Revealing art secrets with science

Science for art is a relatively recent discipline which, in just a few decades, has involved most of the experimental sciences in a number and variety of applications for works of art. Chemistry and physics help conserve works of art, but more than this, they also help to understand them better. Diagnostics in particular makes it possible to discover what is hidden under a layer of paint to uncover important evidence for dating, attribution and the technique and creative process of the artist. 

In 1956 John Walker published a composite x – radiograph of the “Feast of the Gods” that revealed its original appearance as finished by Bellini, with figures seated in front of a forest with the tree trunks extending across the entire width of the picture. Walker was thus able to modify Vasari’s claim that Titian completed Bellini’s picture y demonstrating that the younger artist has actually repainted the left side of a finished landscape.

X-ray and infrared examination of the panel has revealed an earlier landscape composition, rotated 180 degrees, with a seated youth asleep with his head propped on his hand in a similar pose. As David Brown hash shown, this pose is an almost exact reflection of the central figure in a comparable subject much beloved in the Renaissance, namely, the dream of Hercules or Hercules and the Crossroads often found on cassone panels, like one attributed to Giacomo Pacchiarotto in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Cariani’s “Concert”, now in the National Gallery of Art, came into light only in the 1960s, when it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Any interpretation of Cariani’s picture must proceed from the fact that it does not represent a vocal ensemble. All three figures, to judge from their individualized features, must be portraits, though the sitters have yet to be identified. Most impressive is the corpulent musician, who bursts on the scene, separating the tutor from his aristocratic young pupil. In his bulk, extravagant hat, and perhaps too-passionate search for inspiration, the musician in the Washington canvas, in common with its realistic style, would seem to be a critique of the elevated type of musical picture Cariani encountered in Venice.

The "Piccolo" is a small violin, authentic piece in all its parts by the Cremonese violinmaker Lorenzo Storioni (1744-1816), proven by an cartouche of the author. In addition of its important value as an object of study and typical exemplary of the work of Storioni, the instrument is of particular interest because of the author has not been represented until now in Cremona, international center of knowledge with its Museum of the Violin and the Cultural District of Violinmaking.

The project involves studying the history, organology and philology of the instrument, alongside diagnostic work to examine the violin’s materials and construction techniques and finally the restoration of the instrument by renowned violin restorers, before the instrument joins the permanent collection at the Museo del Violino, Cremona, Italy (April 2019).

The project and the restoration work also provide an extremely valuable learning opportunity for students on the conservation and restoration of musical instruments course, the only one of its type in Italy. This initiative, of extremely high cultural and scientific value, has seen the Foundation working with the Municipality of Cremona and the Museo del Violino to purchase, study, restore and exhibit Lorenzo Storioni’s small violin.