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.
It could be said that the three pillars of the study of historical art techniques are scientific analysis, research into historic sources and reconstruction. This volume contains papers that address the art of the past through reconstruction and studies of historic sources - either written (recipes, handbooks, workshop notes and letters) visual (designs, studio interiors, depictions of tools and working methods) or material by analysis of artefacts themselves, and by examination of surviving tools and unused materials in their making.
Objects examined include paintings (panel and canvas, icons and miniatures); polychrome sculpture; graphic documents and book illustration; glass and composite objects including early plastics and costume. The arena is Europe with the exception of forays into ancient Mesopotamia and colonial Latin America. The period ranges from c. 1700 BC to mediaeval, Renaissance, Baroque, through the 18th and 19th centuries to the early 20th century and forward to contemporary art. Topics covered include studies of ageing processes; difficulties in interpreting old texts; material as well as virtual reconstructions; the use of databases to increase the accesibility and use of source material; and the importance of selecting representative recipes from historical sources.
Proceedings of the first symposium of the Art Technological Source Research study group: Approaching the Art of the Past: Sources & Reconstructions.
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Foreword
Acknowledgements
Style and technique are inseperable: art technological sources and reconstructions
Ad Stijnman
The Cologne database for painting materials and reconstruction
Doris Oltrogge
Interpreting historical sources on painting materials and techniques: the myth of 'copper resinate' and the reconstruction of indigo oil paints
Margriet H. van Eikema Hommes
Is gold and ingredient in Assyrian-Mesopotamian written recipes for red glass?
Mark Clarke
Reflections on sources and reconstructions
Lorne Campbell
Reading technical sources
Arie Wallert
Munich Taxae project: the Kolberg inventory list of 1589
Andreas Burmester, Ursula Haller and Christoph Krekel
Page-image recipe databases: a new approach to making art technological manuscripts and rare printed sources accessible
Mark Clarke and Leslie Carlyle
Historically accurate reconstructions of artist's oil painting materials
Leslie Carlyle and Maartje Witlox
Cobalt blue, emerald green and rose madder in copal-based mediums as used by the Pre-Raphaelites
Joyce Townsend, Jacqueline Ridge and Leslie Carlyle
The reconstruction of late 19th-century French red lake pigments
Jo Kirby
The Whistler correspondence as a source of information on Whistler's studio practice
Erma Hermens and Margaret F. MacDonald
Representing authentic surfaces for oil paintings: experiments with 18th- and 19th-century varnish recipes
Leslie Carlyle
Sixteenth-century portrait miniatures: key methodologies for a holistic approach
Alan Derbyshire, Nick Frayling and Timea Tallian
Reconstruction of Albrecht Durer's drawing machine
Aurélie Nicolaus and William Whitney
A mediaeval colorant in the 17th century: turnsole
Arie Wallert
Sources and preparatory drawing in post-Byzantine iconography(15th-19th century): reproducing the reverse imprint technique of transferring praparatory drawing
Ekaterina Talarou-Ganitis and Vaios Ganitis
Rembrandt and burnt plate oil: new observations and proposals on Rembrandt 's painting medium
Sarah Belchetz-Swenson and Phoebe Dent Weil
Intrigues and trade in painting materials in 18th-century Havana
Carlos Venegas Fornias and Alberto de Tagle
Imitating ultramarine: artist's economies reconstructed
Sally Woodcock and Libby Sheldon
Blue smalt lacquers on silver leaf: Baroque and Rococo polychromy in southern Germany
Mark Richter
Three-dimensional virtual restoration: techniques and case study
Angela Geary
Reconstructions of iron-gall ink recipes for the InkCor project
Ad Stijman
Compatibility of contemporary pigments in mixtures
Elzbieta Szmit-Naud
Painted skin: reconstruction of recipes for flesh colours in artists' manuals
Kathrin Kinseher
When glass is made of plastic: restoration of the model of the Pavillon Saint-Gobain for the International Exhibition of 1937
Olivier Béringuer