Paint like an Egyptian

Every painter has a process, but the painstaking revisions and countless tiny edits are invisible to those who only see the final product. In a study published today in PLOS ONE , researchers used x-rays to reveal how 3000-year-old paintings inside Egypt’s Theban Necropolis unfolded step by step . The findings hint at the creative process used to produce these ancient masterworks. Applying the x-ray method to ancient Egyptian wall paintings “is really a game changer,” says Marine Cotte, a chemist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, who previously collaborated with the study’s authors but was not involved with this work. In recent years, scientists and art historians around the world have teamed up to use a technology known as x-ray fluorescence to identify paint colors and traced lines buried beneath the surface of famous works of art. Every paint color has a distinct chemical composition. By bombarding paintings with x-rays and measuring how they are absorbed, scientists can fingerprint the pigments both at the surface and below. The technique allows scientists to see the mistakes artists covered up, as well as the layer-by-layer iterations that resulted in famous end results. Most of this work has happened in museums or laboratories, where smaller, portable objects can be brought to the machine. That’s tough to do with paintings on the wall of an underground tomb. So, using two portable x-ray machines, an interdisc...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news