Author: svenvandorst

Madrid Study Trip

At the beginning of June, the Interns, students and two staff members of the Hamilton Kerr Institute travelled to Madrid for the annual study trip, visiting the cultural highlights of the Spanish capital and some of the major conservation studios. We enjoyed the hospitality and refined culinary traditions of Spain, guided by second year HKI intern Carlos González Juste who lived in Madrid before moving to Cambridge.

Casa de las Conchas

The day after we arrived in Madrid, we travelled out of the city to visit Spain’s oldest University Town, Salamanca, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One of the city’s most remarkable buildings is the House of the Shells, or Casa de las Conchas, a late gothic palace covered with stone carved shells. Hidden away in Salamanca’s back streets is the Museum of Art Nouveau and Art Deco that houses a collection of remarkable glassware, furniture, dolls and paintings by Ignacio Zuloaga.

The Crown of thorns

Our first studio visit took us to the headquarters of the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España (Cultural Heritage of Spain), located on the outskirts of the city. The circular building is one of the most remarkable architectural structures of the 1960’s, and is nicknamed “the Crown of Thorns”. After visiting the entrance hall, library and rooftop terrace we were guided around the sculpture and painting conservation departments, as well as the laboratories. We were introduced to the materials and techniques used in the making of traditional Spanish baroque sculptures, like the laying-in of glass eyes, use of ivory teeth and genuine hair in the representation of saints.

Hidden studios

In one of the narrow streets in the centre of Madrid lies the private conservation studio ICONO I&R S.C. We were guided around by co-owner and conservator Rafael Romero Asenjo, specialist on 17th century Spanish still-lives, some of which we admired while touring the studio. At the end of this exciting day, we walked to another hidden gem, the rooftop of the Círculo de Bellas Artes to enjoy a panoramic view of the city.

Back to School

On our third day we visited the Escuela Superior de Conservación y Restauración De Bienes Culturales, where our colleague Carlos trained as a conservator. We were introduced to the four year BA- and one year Master program and guided around the studios housed in a 17th century palace. In the wall-painting conservation studio , a monumental canvas painting was currently being treated. The numerous bullet holes that perforated the painting were a reminder of the violent civil war that raged through Spain in the 1930’s. Other highlights of our visit included a roman pillar with ancient graffiti, traditional Spanish fans, paintings on glass supports and the challenging support treatments in the panel paintings studio.

In his Majesty’s service

Inside the magnificent Palacio Real de Madrid are located the conservation studios and Royal workshop of the King. We walked through a long corridor with a seemingly infinite amount of doors on either side. Behind every door was housed a different studio: clocks, paper and book, painting, metal…

The first room we entered was the studio responsible for the maintenance and repair of the ca.700 clocks, tower bells, music boxes and organ pieces dispersed over the Royal palaces. The specialist skills required for this work takes many years of practice, and has unfortunately become a dying trade.

In one of the studios, we saw a rare piece of royal transport history, the litter used by the elderly Emperor Charles V. After visiting paper and book conservation as well as frame conservation, we arrived at the studio designated for the treatment of small scale paintings. On the easel stood a delightful Madonna and Child by Quinten Massys which was in the process of having its varnish removed. The conservators often work on location for larger pieces, like the treatment of the monumental Crucifixion by Rogier van der Weyden kept at the Escorial Palace. Just next to the Royal Quarters, right on the first floor of the Palacio Real, a painting conservator was finishing the treatment of several large pieces by the neoclassical painter Anton Raphael Mengs, a favourite of Charles III of Spain.

The surface of Guernica 

Spain’s national museum of 20th century art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, houses a world renowned collection of modern art. The most enigmatic work of its collection is Pablo Picasso’s magnum opus: Guernica. A team of conservators and computer technicians have recently completed an imaging project, scanning the monumental canvas in high resolution. This makes the monitoring and studying of the painting’s fragile surface much easier for conservators and art historians. The team of 22 conservators are mainly involved in the loan requests the museum receives, preparing paintings for transport and assessing their condition. Most treatments are limited to stabilising the artwork and minimal intervention, as modern and contemporary artworks present challenges the conservation world has not fully mastered yet.

Garden of Earthly Delights

The Museo Nacional del Prado is a true garden of delights for the art lover, where the walls are adorned with works by Titian, Van der Weyden, Rubens, Velázquez and Goya. The conservation studios have recently been moved to the museums new extension, the former monastery of San Jerónimo el Real. We were shown some of the panel support systems that were developed by the Panel Painting Initiative, a project that was conducted with the help of the Getty Conservation Institute. After discussing some of the treatments, we moved to the museum’s laboratory. The imaging facilities and analytical techniques employed by the scientists are tailored to answer specific questions asked by curators and conservators. In recent years, the laboratory has conducted ground-breaking work on the analysis of historic materials used in Spanish paintings, especially the composition of ground layers.

*For security reasons, no photos were allowed to be taken during the tour*

Following the studio visit, we went to see the blockbuster exhibition on Hieronymus Bosch, better known in Spain as El Bosco, and an exhibition on the French baroque artist Georges de La Tour.

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The Hamilton Kerr Institute at the Bosch Exhibition (© Page)

The ghost of El Greco

On Friday we took the train to the nearby city of Toledo, a medieval stronghold which history goes back to Roman times. The astonishing buildings and structures across the city are a reminder of Toledo’s complex cultural and religious history. The Cathedral of Saint Mary of Toledo houses many 15th century altarpieces and the recently restored Disrobing by El Greco. The artist lived in Toledo for most of his life and many of his paintings have been preserved in Toledo’s churches and monasteries. In the Santo Domingo el Antiguo, the local nun pointed out a hole in the floor, where the artist is supposedly buried. Before we travelled back to Madrid we acquired a few bags of the famous Toledo marzipan, in the hope to make it last until we were back to England.

Our study trip to Madrid, on top of being sunny and full of delicious food, was an absolute delight as there were so many beautiful artworks and buildings to enjoy. The Bosch exhibition was everyone’s favourite, and we would like to encourage people to kill two birds with one stone by going to see it when you visit Madrid, as many of the paintings belonging to the Prado, such as the Earthy Delights, will never travel in order to preserve the condition of these masterpieces.

Sven van Dorst – 2nd year Post Graduate Intern at the Hamilton Kerr Institute

About the author

Sven Van Dorst graduated magna cum laude at the Artesis University College Antwerp (Belgium) in 2012, majoring in painting conservation and restoration. The following two years he worked on several projects at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp and as a freelance conservator and painter. Sven commenced a two-year postgraduate internship at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in 2014. Working on several Dutch and Flemish paintings by Rubens, de Fromantiou and van de Cappelle, as well as an Italian cassone and a quattrocento panel painting.

Recently Sven published an article on the technique of Antwerp flower painters for the catalogue of the exhibition Power Flower: Foral still lifes in the Netherlands at the Antwerp Rockoxhuis Museum. At the moment the results of his research project on the flower painter Daniel Seghers are on display in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, and will be published in the upcoming Hamilton kerr Bulletin 2016. The author has previously contributed articles to Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen (OKV), CeROArt and the BRK/APROA –bulletin.

To contact Sven: svd30@cam.ac.uk

Reconstructing a 17th century Flemish flower painting

In 2014, I started a research project at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, studying the painting technique of the seventeenth century flower painter Daniël Seghers (Antwerp 1590-1661).[1] One of the master’s flower pieces kept at the Fitzwilliam Museum was studied in depth using modern imaging techniques and paint analysis. These findings were used to paint a reconstruction of the painting, emulating the original materials and techniques as faithfully as possible. When painting the reconstruction, the ageing that has affected the paint and varnish on the original painting was disregarded. The result of this step-by-step reconstruction shows how the painting was created and how it would have looked when it left the artist’s studio. The reconstruction will be on show at the Fitzwilliam Museum in June as part of the Hamilton Kerr Institute’s 40th anniversary display.

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Painting the reconstruction in the HKI studio’s (© van Dorst)

The original

The Vase of Flowers, kept at the Fitzwilliam Museum, is a beautiful example of Seghers’ colourful flower arrangements. When the painting was examined, an unfinished flower piece was discovered on the reverse of the copper support. This is possibly the only surviving flower painting of the period that is left in the dead-colouring stage, it is therefore an invaluable source for the study of the genre. The dead-colouring is the first step of the painting process, when the artist defines the composition. These abstract looking shapes are also present underneath the finished flower piece, and can be seen with the naked eye to a certain extent, or more clearly with the use of infrared imaging techniques.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Palette

The range of pigments Seghers employed fall firmly into the mainstream of painting practices in the Low Countries during the seventeenth century.[2] The artist’s pallet contains natural earth pigments, manufactured colours like lead white, and a few precious pigments like ultramarine blue, made from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. In preparation for painting the reconstruction, a range of historic pigments were ground in oil; the dry pigment powder was placed on a glass slab and the required amount of drying oil was added. This was mixed into a paste and ground with a glass muller to form a homogeneous paint. The consistency of the paint could be altered by adding some chalk or boiled linseed oil. The paint was kept in glass containers and used throughout the whole process of painting.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Support and ground layer

Like the Fitzwilliam painting, the reconstruction is executed on a thin copper panel. The smooth surface of the copper support allows fine detailing, characteristic of seventeenth century Flemish and Dutch flower pieces. Following historic practices, the surface of the copper plate was roughened and rubbed with garlic thus achieving better adhesion between the smooth support and the paint layers. The support was covered with a ‘ground’ or preparatory surface; the grey colour was applied quite thickly, with brushstrokes running in different directions. The preparatory layer consists of a mixture of lead white, charcoal black, raw umber and some chalk.

The dead-colouring

After the ground layer had dried the most important flowers were positioned using coloured plains, this stage is called dead-colouring. IR images of the Vase of Flowers made it possible to look through the paintlayers and see the shapes the artist laid in during the dead-colouring stage. The unfinished composition on the reverse of the painting helped to interpreting the IR images. First the flowers were positioned in bright colours; pink, red, white and yellow. Then a thin green scumble was applied in the centre and finally the dark background and tabletop were painted in. Whilst the paint was still wet, the edges of the different elements were blended in with a brush to create soft transitions. The paint mixtures are not complex, the reds consists mainly of red lead and vermillion, whilst the yellow is made up of lead-tin-yellow and some lead white. The pink colour was achieved by mixing lead white, madder (red lake) and a small amount of red lead.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Final painting

Seghers only needed a single paintlayer on top of the dead-colouring to model his flowers. The large flowers were painted on top of the bright underlayer, while the small flowers were painted directly on top of the dark background. The bright underlayer plays a key role in the final result. The vibrant colour of the red rose, for example, was achieved by applying a semi-transparant red lake on top of the red dead-colouring. The egg shape underneath the tulip is still visible in the final result, it is placed on the lighter side of the flower, whilst the shadow side was painted on top of the dark background. This way it was possible to create astonishing pictorial effects in a limited amount of time. Because the painting was executed in only one layer, on top of the dead-colouring, the brushwork and paint handling had to be executed with great care. The brushstrokes follow the shape of the flowers, giving a feeling of three dimensions. This aspect of the painting was especially difficult to imitate during the reconstruction because the consistency of the paint had to be adjusted to improve the paint handling.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Finishing touches  

In the last stage the artist added the insects to his flower arrangement. The confidence with which the butterflies were executed is astonishing. Some of the details on the wings were achieved by scratching into the wet paint, uncovering the dark colour of the background. I could only achieve a similar level of detail by using loups. Once the paint had dried a varnish was applied on top of the painting to saturate the colours.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Reflecting on the effects of ageing

Comparing the original with the reconstruction makes it clear we look at Old Master paintings through a window of distorted glass, often without being aware of it.[3] The layers of fragile material that make up a work of art are all subject to change and decay. By painting this reconstruction I want to show how this work would have looked when it left the artist’s studio almost 400 years ago.

Sven van Dorst – 2nd year Post Graduate Intern at the Hamilton Kerr Institute

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The finished reconstruction and original side by side (© van Dorst)

About the author

Sven Van Dorst graduated magna cum laude at the Artesis University College Antwerp (Belgium) in 2012, majoring in painting conservation and restoration. The following two years he worked on several projects at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp and as a freelance conservator and painter. Sven commenced a two-year postgraduate internship at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in 2014. Working on several Dutch and Flemish paintings by Rubens, de Fromantiou and van de Cappelle, as well as an Italian cassone and a quattrocento panel painting.

Recently Sven published an article on the technique of Antwerp flower painters for the catalogue of the exhibition Power Flower: Foral still lifes in the Netherlands at the Antwerp Rockoxhuis Museum. The author has previously contributed articles to Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen (OKV), CeROArt and the BRK/APROA –bulletin.

To contact Sven: svd30@cam.ac.uk

[1] van Dorst, S., “Daniël Seghers: Phenix of Flowerpainters”, in Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin, 2016. (Upcoming)

[2] The artists’ palette and materials were studied using several analytical techniques. Chemical elements were identified using X-ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) and Ma-XRF scanning to indicate the presence of certain (mainly inorganic) pigments. The layer structure of the paint was studied using cross section analysis. Small paint samples reveal the sequence of paint layers and made it possible to see the individual pigment-particles that make up the various strata. The cross sections were analysed with scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) to enable more detailed identification of individual pigment particles in the paint mixture.

[3] For more information on the ageing of paintings consult Paul Taylor’s Condition: The Ageing of Art , 2015.