In Artists’ Footsteps explores the technical study and reconstruction of Old Master paintings and pigments from the medieval to the modern period. The contributions from experts in the fields of technical art history and conservation reflect a broad spectrum of current research and investigation worldwide.
The authors address the making of historically informed reconstructions as a way of informing the conservation process, assisting in the training of conservators and understanding historical artistic processes. The undertaking of reconstructions, carried out in tandem with the study of artists’ treatises and historical sources, is further supported by the technical study of physical works of art - which is also explored in this volume.
These essays are brought together to celebrate the work of Renate Woudhuysen-Keller, who retired from the Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge, in 2011. Among the contributions is a number devoted to reconstructions of paintings made at the Hamilton Kerr Institute under the tuition of Dr Woudhuysen-Keller, for whom this topic was a primary area of research and interest.
Tabula Gratulatoria
Preface
Rupert Featherstone and Ian McClure
A letter
Karin and Manfred Schoeller
Acknowledgements
Publications by Renate Woudhuysen-Keller
Lucy Wrapson and Paul Woudhuysen
Renate Woudhuysen-Keller: Zürich to Cambridge Ann Massing
‘Hands on’: personal reflections on teaching the practice of paintings conservation
Anne van Grevenstein-Kruse and Ernst van der Wetering
Technical studies and reconstructions
Making reconstructions at the Hamilton Kerr Institute
Mary Kempski
Housewife chemistry
Spike Bucklow
Towards a new English Cennino
Lara Broecke
Reconstructing the exceptional: the decoration of the Wingfield organ
Madeleine Katkov
Aspects of painting technique in the Madonna and Child with St Anne attributed
to Gian Giacomo Caprotti, called Salai
Sue Ann Chui and Alan Phenix
Reconstructing intermediate layers in early Netherlandish paintings
Abbie Vandivere
Sebastiano del Piombo’s Adoration of the Shepherds: on the pursuit of colouristic
splendour in a ‘lost’ painting
Christine S. Kimbriel and Youjin Noh
Reconstructing towards a better understanding: a study of missing underdrawings
in Van Mierevelt’s portraits
Charlotte Caspers, Johanneke Verhave and Margreet Wolters
Does the de Mayerne manuscript reflect contemporary studio practice?
Alison Stock
Further observations on Corot’s late painting technique
Kate Stonor, Sarah Herring and Hayley Tomlinson
Shocking a mock-up: recreating the damages and historical treatments found in
Edvard Munch’s monumental Aula paintings to test materials and procedure
for marouflaging a marouflage
Karen Mengshoel, Mirjam Liu and Tine Frøysaker
Reconstructing red lakes in traditional paint systems
Daniela Leonard
‘….And now you see it!’: the use of digital reconstructions in painting conservation
Chris Titmus
Four weeks of work for four seconds of fame: reconstructions for television
Rose Miller and Christine Patrick
Case studies
Reconstruction of the tin relief decoration on the Thornham Parva Retable
Alice Tavares da Silva
Being Paolo Uccello
Nicola Christie
Reconstructing the preparation layers of a late fifteenth-century panel painting
from Seville
Lara Broecke
Preparing a copper panel for painting: a late sixteenth-century reconstruction
Alison Stock
Perspective: constructing a seventeenth-century Dutch interior
Daniela Leonard
The reconstruction of The Yarmouth Collection
Jessica David
Reconstruction of a fruit and flower piece by Jan van Os
Spike Bucklow
Copying Alfred Stevens’ La Liseuse
Rebecca Kench
List of contributors
