The unvarnished truth

de Joan Padgett

This compendium of original essays features discoveries made by an international team of researchers - scholars of applied radiation sciences, anthropology, art history, biomedical engineering, as well as conservators, conservation scientists, forensic art historians, and curators - who examined several paintings from the museum?s collection, including works by Vincent Van Gogh, Alexander Rodchenko and Peter Paul Rubens? workshop. The result is a multidisciplinary, collaborative study of paintings as complex physical objects whose component parts tell us a story about their history. Drawing on the expertise of such an uncommon range of specialists, the thoroughly illustrated volume develops a large number of themes including painting technique and materials, attribution, connoisseurship, as well as issues of object condition and stability. Often referred to as technical art history, this relatively new approach reveals the valuable insights that are generated when scientific equipment is used to answer art historical questions.