Non-Invasive and Spectroscopic Techniques for the Study of Alonso Cano's Visitation from the Golden Age of Spain
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemAutor
Manzano Moreno, Eloisa; Rodríguez Simón, Luis Rodrigo; Navas Iglesias, Natalia Africa; Capitán Vallvey, Luis FermínEditorial
Taylor and Francis
Fecha
2021Referencia bibliográfica
2) Eloisa Manzano, Luis Rodrigo Rodríguez-Simón, Natalia Navas & Luis Fermin Capitán-Vallvey. “Non-Invasive and Spectroscopic Techniques for the Study of Alonso Cano's Visitation from the Golden Age of Spain”. Studies in Conservation, 2021, 66:5,298-312.
Resumen
Alonso Cano is considered one of the most original and brilliant artists from the Spanish
Golden Age (known in Spanish as Siglo de Oro), a period of flourishing in arts and literature.
He was also the founder of the Baroque painting school of Granada. This paper focuses on
the painting the Visitation painted by Cano in 1652 and housed in the main chapel of
Granada Cathedral. This study is part of an ambitious 11-year project aimed at
understanding Cano’s working technique by considering both the evolution of his painting
style and the reconstruction of his color palette. Through this extensive project we intended
to provide necessary scientific evidence to help in authorship verification in cases of
controversial attribution to Cano of paintings included in the current catalogue of the artist.
To this end, the Visitation was included in the project and a series of non-invasive and
minimally invasive analytical techniques were applied to gain a wider insight into the artist’s
technique and the materials used to create his paintings. Macroscopic and microscopic
examination of the surface, infrared reflectography, ultraviolet fluorescence, and Xradiography
were performed. The underdrawings found reveal some significant changes in
the composition of the figures. The results of optical microscopy, UV fluorescence
microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy revealed a quasi-sculptural treatment of the
figures, where the artist tested different pigment:binder ratios and applied several pictorial
layers of different thicknesses. SEM with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, attenuated
total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and micro-Raman spectrometry
were used to identify the pigments present in individual layers. The results showed that
pigments generally available in the seventeenth century were used, including white lead,
malachite, copper resinate, vermilion, red lake, lapis lazuli, smalt, red lead, bone black, and
carbon black. Additionally, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis suggested the
use of linseed oil binding medium.