Art of the Past--Sources & Reconstruction

In October 2004 the Art Technological Source Research study group held a highly successful symposium at the Instituut Collectie Nederland, Amsterdam: Approaching the Art of the Past: Sources & Reconstructions. Recipe books, treatises and manuals on artists’ materials, tools and methods are of fundamental importance for an understanding of how art objects were made. Historically accurate reconstructions on the basis of these sources provide insight into the original appearance of an object, as well as workshop practices, and provide models for understanding material degradation. The interpretation of artists’ intent rests on this kind of basic knowledge. For example: Van Gogh never intended the blossoms in his series of orchard paintings (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) to appear quite as pale as they look today. How would they have looked originally? The recipe sources and reconstructions may answer this and help us understand what has happened. The symposium was held to discuss the role of source research and the use of reconstructions in the emerging field of art technological research. The Proceedings of the symposium (edited by Mark Clarke, Joyce Townsend and Ad Stijnman) will be published next year (2005). Table of contents Forward – Henriëtte van der Linden Preface – Alberto de Tagle Introduction – Ad Stijnman and Mark Clarke Chairman’s remarks – Arie Wallert An introduction to source research Ad Stijnman Reconstruction research, some cases and their contexts Ernst van de Wetering Blue and green, understanding historical recipes and phenomena on old master paintings Margriet van Eikema Hommes The Cologne database for Medieval painting materials and reconstruction Doris Oltrogge Levels of reconstruction of black iron gall inks for the InkCor project Ad Stijnman The value of accurate reconstructions to the art historian Lorne Campbell Historically accurate oil painting reconstructions for the De Mayerne Project Leslie Carlyle Cobalt blue, emerald green and rose madder in copal-based media used by the Pre-Raphaelites Joyce Townsend Reconstructions of French 19th-century red lake pigments for the Red Lake Project Jo Kirby When glass is made of plastic : restoration of the model of the Pavillon Saint-Gobain for the international exhibition of 1937 Olivier Béringuer ArTeS database Hayo de Boer Inventory of a pharmacy in Kolberg Andreas Burmester Page-Image Recipe Databases Mark Clarke and Leslie Carlyle 16th century portrait miniatures Alan Derbyshire, Nick Frayling, Timea Tallian Computer reconstruction of the yellow cloak of the Girl at the Virginals by Vermeer Joris Dik, Paul van Alkemade, Valerie Sivel, Jan van der Lubbe, Yuval Garini Sources and preparatory drawing in 15th-19th century Byzantine iconography Vaios Ganitis, Ekaterina Talarou 3D Digital Visualisation and Virtual Restoration of Polychrome Sculpture Angie Geary Whistler’s Correspondence: an artist in the studios Erma Hermens, Margaret MacDonald Reconstruction of recipes for flesh colours in mediaeval artist manuals Kathrin Kinseher Reconstruction of the one of Durer s drawing machines Aurélie Nicolaus, William Whitney Smalt glazes on silver leaf gildings of baroque and rococo polychromy in southern Germany Mark Richter (In)stability of pigment mixtures described in artist manuals Elzbieta Szmit-Naud Import of European painting materials in Havana, Cuba, in the 17th and 18th century Alberto de Tagle Chrozophora tinctoria : mediaeval colourant in the seventeenth century Arie Wallert Exploring Rembrandt s painting materials and techniques: Rembrandt and burnt plate oil Phoebe Dent Weil & Sarah Belchetz-Swenson Imitating ultramarine: artist’s economies reconstructed Sally Woodcock & Libby Sheldon