En los retablos españoles dieciochescos se despliega un variado repertorio de acabados en el dorado jugando con efectos mates y brillantes, cincelados y bronceados. Aquí se presenta una técnica hasta ...ahora desconocida que combina el bronceado con un efecto marmolado. La primera vez que encontramos esta técnica fue en Madrid, en el retablo mayor de Meco; posteriormente pudimos localizarla en Ávila, Nájera, Coria y Albarracín. En dos casos, Meco y Ávila, se ha documentado el nombre de Próspero Mortola, dorador real. También se detectaron fuera de España, en México, en la iglesia de Santa Prisca, en Taxco. Por tanto, nos hallamos ante una técnica de policromía barroca no estudiada hasta la fecha, que podemos situar entre fines del primer tercio y el tercio central de la decimoctava centuria y que se asocia con el estilo Rococó o Chinesco.
Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati moderni takes up the question of the issues involved in the formation of recent saints—or Beati moderni (modern Blesseds) as they were called—by the ...Jesuits and Oratorians in the new environment of increased strictures and censorship that developed after the Council of Trent with respect to legal canonization procedures and cultic devotion to the saints. Ruth Noyes focuses particularly on how the new regulations pertained to the creation of emerging cults of those not yet canonized, the so-called Beati moderni, such as Jesuit founders Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola, and Filippo Neri, founder of the Oratorians. Centrally involved in the book is the question of the fate and meaning of the two altarpiece paintings commissioned by the Oratorians from Peter Paul Rubens. The Congregation rejected his first altarpiece because it too specifically identified Filippo Neri as a cult figure to be venerated (before his actual canonization) and thus was caught up in the politics of cult formation and the papacy’s desire to control such pre-canonization cults. The book demonstrates that Rubens’ second altarpiece, although less overtly depicting Neri as a saint, was if anything more radical in the claims it made for him. Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati moderni offers the first comparative study of Jesuit and Oratorian images of their respective would-be saints, and the controversy they ignited across Church hierarchies. It is also the first work to examine provocative Philippine imagery and demonstrate how its bold promotion specifically triggered the first wave of curial censure in 1602.
Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) imaging using cluster primary ion beams is used for the identification of a green painting layer on the scene
The Angels Concert
from the
...Issenheim Altarpiece
(painted in 1516) from a German Renaissance painter, Matthias Grünewald. Copper carboxylate clusters inside a basic copper chloride (atacamite) layer have been identified and located in the copper green layer. The mechanisms of transformation of atacamite into copper carboxylates may be initiated by an aging of the paint layers. The combination of the high mass resolution of the technique together with a micrometer spatial resolution and the possibility to simultaneously identify both minerals and organics, has proven to be the method of choice for the study of the stratigraphy of a paint cross-section.
The gold leaf from one of the most important art works of the Portuguese Baroque period, the main altarpiece of the Church of Jesus in Aveiro, currently part of the city Museum and former Convent of ...Jesus, was studied. Qualitative analysis of the samples cross-section was performed by optical microscopy. Three different layers – ground layer, bole and gold – were identified, a result consistent with a traditional gilding. The use of scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) showed the use of a ternary Au-Ag-Cu alloy, with approximately 22 carats. Through inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) it was possible to identify trace elements such as Cr, Pt, Pd and Sn in the gold, and Pb and Hg in the bole layer. The use of synchrotron radiation micro X-ray fluorescence (SR-µXRF) confirmed the presence of Sn and allowed to establish a profile of the main elements in the samples.
Cholesterol (
1) constitutes approximately 5% of the lipid fraction of eggs. The compound is therefore abundant in fresh egg tempera paints. The fate of cholesterol upon light ageing of egg tempera ...paint binding medium was investigated by direct temperature resolved mass spectrometry (DTMS) and tandem mass spectrometry (DTMSMS). Cholesterol oxidation products (COPs) such as 5,6-epoxycholestan-3-ol (
2) and 3-hydroxycholest-5-en-7-one (
3) were positively identified in light-aged egg binding medium. Given the fast rate of oxidation of cholesterol, the corresponding oxidation products are better markers for egg tempera than the cholesterol molecule itself. Cholesterol and COPs were discovered in paints on German baroque altar pieces from the 16th and 18th C and in a 20th C glaze on a Mark Rothko Seagram Mural painting at Tate by DTMS fingerprinting analysis of paint microsamples.
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