The biographies of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) describe him as an artist interested in painting the human subject, especially women. In his works are dancers, singers of cabaret, hats saleswomen, images of Parisian bohemian life and artistic. Portrait de Femme ( Portrait of Woman ), the viewer sees a full-faced woman with a dark dress and a black cloth to cover her head. The table belongs to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, since 1937. Already at that time, the work revealed more than what was seen on the surface.
“The Unknown Woman is sitting, leaning on the edge of a conversation, his eyes are alive with interest. The concentration that hears a party that is out of the picture was captured on fast and skillful brushstrokes, which are according to the style that the painter had in the late 1870s, “says the description of the painting, dated between 1876 and 1880 , appearing in the site Australian museum. But “the intrinsic merits [frame] are difficult to assess due to the misfortune of another composition to reveal a dark stain along the seated woman’s face, disfiguring this captivating picture”.
When the work was first presented to the Australian public, August 6, 1937, this spot was already a concern for art critics. Almost 80 years later, a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria with over 200 paintings by Edgar Degas now includes a reconstruction of the composition that is hidden in Portrait de Femme . Thanks to the use of a ray fluorescence technique X, a team of researchers managed to get a picture with very approximate colors of the hidden painting, identifying the model depicted by French painter.
The scientific paper on this work , which combined the latest technology to the study of art, was published yesterday in the journal Scientific Reports . According to the authors, the technique could help confirm the authenticity of other works of art.
Although Edgar Degas did not see as an Impressionist, many art historians place it in this movement, known by names such as Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir. This group of French artists turned to painting in the second half of the nineteenth century to choose as subject the natural landscapes and the everyday, and giving more importance to color and light than to the lines and contours. Thus, they created works which, though less detailed, were closer to the way we see the reality of what the paintings made earlier.
During the 1860s, the Paris Academy of Fine Arts refused the pictures of these painters. Therefore, in the next decade, Monet, Renoir, Degas and many other artists formed an association. In 1874, this association organized the first of several exhibitions with their work, which would mark the beginning of Impressionism.
The table Portrait de Femme and the hidden composition of Edgar Degas They were painted during that period. Since 1922 that identifies the outline of the figure hidden in the frame, a consequence of the degradation of the oil painting pigments.
In the past, an image X-ray had given to art historians some information about the hidden painting, revealing a young man. “Screen infrared the photos also show that this was a sketch drawn with delicacy and care, reminiscent of the classic style that Degas used around 1860, when his work worshiped the old masters of painting” is explained in the museum text . The face of the young is upside down: that is, Edgar Degas painted this first portrait and a few years later, between 1876 and 1880 turned the screen around to paint the portrait
This was all. what was known. Now, the images obtained by the team of Daryl Howard, the Australian Synchrotron in Clayton, allowed to go further and reveal the identity of the mysterious female figure. “The initial compositions were hidden by later works, give important information about the works of art and artists,” reads the article Scientific Reports . “They can reveal the evolution of an artist and be invaluable for the attribution of authorship of a work.”
For this, the scientists used a synchrotron, a machine that sends intense beams of X-rays to the frame, causing a fluorescence reaction, and allowing to analyze the painting to a new level. And they worked with a tip fluorescence detector. “The images of fluorescence X-ray high-definition work by quickly scanning the frame image, which is crossed by a beam of X-rays,” said Publico Daryl Howard. “You need an X-ray detector capable of working very quickly.”
The image took 33 hours to collect, creating a document with 31.6 million pixels. “We are able to identify the pigments of metals from a characteristic fluorescence” also explains. The managed thereby split the fluorescence image 11 images, each showing the distribution of a single chemical element -. Calcium, manganese, iron, cobalt, zinc, mercury, chromium, nickel, copper, arsenic and barium
Then the scientists associated each chemical element to a pigment related to the place where it was located in the hidden painting and paints used at the time. Zinc, for example, the face is in place, but also the ear and hair. “Zinc would be more likely as a white pigment zinc, which became widely used after 1845,” explains the article.
Making this kind of association with the 11 chemical elements, the team defined the palette colors that the painter will have used the hidden sketch. The computer did the rest, a kind of immediate translation of chemical elements for the colors. And voila We obtained a color image of the young woman, where brown and pastel tones stand out, unlike the yellow, green and darker shades of paint that is visible to human eyes.
“The ‘false ‘picture the resulting color is a plausible representation of the artist’s work in that period, “reads the article, which points out the identity of the woman portrayed. “We propose a portrait, previously unknown, Emma Dobigny model, whose real name was Marie Emma Thuilleux, which was a model for Degas between 1869 and 1870 and is described as a favorite model of Degas and other French artists of this period.”
According to scientific literature, the French painter had a special appreciation for this model. The authors argue that perhaps this is why there has been a “dissatisfaction” by Edgar Degas about the outcome of the draft, which have led the painter to abandon the work halfway. In fact, a careful reading fluorescence image revealed several attempts to paint the ear Emma Dobigny, which appears somewhat pointed, the authors explain.
All this information allowed Daryl Howard team point the year 1869 as the likely date of the picture of the model.
for the authors, this technique offers “a much higher probability of identifying the correct pigments when compared to conventional analytical techniques not invasive.” The team hopes that its use will spread and be applied in studies confirm authorship of paintings, since “reveals stylistic information and on the composition of the elements [chemical], whose reproduction is unlikely for people who try to copy a job.”
for now, the new image has observed the artistic changes Edgar Degas between 1869 and 1880 as the “transformation of the color palette used and the technique is clearly documented,” thus revealing a picture that is living proof of the evolution of one of the great painters of the nineteenth century.
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