Cultural Property Radiography
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Cultural Property Radiography
The radiography of cultural property is the use of radiography to understand intrinsic details about objects. Most commonly this involves X-rays of paintings to reveal underdrawing, pentimenti alterations in the course of painting or by later restorers, and sometimes previous paintings on the support. Many pigments such as lead white show well in radiographs. X-ray spectromicroscopy has also been used to analyse the reactions of pigments in paintings. For example, in analysing colour degradation in the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. These processes can reveal various details about objects that are not visible to the naked eye. This information, which includes structural elements, aids conservators as they assess object condition and consider treatment plans. For three dimensional objects, the computed tomography (CT) has become a common tool, which when combined with analysis can, for example, "digitally unroll" or unfold and make possible the reading of fragile scrolls, b ...
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Syndics Of The Drapers' Guild
''The Sampling Officials'' (), also called ''Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild'' (), is a 1662 oil painting by Rembrandt. It is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It has been described as his "last great collective portrait". The painting is a group portrait of five gentlemen from the Amsterdam cloth guild who were responsible for inspecting the cloth, along with their servant. They were not the regents of the guild but the wardens: two Catholics, a Mennonite, a Remonstrant, and a Reformed Protestant. Their one-year terms in office began on Good Friday and they were expected to conduct their inspections thrice weekly. It was an unpaid honorary position. To compare the quality of different batches of cloth, they used 'samples,' test pieces of fabric—hence their name, "staalmeesters" (masters of samples in Dutch). There were four grades of quality, the highest was indicated by pressing four seals and the lowest by pressing only one. The inspectors used pliers to press the seals o ...
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Altarpiece
An altarpiece is a painting or sculpture, including relief, of religious subject matter made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, or a set of them, the word can also be used of the whole ensemble behind an altar, otherwise known as a reredos, including what is often an elaborate frame for the central image or images. Altarpieces were one of the most important products of Christian art especially from the late Middle Ages to the era of Baroque painting. The word altarpiece, used for paintings, usually means a framed work of panel painting on wood, or later on canvas. In the Middle Ages they were generally the largest genre for these formats. Murals in fresco tend to cover larger surfaces. The largest painted altarpieces developed complicated structures, especially winged altarpieces with hinged side wings that folded in to cover the main image, and were painted o ...
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Belgium
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the south, and the North Sea to the west. Belgium covers an area of and has a population of more than 11.8 million; its population density of ranks List of countries and dependencies by population density, 22nd in the world and Area and population of European countries, sixth in Europe. The capital and Metropolitan areas in Belgium, largest metropolitan region is City of Brussels, Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven. Belgium is a parliamentary system, parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a complex Federation, federal system structured on regional and linguistic grounds. The country is divided into three highly autonomous Communities, regions and language areas o ...
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Saint Bavo Cathedral In Ghent
Saint Bavo's Cathedral, also known as Sint-Baafs Cathedral (), is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. The Gothic building is the seat of the Diocese of Ghent and is named for Saint Bavo of Ghent. It contains the well-known ''Ghent Altarpiece'', also called the ''Adoration of the Mystic Lamb''. History The cathedral stands on the site of the former Chapel of St. John the Baptist, which was primarily of wooden construction and was consecrated in 942 by Transmarus, Bishop of Tournai and Noyon. Traces of a later Romanesque structure can be found in the cathedral's crypt. Construction of the Gothic church began around 1274. In the subsequent period from the 14th through 16th centuries, nearly continuous expansion projects in the Gothic style were executed on the structure. A new choir, radiating chapels, expansions of the transepts, a chapter house, nave aisles and a single-tower western section were all added. In 1539, as a result of the rebellion against Charle ...
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Jan Van Eyck
Jan van Eyck ( ; ; – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish people, Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. According to Vasari and other art historians including Ernst Gombrich, he invented oil painting, Gombrich, The Story of Art, page 240 though most now regard that claim as an oversimplification. The surviving records indicate that he was born around 1380 or 1390, in Maaseik (then Maaseyck, hence his name), Limburg (Belgium), Limburg, which is located in present-day Belgium. He took employment in The Hague around 1422, when he was already a master painter with workshop assistants, and was employed as painter and ''valet de chambre'' to John III, Duke of Bavaria, John III the Pitiless, ruler of the counties of County of Holland, Holland and County of Hainaut, Hainaut. After John's death in 1425, he was later appointed a ...
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Ghent Altarpiece
The ''Ghent Altarpiece'', also called the ''Adoration of the Mystic Lamb'' (), is a very large and complex 15th-century polyptych altarpiece in St Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. It was begun around the mid-1420s and completed by 1432, and it is attributed to the Early Netherlandish painting, Early Netherlandish painters and brothers Hubert van Eyck, Hubert and Jan van Eyck. The altarpiece is a prominent example of the transition from Middle Age to Renaissance art and is considered a masterpiece of European art, identified by some as "the first major oil painting." The panels are organised in two vertical Register (art), registers, each with double sets of foldable wings containing inner and outer panel paintings. The upper register of the inner panels represents the heavenly redemption, and includes the central classical ''Deësis'' arrangement of God (identified either as Jesus, Christ the King or God the Father), flanked by the Blessed Virgin Mary, Virgin Mary and John the ...
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Carbon Black
Carbon black (with subtypes acetylene black, channel black, furnace black, lamp black and thermal black) is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of coal tar, vegetable matter, or petroleum products, including fuel oil, fluid catalytic cracking tar, and ethylene cracking in a limited supply of air. Carbon black is a form of paracrystalline carbon that has a high surface-area-to-volume ratio, albeit lower than that of activated carbon. It is dissimilar to soot in its much higher surface-area-to-volume ratio and significantly lower (negligible and non-bioavailable) polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) content. Carbon black is used as a colorant and reinforcing filler in tires and other rubber products and as a pigment and wear protection additive in plastics, paints, and ink pigment. It is used in the EU as a food colorant when produced from vegetable matter (E153). The current International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) evaluation is that, "Carbon black i ...
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Lead White
Lead white is a thick, opaque, and heavy white pigment composed primarily of basic lead carbonate, , with a crystalline molecular structure. It was the most widely produced and used white pigment in different parts of the world from antiquity until the nineteenth century, when it was displaced by zinc white and later by titanium white. Lead white has maintained relatively consistent production methods across times and regions, yet it has a wide range of applications in different contexts, such as home decoration, art production, and cosmetics. Given its affordability and distinctive visual qualities, lead white was particularly favored and generously used by artists in their paintings. However, most art supply companies now explicitly advise against the use of lead white because of the risk that it poses of lead poisoning. Even after this drawback was known, it continued to be used in paintings and cosmetics. Production methods As one of the oldest synthetically produced pigmen ...
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Fluorescence
Fluorescence is one of two kinds of photoluminescence, the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. When exposed to ultraviolet radiation, many substances will glow (fluoresce) with colored visible light. The color of the light emitted depends on the chemical composition of the substance. Fluorescent materials generally cease to glow nearly immediately when the radiation source stops. This distinguishes them from the other type of light emission, phosphorescence. Phosphorescent materials continue to emit light for some time after the radiation stops. This difference in duration is a result of quantum spin effects. Fluorescence occurs when a photon from incoming radiation is absorbed by a molecule, exciting it to a higher energy level, followed by the emission of light as the molecule returns to a lower energy state. The emitted light may have a longer wavelength and, therefore, a lower photon energy than the absorbed radi ...
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