lire le livre The Unvarnished Truth: Exploring the Material History of Paintings

This compendium of original essays features discoveries made by an international team of researchers scholar of applied radiation sciences, anthropology, art history, biomedical engineering, as well as conservators, conservation scientists, forensic art historians, and curators who examined paintings from the collection of the McMaster Museum of Art, including works by Vincent Van Gogh, Alexander Rodchenko and Peter Paul Rubens workshop. The result is a multidisciplinary, collaborative study of paintings as complex physical objects whose component parts tell us a story about their history. Drawing on the expertise of such a wide range of specialists, the thoroughly illustrated volume develops a large number of themes including painting technique and materials, attribution, connoisseurship, as well as issues of object condition and stability. Often referred to as technical art history, this relatively new approach reveals the valuable insights that are generated when scientific equipment is used to answer art historical questions. Topics covered include: The professionalization of art dealing; the rise of art history as a discipline; a history of conservation practices in the museum; testing formats and methods, including microscopy, X radiography, infrared reflectography, and X-ray fluorescence; a history of pigments; the shifting dynamics of interdisciplinary practice in museum work; and more.