating. But Duccio’s tavoletta could also tell the story of the pandemic of the fourteenth century, of the plague that annihilated Siena, of the changing landscape, of art in Dante’s time, of collecting and art trafficking at the beginning of the twentieth century, of the change of taste, of the idea of ​​protecting the Cultural Heritage, of a technique that has allowed the works to reach us almost intact.

Not bad for an old, out-of-date primitive.

(Federica Fani)
(Federica Fani)

 

 

 

 

“Sotto l’oro” Il primo database di dati diagnostici
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The Third Way for Museums survival

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How to double your income during pandemic

This past year was a fatal year. A year of closures or openings in fits and starts, of crises and layoffs; in short, a disaster for the state of health of art, increasingly overwhelmed by events. The bitter truth is that there is still no end in sight to the pandemic.

The average decline in visitors to European museums in 2020 compared to 2019 was 75%,  as published by the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO), surveying 600 museums in 48 countries.

But it is not the demand for art that declined. During the long lockdown period, it was often art that we called to comfort us. Many institutions remained “open” online, offering each public a different experience, in order to keep interest alive and active.

Some performed better than others. It is evident that not everyone has been able to face this chaos in the same way, some for lack of staff, some for lack of equipment, or even worse for the absence of a strategy for programming, design and creation of contents. But It is evident that there is a great potential for digital.

At this point, as the pandemic continues, museums will all need to be able to work in a structured way with this new means. As budgets are not forecast to increase, what could be the new business model?

To face the challenge that this change imposes, not only should institutions evolve, but also the general thinking should do so. It is fundamental to relaunch the very idea of ​​a museum. In fact, one of the fundamental investments should be the recruitment of trained and qualified figures and not (only) of trainees who improvise as social media managers, fundraisers, supervisory assistants, secretaries or press officers.

Moreover, and above all, it is necessary to get rid of the association museum = a closed and mouldy place, which lives in the imagination of many. It should be replaced by the concept of the new museum that intertwines with the community, and is a place of local identity where people can recognize themselves and actively participate to events, not just a place where masterpieces can be admired in a passive fashion.

But of course this involves a semi-revolution, and it certainly comes at a cost. How to deal with it?

Museums are not doing well as we have seen. For example, there was a strong controversy, followed by a petition, for the auctioning of works of art by the MET. The New York Times reported that the Met, facing a $ 150 million deficit, has contacted auction houses about potential art sales. The New York museum is not the first, but given the weight of the institution, it could definitively clear this practice, prompting other museums to follow suit, in America, but also in the rest of the world.

Less art to keep museums alive?

At MArTA in Taranto they found an alternative, new and advanced model that we really like and that has allowed them to double their turnover by offering a full virtual 3D experience of the whole collection, attracting donations, and, mostly creating a modern FabLab inside the museum, offering a variety of workshops for modern craftsmanship. 

Wonderful!

We hope that in the New (!) Italian Minister of Culture it will take a cue!

 

(Chiara Martine Menchetti)
(Chiara Martine Menchetti)
(Anna Pelagotti)
(Anna Pelagotti)

 

diagnosticanoncosta

The costs of not doing it!

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The costs for a diagnostic campaign to authenticate a painting may seem high, but they are always a good investment.
Without a painting having positively passed a series of tests to determine the compatibility of methods and materials with the period or the envisaged author, there is the risk of running into a fraud, which can be millionaire and deceive also auction houses of the calibre of Sotheby’s.

In this case, the possible scam that led to the arrest of both the painter and the antiquarian involved, covers a total of over 200 million euros and well-known and much-studied authors, from El Greco to Frans Hals.
Naturally it is neither the first nor it will  be the last scam we read about; the chronicles report more and more frequently of similar cases. The market is full of fakes for sale. Counterfeiting of artworks can however be uncovered and indeed, for example, produced other arrests recently in Bologna

How to avoid risking the unwary purchase? Invest in serious scientific analyses, and at a qualified laboratory, not involved in the market.

It is an investment, not a cost. The cost is not the diagnostics, it cost is not to do it!

diagnosticanoncosta
Rifl_sito23

Happy Holidays from Art-Test!

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Here is the adoration of the Shepherds by Andrea di Niccolò (1470-1480), from the Conservatory of Santa Maria Maddalena in Siena and now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale. We have selected it to illustrate not only the nativity, but also our love for art and our satisfaction for discoveries which are possible through our research.
The results of scientific analyzes tell us much about the paintings :they speak, for example, of their genesis, the style and of the choices of the artist. Seeing part of the creative process allows us to ask ourselves  the right questions on who, why and when. The answers are never trivial and to learn more we don’t have much choice but to keep studying! A pleasure that we share with you .
This artwork is in fact part of “Under the gold”, the database of diagnostic images of a hundred paintings from the Pinacoteca of Siena that Art-Test Firenze has recently developed, in collaboration with the Superintendence of Siena and Grosseto. The database can be yours: here you will find more information (http://www.art-test.com/it/database-it/).

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Art-Test Firenze wishes everyone Merry Christmas and a New Year full of exciting discoveries!
We thank you for the interest with which you have followed us throughout 2014!
Our offices will be closed from December 23 to January 6 . For any urgent communication please contact us by e-mail to info@art-test.com.