A group of specialists from the University of Antwerp and Rijksmuseum, both in Belgium, have utilized substance and optical imaging methods to decide why a solitary blossom in a well-known painting blurred while different blossoms in the composition stayed lively. Their work is distributed in the journal Science Advances.
Abraham Mignon was a seventeenth century German painter eminent for his still life works of art, one of which was “Still Life with Flowers and a Watch”—it portrayed a bundle of brilliant and bright blossoms. Tragically, after some time, one of the blossoms — a yellow rose — has lost its splendor and its once three-layered appearance. In this new experiment, the scientists applied innovation to the issue of understanding why the rose blurred.
The specialists utilized a few harmless methods to concentrate on the blossom, including X-beam fluorescence imaging, a strategy that includes customary X-beams to make pictures of items. Concentrating on silt, minerals, liquids and rocks is commonly utilized. The group likewise utilized X-beam powder diffraction, which pictures material by terminating monochromatic X-beams at it alongside a glasslike test and showing the manners in which they diffract. Recognizing obscure translucent materials is regularly utilized.
The extraordinary way that Mignon layered his paints gave his work its special 3D impact, so the scientists utilized these strategies to plan the materials in the layers of the paint, like lead, arsenic, and calcium. The investigations showed that there were two gems that had been framed after the canvas had been finished, two of which contained arsenic and lead because of a progression of synthetic responses. The making of the precious stones prompted the development of arsenolite, which moved to various pieces of the blossom and responded with different synthetic substances in the paint. What’s more, that prompted the creation of schultenite and mimetite, which prompted a variety of misfortunes in the blossom. As well as losing variety, the responses likewise prompted the loss of the 3D impact, making the blossom look level and dead.
More information: Nouchka De Keyser et al, Reviving degraded colors of yellow flowers in 17th century still life paintings with macro- and microscale chemical imaging, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn6344
