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Shedding "light"
The idea
In 2014, scientists and art conservators from the Phillips Collection, the National Gallery of Art, Cornell University and the Winterthur Museum discovered the form of a man under the main painting of a Picasso, using infrared technology! More specifically, a bearded man wearing a bow tie and supporting his head with his hand, appears beneath the famous Picasso’s painting “The blue room”
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Room_(Picasso)].
However, this is not the first time that a hidden image has been revealed beneath a painter's artwork. Another example is one of the most famous paintings of the Italian painter Caravaggio, "Bacchus", where experts using infrared technology found that there was a self-portrait of the artist himself beneath the main painting.
Technology and modern imaging techniques are constantly revealing new elements and hidden details of artworks, and thus constantly changing the way we perceive art.
So, this work aims to combine our students' love for both art and science. Learning about modern imaging techniques, students understand the interaction of light with matter, get familiar with applications of basic principles of Physics in practice and finally realize the interdisciplinary nature of scientific knowledge.
Ultraviolet light
Areas of retouching and pictorial additions can be found!
UV fluorescence imaging is based on the property of certain pigments to fluoresce in the visible region of the spectrum after excitation with ultraviolet radiation (300nm-400nm). Varnishes, used on the surface of artworks, whether older or more modern, have the property to fluoresce in contrast to any later interventions or surface damage, which appear as dark spots without any fluorescent property.
Visible light
Pigments can be identified!
Imaging using radiation in the visible region of the spectrum gives us information about the artist's work itself, since visible radiation penetrates the varnish and reaches a level below it. This information concerns the painter's technique or any subsequent aesthetic interventions and overpaintings. Depending on the way the sample is illuminated, two ways of observing the sample can be distinguished, which are the reflected and the transmitted observation. The first mode of observation is applied to opaque samples, while the second one to transparent or semi-transparent samples.
Infrared light
Paintings become transparent and we can see what is underneath!
Infrared reflectography uses the near infrared region (750nm to 2500nm). The radiation penetrates the first layer, which is usually the varnish or even the entire color layer and thus reaches the artist's draft. Graphite, mainly used in an artist's draft, strongly absorbs infrared radiation.
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