Painting Pairs 2023 – 24: Collaborative Research in Conservation and Art History – Results Session

Painting Pairs: Art History and Technical Study’ is a research opportunity for graduate students enrolled in the MA in the History of Art, MA in Curating the Art Museum and the PhD programme. It is supported by the Research Forum, the Courtauld Gallery and the Department of Conservation. Selected students are given the opportunity to form a research partnership with future conservators from the postgraduate diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings

Each pairing explores the contribution technical study can make to art historical scholarship (and vice versa) through research on a painting undergoing analysis or treatment in the Department of Conservation and Technology. The paintings are drawn from private and public collections, including the Courtauld Gallery.

In this second presentation, the pairs will each report on their technical and art historical examination in a 15-20 minute presentation, with time for questions.

2023 – 24 Participants and paintings

Nitzan Band and Jessica Raja-Brown, Bearded Man with a Falcon, Courtauld Gallery

Grace Storey and Sarah Brokenborough, Mary Queen of Scots, Royal Collection Trust

Christina O’Brien and Ana Maria Delmar, Portrait of Stephanie Pilkington 1919, Private Collection

Victoria Ward and Tiffany Foster, Childbirth Scene, Private Collection

Sakeenah Montanaro and Bianca Arthur-Hull, Portrait of a Lady, Parham House

Organised by Professor Aviva Burnstock (The Courtauld), Pippa Balch (The Courtauld) and Dr Karen Serres (The Courtauld).

Welcome everyone to Painting Pairs Art History and Technical Study which just in case anyone doesn’t know from the many times we’ve run this program or The Research Forum have run it it’s a research opportunity for graduate students enrolled in the Master’s course in History of Art or the MA in Curating the Art Museum or the PhD program uh who pair up with students in easel painting conservation it’s supported by The Research Forum and The Courtauld Gallery and the Department of Conservation in collaboration with each other so selected students are given the opportunity to form a research partnership with future conservators from the Postgraduate Diploma and or now the Masters in Easel Painting Conservation and each pair very much independently explores the contribution of technical study and how what it can make to art historical scholarship and vice versa through research on a painting that’s undergoing either technical analysis in the department or actual conservation treatment the paintings are drawn from public and private collections including The Courtauld Gallery so it’s a really exciting program wonderful paintings and those of you who came to the first presentation where the pairs presented their ideas for their research which are really diverse and interesting and very much generated by them will know what those paintings are but they will reintroduce them today so the program is now in its 13th year which is a very lucky number and this year we have five pairs of graduate students so I want to really give special thanks to Diego Arteche Grace Williams Leyla Bumbra and the Research Forum for their support and their fantastic organization of this program and Karen Serres obviously and Pippa Balch who work together to provide fantastic paintings for the program and to select the students and do everything to support the program and make it work well so this is a final presentation and like before the pairs will introduce themselves the paintings they’re working on and the results of their collaborative research and after each presentation they’ll take some questions for themselves and then hand on to the next student and finally at the very end The Research Forum have kindly offered for us to have drinks in The Research Forum that means everyone not just the speakers but everyone here uh and whoever wants to come can come and have drinks in the Research Forum which is in the floor on the floor above here one floor up and at the end I’ll just remind you that you can come to the drinks it’ll be really nice so first of all I want to to hand over to the first pair Nitzan and Jessica hi everyone thank you so much for joining us here today I’m Jessica and I’m studying for MA in Curating the Art Museum I’m Nitzan and I’m in second year of the MA of the Easel Painting Conservation today we will be presenting Bearded Nan with Falcon attributed to Lazzaro Bastiani from The Courtauld Gallery collection today we’d like to share with you our findings regarding the physical history of the painting its provenance and art historical context our research aims were to begin by questioning the painting’s current attribution through understanding where else it may have been painted we also wanted to contextualize the sitter’s appearance by using art historical analysis and history of the fashion of the period the painting is of oil on canvas 99 over 73cm its auxiliary support is a stretcher with one horizontal crossmember and eight keys the paint layer appears to have suffered widespread damages and losses it is heavily overpainted as part of previous restoration works which will be further explored later in this talk the old restoration campaigns are noticeable upon close examination mainly in the background however less apparent in normal lighting conditions the painting is stable and displays satisfactory planer alignment with no visible evidence of recent losses the painting was lined at least once in the past the lining canvas appears to be well adhered taught and in good condition the painting is currently attributed to Lazzaro Bastiani by art historian Bernard Berenson who published his attribution in his 1957 book Italian Pictures of the Renaissance Bastiani was active from 1449 as a painter in Venetian workshops and may have worked with Giovanni and Gentile Bellini however many scholars have since disputed the extent of his body of work furthermore it is likely that Berenson only saw an image of this painting in black and white and that his choice of artists was guided by contemporaneous understanding to attribute works to Bastiani if they did not quite fit with his more famous contemporaries another portrait which is also attributed to Bastiani a Venetian Doge Francesco Foscari there has little visual or formal resemblance to our portrait three further paintings attributed to Bastiani are also relatively diverse of the Madonna and Christ which may suggest that he worked more on religious scenes of this type rather than as a painter of portraits it is difficult to trace any consistency across Bastiani’s attributed works and our research has led us to believe that this present attribution is unlikely we employed several technical analysis methods to identify the original materials used to produce the painting as well as later interventions made by restorers to do so X radiography was used to study the support changes in composition and the 1935 claim of a transfer infrared reflectography was used for the identification and study of underdrawing samples were taken from the from the painting for analysis as well as x-ray fluorescence spectrometry for elemental mapping to inform us of elements present in different areas of the painting from those we can infer pigments used technical imaging such as infrared and x-ray detected areas of pentimenti this refers to changes made by the artist during the painting process these changes are usually hidden beneath subsequent layers of paint and show the development of the artist design and work method in this case it seems that the artist had planned out the general composition he was aiming for but was still reworking and adjusting it as he progressed here we see two types of pentimenti the first involves the underdrawing specifically a tree branch in the top right corner appears to have been repositioned towards the left and center of the composition additionally the figure’s face has lines across the nose and two circular shapes under the eyes indicating they were initially intended to be lower the second set of changes relates to the figure’s position and hat the X-ray and infrared indicate that the sitter was originally posed differently the infrared image suggests a different arm placement the figure’s black robe which contains carbon based pigment both obscures and reveals sections of this change these findings suggested the initial intent for the figures pose was likely likely involved more movement and a different orientation later modified to the current full frontal composition here we can see some examples of the technique for paint application signs of precise brush work blending of the oil paint and thin application of paint both with translucent and opaque paint identifying the original unaltered areas of the painting is crucial and in this case somewhat complex due to the frequent history of cleaning restorations and alterations to this painting of the materials used for this painting we could identify certain pigments commonly used in early modern Europe such as bone black lead white iron based pigments lead tin yellow and azurite the ground layer was our leading indicator in attempting to locate the origin of the painting a topic that was debated upon the purchase of this portrait the ground layer consists of calcium sulfate known as gypsum consistent with Italian methods of priming painted surfaces after locating the availability of some of these materials in Italy we wanted to examine portraits by other Venetian painters other than Bastiani a comparison with portraits by Bernini also calls into question whether our sitter is a Venetian at all his beard is long and this was not fashionable for Venetians at all in this period until later furthermore the Venetian cap has straighter sides compared to our sitters’s hat and paintings by Bernini and Carpaccio are far smaller almost half the size of our painting and painted on panel rather than on canvas we don’t believe that our painting is consistent with Venetian portraiture of the late 15th and early 16th century this led us to consider a broader region many artists traveled between courts in Northern Italy and we consulted Dr Irene Brook who advised us to consider portraiture painting in the terra firma and in court cities in Lombardy such as Brescia Mantua and Cremona Gian Francesco Bembo was a painter from Cremona and the style of the hat and beard in this portrait also oil on canvas and date as the 1520s remind us of our sitter as does the stern expression robes and the artist’s similar colour palette the painting has been considered to be from this region in the past and in 1907 it was sold as by a different artist from Cremona Campi Giulio de Cremona at a sale by in Paris a further comparison to this painting by Grimaldi Lazzaro who worked in Mantua by 1501 where it is likely that he painted this portrait indicates some interesting comparisons in terms of the use of weaponry attached to the sitter’s belt in our painting is a holstered dagger and a sheathed sword one on each side of the body we see a similar portraiture trait in Lazzarro’s portrait of a man holds a sword which seems to be tucked into his belt we see a similar trope with the sword in this portrait by Bartolomeo Veneto his portrait of a Bearded Gentleman similarly there is three quarter length view the wide brimmed hat and the convention of the beard which was more popular style in the terra firma compared to in Venice itself Veneto was born in 1502 but he also worked in outside of the Veneto in Lombardy and also in the Este court in Ferrara between 1505 to 1508 a further painting of which the attribution is unknown but has in the past been attributed to a Lombardi artist Girolamo Savoldo as well as to portraits by the Venetian painter Marco Basaiti of the hat and the beard are also of a similar style and both the sitters wear the typical layers of clothing of early 16th century Italy the camichier undershirt with cuffs and the journea mantle with um wide sleeves black was a sartorial choice for Lords and Princes was increasingly the most expensive fabric considered to be the new gold our sitter’s cuffs are decorated with frappature in which edges of the cloth have been decoratively cut and outlined with a dark thread examined together these portraits seem of a type in terms of the fashion of the sitter and the presentation of them including one by Romanino which we will go on to discuss however the styles of the wide brimmed hat vary some with feathers and some without testifying to experimentation with fashion in the period and changing trends as mentioned an examination of the infrared and X-ray images revealed that the hat had changed shape size and style X-ray elemental mapping provided further details on the changes made to the hat the iron map revealed a well defined almost turban-like structure on top of the figure’s head additionally brush strokes visible on this map suggest a deliberate shape construction of the wide brim hat as well as brush strokes within these defined borders appear as filling in motion revealing more information about the hat’s construction however at this point we are unsure whether these alterations were made by the artist or within the artist’s studio or if there are later interventions made by restorers this painting by Romanino who’s one of the leading painters in Russia in the 16th century and likely painted this while he was resident in Padua in 1514 shares some characteristics of our painting they have the same style of beard 3/4 length use of weaponry um but most significantly this the sitters share similar headwear in which case the hats are adorned with ostrich feathers unlike the other portraits that we’ve examined another alteration was observed in the feathers of the hat it appears that the group of feathers were initially just one positioned upright and far less fluffy and floppy than the current depiction examination of the lower feathers under the microscope confirmed that these changes were later additions possibly made during the later stages in the painting’s life time where the feathers seem to have been added on top of areas of damage and loss and perhaps reshaped according to later traditions and fashion trends considering this possibility it is worth noting that it was only by the 1520s that wearing feathers became so common in Europe that by 1573 people who chose not to wear them were referred to as the featherless early accounts suggest that wearing singular feathers was more common and it was only later that the fashion was for more elaborate designs our sitter’s hat has also been decorated with a fermaglio hat badge on some hats these badges were pinned to the headwear but in this case it seems to be an integral part of the structure an example of the rete in which badges were created through silk threads which often incorporated pearls the hat stamp appears to have been made using zinc white either a later addition or a later strengthening of a pre-existing motif indeed then if the hat stamp and the feathers were also not original then the style of the hat maybe more consistent with the portraits we have examined other than the portrait by Romanino locating it in an earlier time period however the hat as it stands now resembles Cesare Vercellio’s Soldato Disarmato disarmed soldier from his 1590 book clothing the Renaissance world this other image here is just to show that there is indeed a falconer in Vercellio’s book um in which case it is a signify of his noble status the painting’s earliest known provenance is part of the collection of Giovanni Battista Costabili Containi from Camillo Laderchi’s 1836 catalogue Costabili was an important collector of Ferrarese painting at its largest the collection held 385 Ferrara paintings out 624 total works our painting may have been acquired from a local Noble Ferrarese family like many others in the collection this provenance leted us to look further into Ferrarese portraiture one example is by Dosso Dossi the court artist of Duke Alfonso I D’Este from the mid 1530s which shares some similarities to our portrait both are oil on canvas and share the 3/4 length composition of the figure as well as the beard hat and landscape with the closely cropped trees in the background as well as another stern expression the 20th century provenance of the painting has helped to indicate the history of its treatment in 1907 the painting was sold by artist um as by artist Campi Giulio di Cremona at a sale in Paris by art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer from there it was purchased by another Parisian art dealer became part of the collection of Ludwig Kappis where it received a second attribution as by Carpaccio um by Raymond van Mal who was the art dealer who alerted Viscount Lee Fareham far to the painting in 1935 who then bought it for £800 Lee did not purchase the paintings by Carpaccio but instead is suspected to have purchased by an unknown master and the painting was then donated to The Courtauld Gallery as part of of Hamilton Lee’s Bequest in 1947 in our last presentation we introduced you to the correspondence between Lord Lee Fareham and Vanmal referring to a transfer of the painting from original panel support onto canvas this technique developed in Italy was rather popular in France in the late 18th and 19th centuries it’s an invasive procedure involving the removal of the picture’s support retaining only the paint or painting ground layers and reattaching them onto a new support based on the curatorial file evidence we sought physical indication to confirm this several aspects of paint of the painting were examined including the X-ray for signs of panel joints or wood residues th craquelure for signs of wood grain and cross-sections from and tacking margins for a scrim a thin interlayer of silk muslin or paper between the original paint and the new support in raking light some areas show texture reminiscent of wood grain pattern microscopic examination of the tacking margins revealed a brownish pink fill material buffering between the original paint and the tacking edges matching with descriptions from the 18th and 19th century of French transfer traditions however the answer to this question remains inconclusive at the moment initial inspection revealed that the painting had undergone multiple treatments corroborated by the gallery’s curatorial file the correspondence regarding the painting mentioned restorations including a reference to the painting being largely repainted by a very unskillful hand an interesting discovery from the elemental mapping was the presence of specific elements suggesting the use of pigments associated with the later period common in 19th and 20th century France and England here we see the XRF elemental map for zinc that revealed the substantial use of zinc white seemingly for retouching damages and losses and strengthening some aspects of the composition such as the clouds in the background as can also be seen in the photo micrograph similarly areas of damage and loss in the blue skies behind the figure originally painted with azurite have been overpainting using cerulean blue identified by the presence of tin and cobalt the elemental mapping revealed the presence of chromium in the top left leaves in this case it is likely that chrome green was used to mimic the other existing leaves in the composition to disguise areas of damage and loss as can be seen in the photo micrographs comparing the chromium based pigment leaves and the copper green leaves these findings align with the painting’s provenance indicating it underwent significant restorations in France before being purchased and brought to England where it was then reworked again moving on to another aspect of our research which has been a focus on the history of falconry and how it’s been represented in Italian visual culture practice of falconry was a pastime of the nobility particularly when staying in rural villas where there was ample land to pursue a sport such as hawking the Palazzo Schifanoia was one such rural villa and in the fresco cycle in the Salone dei Mesi executed between 1468 to 1470 shows a Duke Borso D’Este who commissioned it along with his courtiers with many falcons on their gloves showing 33 birds of prey in total the cycle is a testament to centrality of falconry in Ferrarese court life and elsewhere in Italy at the time from the infrared imaging and elemental mapping we identified specific changes to the falcon a predominant motif in this portrait these suggest a reserved plan for the original falcon that was initially much smaller and less central to the composition although we cannot determine definitively why or by whom this change was made it is possible to suggest that this was part of the same campaign that included the repositioning of the figure’s right arm to accommodate the repositioning of the falcon this change in composition may make sense in relation to other portraits with falcons where it is common for the falcon to be smaller and on the sitter’s left examples of Italian portraits and falcons do come from a variety of regions however um from one portrait by an anonymous Florentine painter to another by painter Schiavone who was from the Dalmatian coast and spent most of his working life in Venice as well as of course Titian’s portrait of a man with falcon a later portrait by Nicollo dell’Abate who was born in 1509 in Emilia-Romana is also while much later an interesting testament to the continued motif of the man with his falcon into the latter half of the 16th century interestingly while this is absent in our painting all of these examples include hunting dogs alongside falcons portraits of falcons are unusual and the inclusion of the falcon suggests its significance to the city’s life and identity our sitter could be a falconer plainer velvet such as what he might be wearing were bought in large quantities by merchants to outfit falconers as part of the court the appearance of the falcon of the falcons themselves in each painting suggests that they may be peregrine falcons um and some scholars have sought to identify the species in Titian’s work shown by their outer feathers white necks and bellies speckled with brown the falcon is hooded which kept it still between hunts and our sitter wears a thick leather falconer’s glove with a field leash looped round and visible the bottom of the painting the portraits we have examined from across the region of Lombardy and the Veneto including cities such as Brescia Mantua Cremona and Ferrara share visual affinities of our painting it is difficult to place our painting within a particular region due to the ubiquity of falconry the mobility of artists in the period moving between different courts and it’s important to acknowledge that many terra firma painters also worked in Venice were influenced by artistic practices there however we can align our portrait with terra firma portraits of men equipped with clear state symbols such as weaponry and of course the falcon in our case given the damage and extent of loss to the original material any treatment will likely be a long and complex endeavor however we do recommend addressing the aged and yellowed varnish with which is currently distorting the intended chromatic relationship of the composition our technical analysis uncovered evidence regarding the painting’s condition and physical history these findings have advanced our investigation into the painting’s provenance which we were excited to share with you today we’d like to thank oh sorry Irene Brooke for her guidance our research as well as Karen Serres Aviva burnstock and Graeme Barraclough for their opportunity to work on the gallery picture we learned so much in a very grateful for the experience thank you [Applause] hi everyone I’m Victoria Ward I’m the second year um conservation student studying conservation of easel paintings and I’m Tiffany Foster I am the Master’s of Art History student who has assisted in the research on this project so our object of study is this panel painting it’s privately owned and its date provenance and attribution are all unknown it was catalogued in an auction as an aristocratic birth scene however the subject matter is unknown the painting depicts a birth scene of a child to a mother in white robes encircled by five midwives the project’s aims are firstly to determine the subject matter of the painting secondly to establish the order of paint application and to identify pigment mixtures and to suggest an approximate date for the panel and to see if it’s connected to early Netherlandish painting technique to meet these aims our methodology was divided into iconographic and stylistic analysis of the panel and on my end it was the technical examination of materials using microscopy spectroscopy for pigment analysis and technical imaging for those of you who weren’t here for our first presentation uh we didn’t have any background information for this panel basically all that we knew was we had an indication that this was from the 16th century and then from the auction website itself we had just two sentences and that was that this was Northern European and I quote an aristocratic midwifery scene it was unclear if this painting was depicting a religious scene or a secular scene and so we weren’t sure if this was depicting the birth of the Virgin Mary to her mother St Anne or if this just was something that was a genre painting so there’s attributes here of a sacred scene uh the white clothing of the figures and the canopy bed but the painting was missing and is missing any clear indications of sacristy there is no halos um or any indication of Joachim the husband of Saint Anne or their kiss of Immaculate Conception which was typical in birth scenes that were sacred of the time however Saint Anne is typically shown in sacred scenes of 16th century wearing white and in giving birth to Mary and the colour white however has kind of a dual meaning it also can be secular in nature so it describes noble birth um so it signifies a link to the humanities and such in entourage like we see here in this painting was typical of noble births of the time however Saint Anne like I said before was typically depicted wearing white so there was immediately some confusion about whether the scene was sacred or secular in addition we were confused about the locality of the painting it was indicated to us that this was Northern but there were some indications that maybe there were some Italian provenances here as well so going into it we compared immediately to northern birth scene so we have on the screen here a similar birth of the Virgin panel by Jan de Beer this one is also 16th century dating to 1520 and is oil on panel much like our birth scene um but and you can see on the screen that the panels share traits that are similar to each other so the panel on the right the Jan de Beer is painted in a style known as Mannerism and it’s particularly evident the style in the modelling of the figures faces they’re quite long and drawn out and overall in the composition the figures are quite naturalized and this is very emphasized in the painting technique there’s an artificial sort of elegance to the scene and the room is filled with objects that are treated in a manner of independent still life-like elements and many of these objects appear in our unattributed birth panel so you can see similarly um the same sort of cups and basins that are on the floor and figures in similar standing so the attendings to Saint Anne and the wet nurses on the floor overall there are a lot of similarities however if we look at these Italian paintings for example this Fra Fillippo Lippi Madonna with child and scenes from the life of Saint Anne immediately these are also very similar so particularly the first thing is in headdresses evident here if we look at the Madonna in the centre of the painting her headdress is incred incredibly similar to the headdresses we see in all of the figures of the birth scenes um additionally we see Saint Anne in the back left corner dressed in white with her attending and it’s in a very similar position to the Saint Anne that we see in our birth scene um much like the Lippi composition in our birth panel her attending her midwife is hunched over her in almost the exact same position um and then just going back to the headdresses and the hairstyles of the figures um I am going to show us this image here so now on this right side of the slide we have something called a maiolica plate um these were really important in birth practices just in the Renaissance in general it would have been typical for these sorts of artifacts to be passed from family member to family member during the birthing process um and they were indications of good luck and uh good fortune to come uh for the family and for for the newborn they often depicted scenes of proper birth um this one here is by Battista Franco it’s called Birth of Hercules and this image you can see again that striking similarity of the headdresses and headpieces and this one is from 16th century Florence and there’s also a clear similarity of the head of the figures and this harks back to uh poetry done by Petrarch which really emphasizes the idea of the idealised woman so these ideals didn’t go away just because a woman was pregnant or about to go through arguably one of the hardest experiences of her life and it was really really important these ideals in consideration that women have these really kind of elongated foreheads and beautiful curls and plates of blonde hair and these really wonderful hair adornments pearls signify purity and chastity and all of this is important in consideration of this uh being either a example of a proper noble woman or alternatively an example of Saint Anne so these women are meant to be again idealized um so this begs to question kind of the region of the piece it is majority and compellingly Northern um introducing but this introduces themes of the idea of the global Renaissance considering the aspects of Italian components um so the Italian aspects occur in this work of art because of Italy’s central status relative to Europe so the Renaissance in Italy is separate kind of from the rest of the Renaissance their techniques and developments filtered out and became popular in other countries and their practices filtered out through trade and traveling artists therefore world art history or the concept of quote unquote World art history is history which takes specifically any region in the world and the understanding in the connection of cultures is is the idea of global art history or how these different regions interacted with each other so this painting in essence represents this idea of global art history in order to establish the subject of the painting based on all of these different factors we needed to come up with a starting point as I said at the very beginning we only had two sentences to go off of and because of all of these conflicting themes and ideas we weren’t sure where to start so we decided that the easiest way to do that would be to establish exactly what all of these objects were just to get a better idea of what we were looking at and how to approach it so we have here on the screen an object map and so what we’ve done is we have placed numbers on our image of the birth scene and then on the right we have made larger screenshots for you guys that are labeled accordingly so as you’ll see here number one was the only object that in our preliminary research we weren’t able to define we looked at a ton of different sources scoured many different books consulted with several different Professors here at the University and we couldn’t figure out what it was other than it just was some sort of long wooden chair on the floor going forward object number two we were able to identify as a swaddling band or a long linen cloth used to wrap the infant after birth these were often used to kind of confine the infant into a shape that they found more appealing after the birthing process number three was a metal basin used for washing the child and hands at any time during the birthing process to the left you’ll see another example of a maiolica bowl this one is Italian from Urbino circa 1560 and you’ll see in the bottom left hand portion of this bowl the same sort of basin but at this point you will see the wet nurse bathing the child as an example uh image number four is a metal goblet usually containing broth this was to bring the mum some nutrition after the birthing process uh object number five is a spouted vessel with an elaborate handle it’s another maiolica object um these ones are just another example of such objects that would be passed from family to family these ones with the spouted vessels with the handles uh would have been filled with water or broth or anything else after the birthing process for the mother to use and to display after having the child number six is a vessel of olive oil this would have been used as a lubricant during the birthing process or for massages just to bring the mother some extra comfort number seven we have a pan to warm water for the basin you have seen the same image repeated on slide three from Jan Steen celebrating the birth so this would have been placed in the fire just to warm up any water and then um number eight is just an example of the birthing chair so this is what our mother would have sat in during the birthing process this small oil painting on a panel consists of a single board of oak the board’s edges are beveled by a plane to facilitate mounting within a frame longitudinal medullary rays indicate the birth scene panel was made of oak likely quarter sawn there are smooth tool marks thinning the back of the panel and other examples of Northern panels like you see on the screen show smooth beveled edges pardon me and similar planing marks made by a scrub plane so moving on to the preparation of the panel cross-sections show a natural chalk ground bound in glue the primary layer are bound in oil and composed of high quantity of egg white confirmed in SEM EDX and tinted with charcoal black and blue and some red pigments painting on a pale lead white primed surface is consistent with early Netherlandish practice interestingly the priming layer contains three blue pigments smalt azurite and ultramarine confirmed during SEM EDX analysis micrographs of the priming layer’s inner loss show the blue blue pigments are not high tinting they possibly added to the paint mixture as a dryer smalt in particular is known to be a good dryer due to the presence of cobalt the azurite particles as we see are large and nonuniform in shape suggesting that they were coarsely ground the azurite contains cuprite impurities and orange isotropic copper oxide found as an impurity in the copper ore cross-sections indicate the primer was applied in at least two layers the second discrete layer containing a high proportion of lead white the ultramarine and red Earth pigments is isolated by an all containing layer interestingly the ultramarine particles are very small and uniform in shape given the historical cost of natural ultramarine its use in the primary layer is unusual it could be French ultramarine this would date upper paint layers to post 1830 further analysis using spectroscopic techniques would be required to confirm if the ultramarine is natural or synthetic there is no underdrawing visible in the infrared reflectogram however the iron elemental map shows a detailed outline of the composition a prominent brown outline is visible on the paint surface in areas like the midwife’s sleeve the brown outline was applied over the thicker lead white paint creating an indentation through the paint indicating it was lightly painted before the lead white had fully dried this design deviates from the carbon based underdrawing techniques of the 16th and 17th centuries in northern Europe aspects of the panel technique align with some early Netherlandish practice but the following technical evidence suggests that the earliest possible date for the upper paint section including the birth scene composition would date to the mid 19th century in most cross most cross-section examines there are two varnish layers above the primary layers under ultraviolet light the varnish layer exhibits a bright blue white fluorescence indicative of a synthetic resin given that the subsequent use of modern pigments is located above this varnish layer it is possible that the varnish layer was applied to isolate the upper composition from the lower layers SEM EDX analysis of a red paint sample identified cadmium yellow in an under layer the sample appears original there is no indication of retouching in UV nor is it an area of loss as seen in the panel surface in raking light the presence of cadmium suggested the paint layers were created after the 1840s when cadmium sulfide pigment became available however cross-section analysis provides site specific information so macro XRF scanning was conducted for a broader pigment identification the cadmium elemental map shows that cadmium was used in the three central figures the basin and the ceiling beams cross referencing the elemental map and close looking in visible light show that Cadmium yellow was often used as an underlayer for example we can see cadmium yellow is seen through the drying cracks in the face of the wet nurse the chrome elemental map shows that the yellow button details on the sleeve were likely painted in Chrome yellow we can see with close looking that the Chrome yellow buttons appear to be painted wet in wet with the iron containing dark red outline and so are likely original to the composition the abraded condition of the pain surface has provided visual evidence that there may be a hidden design underlayers can be seen in losses showing thinly painted passages an abraded area in the white drapery reveals a red pink passage um underneath what could be drapery this was further strengthened by the x-ray images in this area that show evidence of drapery painted in a heavy metal containing pigment in this area the copper elemental map revealed a potential hidden subsurface design the reserved areas left for these figures do not match with the top design macro XRF scanning cannot distinguish elements from different layers it produces communative signals from the entire painting so to address this limitation we overlaid visible light images with the elemental maps the overlay shows that the copper containing passages are present in the top and underlying paint layers most evidently in the floor but it also shows that the central figure left in reserve does not correspond to the central female figure in the birth scene moreover the bending figure with an arm outstretched does not match the birth scene composition it’s much lower in a picture plane overlays of the mercury map and the normal light image show that the vermillion was used in the top design it was used in the flesh tones in the drapery and the copper basin but the area of drapery on the left as identified also in the X-ray as seen in visible light through the abrasion does not correspond to this top composition in act fact the drapery in the Mercury map matches quite well the left hand figure in the copper map this indicates that this figure was painted with red drapery it is unclear what this hidden design could be it depicts two figures one kneeling with an arm outstretched to the other although the outline for the central figure remains unclear there appears to be a tree in the background with leaves likely painted in copper green as indicated by the signal for copper in the macro XRF scan this design somewhat resembles the biblical scene of the noli me tangere ‘touch me not’ in Latin where Mary Magdalene recognizes Christ after his resurrection the Virgin by Titian at the National Gallery has a similar format to this hidden design we have two figures with a tree the background with one figure’s arm outstretched Mary Magdalene traditionally wears red robes and the Mercury map shows that the vermillion was used for the red drapery the connection to noli me tangere is hypothetical based on the evidence we can assert that there is a hidden design under the birth scene indicating the panel was repurposed or the scene was changed by the artist the earliest date for the birth scene composition would be the mid 19th century following this discovery we have to reassess why this panel had been overpainted with a birth scene this remains unclear however in the 19th century there was a revived interest in the Renaissance known as the Renaissance Revival so this was in artistic and academic circles particularly in collecting art and a objects from the period and in regarding art making the quote unquote classical academics what I mean by this is that art techniques inspired by the Masters began to resurface in painting academics that is uh the way that Old Masters such as Leonardo Da Vinci or Raphael or Michelangelo or any of the big names that you might think of when you think of the classic Masters particularly Italian would have painted they would have painted in small thin layers very naturalistically close blending and overall would have pushed that naturalism Renaissance the Renaissance was seen as a quote cradle of contemporary secular culture and the high point of artistic production in this revival of the 19th century this photograph here on the right shows a French private collection with its original 19th century heterogenous and nonlinear organization of the collection so this just shows how heavy and important these collections were similarly sorry this so the photograph shows a collection of art and wears from different geographical regions and periods all in close juxtaposition with each other this would have been contrary to the rigid collections that one would have seen in museums at the time and similarly the birth scene is a visual recollection of generalized Renaissance culture as it demonstrates a mixture of Northern and Italian references we proposed that the birth scene could have been painted by an amateur or a student interested in the Renaissance period for academic purposes the birth scene also exhibits traits of amateur painting techniques with bold reinforcements of outlines lacks of detailed modeling and faces and anatomical precision of the figures harking back to these painting practices of the Old Masters considering the Renaissance Revival of the 19th century in the role of painterly academia we can assume that the birth scene functions as a recollection of generalized Renaissance culture explaining the mixture of Northern and Italian influence and reference the inclusion of multiple women and objects allowed the artist to practice multiple painting techniques and explore many objects relevant to 15th century society these aspects hark back to the idea of the global Renaissance again indicating this piece serving as being of an academic function referencing our object map from earlier the decision to depict the Florentine headdresses the embellishment of the sleeves the details of the objects in the room that combine multiple Renaissance cultures are all indications that this is a close cultural study despite the amateur technique the study of Renaissance culture changes our interpretation of the birth scene because because sorry because Christianity was so predominant in the Renaissance it is probable that the birth scene is actually the story of the Virgin Mary’s birth her birth is one of quote unquote Immaculate Conception that is she was born full of grace or without sin so the fact that every woman is wearing white indicates this goodness and purity of the scene as well we can also contextualize this birth panel into the 19th century which supports the technical findings that Victoria made specifically with the modern pigments of the upper paint layers two objects of furniture have been borrowed from 19th century example examples as they are either harder to see or just non extant in typical Renaissance examples specifically paintings and the maiolica plates which we showed you earlier so again going back to our object map earlier I told you guys that we were unable to identify uh the basket on the floor which we have screencapped and added for you in the bottom left hand corner of this slide so the object which the wet nurse sits on in the foreground has been identified now with these new findings as a nursing chair in comparison to 16 my in comparison to the 16th century maiolica plate which we have on the right hand side of the slide here where the wet nurse is sitting in a very similar position but without the basket we were able to predict that this is a 19th century adaptation alluding to wooden cribs and the role of wet nurses in the 16th century adapted as a wicker basket in the birth scene panel so we’ve added here for you an example of the 19th century wicker bassinet wicker was really popular in furniture in Victorian era and so it is probable that this material was chosen for this adaptation because the artist was unable to find an example of it in the Renaissance examples and due to this needed to find a way to interpret it in his own manner in the upper right or sorry left hand corner we have a birthing chair for you the birthing chair is a device that was sheeted to assist women in the physiological upright posture during child birth so the birthing chair has been used for millennia uh with one of the earliest examples dating back to Exodus these chairs were used predominantly before male physicians dominated the delivery room so this was seen around the globe all the way through the 20th century when it was stopped using and so the example that we see in our birth scene panel is very similar to this example from the science museum birthing chairs fell out of fashion in the early 20th century which indicates that the birth scene could have been painted again in the 19th century when the chairs were still in use we’ve included this example for you because traditional birthing chairs of the Renaissance would not have had armrests on them and as you would have seen in the examples of previous slides they weren’t really visible in examples on either maiolica plates or paintings of birth scenes from the Renaissance and therefore our artists likely felt the need to adapt this furniture because they didn’t have an example from the Renaissance again manipulating this study to what they needed so overall we have concluded that we think that this is an academic piece combining aspects of the global Renaissance in tune with the Renaissance Revival of 19th century perfect last but not least we’d just like to thank everyone uh who helped us in our research process again we have had a really wonderful time discovering everything we’ve been able to about this panel it was a tough discovery process because we didn’t have much to go on but special thanks to Professor AViva burnstock Dr Sylvia Amato to Pippa Balch Michael Carter and Dr Guido Rebecchini without you guys we wouldn’t have been able to go forward with our research process the way that we’ve been able to and then at this juncture if anyone has any questions [Applause] so hi my name is Sakeena Montenaro I’m the MA Conservation of Easel Painting student assigned to this painting and I’m Bianca Arthur-Hull and I’m in the MA History of Art program so before we begin we would just like to say that due to the time constraints of this presentation we have omitted some information while focusing on the main aspects of our research however please feel free to ask us questions afterwards if you need clarification or any additional information Portrait of a Lady is an oil painting on wood from Parham house and Gardens in West Sussex and has traditionally been identified as depicting Elizabeth Palmer the first mistress of the house the painting is currently dated to the 1580s and has been attributed to the artist William Segar an attribution offered by Tudor scholar Roy Strong in 1966 the Parham portrait is involved in this year’s Painting Pairs program due to a renewed interest in the work thanks to a 2023 article published in the Burlington magazine by Elise Effman Clifford the Head of Paintings Conservation at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco Clifford’s article suggested an alternative identity for the sitter based on a link to a portrait in the collection in San Francisco so the main aim of this study has been to investigate and propose an identity for the sitter in light of Clifford’s research in doing so we have considered the portrait’s relationship to other tudor works of the time technical analysis and the supposed meaning of the various emblems present in the portrait the archival records at Parham house display a persistent interest in the identity of the sitter in the portrait the identification of the portrait sitter as Elizabeth Palmer is supported by the inscriptions on the back of the panel where her first name is mistakenly written as Eleanor so I’d like to briefly discuss a attribution before as we will it’ll be important later on in the presentation when we examine the style in which the portrait was painted so um in 1966 Ry Strong attributed the farm portrait to William Segar on stylistic grounds while in many ways Strong’s tudor scholarship remains some of the strongest and most substantial in the field his style of attribution has proved difficult to sustain with contemporary technical processes and emerging research on artists in tudor Britain attributions to William Segar have increasingly been proven incorrect few confirmed autographic works by Segar exist and examination of those works that have traditionally been attributed to him like the Parham portrait attributions more suited to more prolific artists of the time such as Robert Peake the Elder Clifford’s 2023 Burlington magazine article details the author’s recent findings regarding the recent findings regarding the attribution and sitter identification of a portrait of a Tudor woman in San Francisco on the left her article offers a new attribution of the work to Peake and she identifies the sitter as Francis Walsingham due to an inscription on the portrait’s cartellino recovered during conservation in her research Clifford makes a direct comparison between the San Francisco portrait and Parham’s Portrait of Lady Francis Walsingham Effmann Clifford’s proposed sitter was born in 1567 the daughter of Queen Elizabeth the first spy Master Francis Walsingham she was married three times to the poet Philip Sydney the Second Earl of Essex Robert Devereux and Richard Burke the fourth Earl of Clanricarde importantly the cartellino on the San Francisco portrait an addition made when it was brought into the collection of John Lord Lumley identifies Frances with the surname of her first husband Philip Sydney most likely indicating that the portrait became part of Lumley’s collection before Sydney’s death in 1586 and her subsequent marriages this would indicate that the portrait was painted while Frances was still married to Sydney between 1583 and his death in 1586 the sitters in the San Francisco and Parham portraits share an immediate and remarkable likeness but as Clifford writes the likeness is more than superficial so the woman’s face has been directly replicated between the two paintings most evident in the sitter’s eyes mouth and nose the extent of the similarities is evident when overlaying the portraits either digitally or by the use of a mylar tracing which was conducted by Effmann Clifford the tracing the tracing shows that features were not only replicated in likeness but in proportion as well as the portraits are relatively close in size the use of face patterns to create multiple portraits of a sitter was not unusual in Tudor portraiture as attested by a surviving but rare example of a 16th century face pattern in the National Portrait Gallery furthermore Clifford identifies a a change in the placement of the Parham portrait’s eye which can be seen ordinary light but is even more readily identifiable in infrared reflect in the infrared reflectograph where the preparatory underdrawing is made visible because this change is not present in the San Francisco portrait and the position of the iris matches the Parham portrait’s final eye placement rather than the underdrawing it is likely that the pattern was made from the finished composition of the Parham portrait rather than a sketch from life indicating that the Parham portrait was probably painted prior to the San Francisco version in turn suggesting that the Parham portrait should be dated to or prior to 1585 the date attributed to San Francisco portrait based on its cartellino so while the sitter’s faces in these two portraits are most likely connected notable differences in the paint handling technique can be seen especially in how the pearls are painted while these differences could be the result of different artist studios they could also be explained by the prevailing workshop practice of the day where artists would paint the more important detail such as the faces while apprentices painted the costume and ornamentation additionally accumulated retouching and degraded varnish obscures the nuances of the technique comparing the faces in terms of artistic technique becomes difficult as the Parham portrait is obscured by overpaint and varnish while the newly cleaned and conserved work of the of San Francisco shows its subtleties while Roy Strong attributes the Parham portrait to Segar he also notes it is clearly by the same hand and at about about the same time as the Countess of Essex which was the previous title of the San Francisco portrait so since the San Francisco portrait is attributed to Robert Peake the Elder it is especially helpful to look at his larger body of work to attempt to better understand these differences in technique and help discern whether these are the result of overpaint a busy workshop practice or that of a different studio entirely so when comparing portrait of a woman identified as Mary Clopton of Kentwell Hall Suffolk which is pictured here in the centre painted by Peake to the San Francisco and Parham portraits we get the sense of a similar essence present within all three so the faint rosy cheeks a slight smile and their gaze so interestingly there are similarities as well as dissimilarities between the paint handling techniques in the San Francisco and Mary Clopton portraits demonstrating the possibility of variance in details even when originating from the same workshop the same can be said with the Parham portrait and Mary Clopton therefore allowing for the possibility that these were painted from the same artist on another note the hand in the Parham portrait resembles the style in which Peake paints hands especially the action of holding something as we can see from the two images on the right um Peake’s fingers are painted in elongated manner with light shadowing research conducted by the NPG as part of their Making Art in Tudor Britain project has also shown a precedent for the use of patterns or formulas to create stock features so these are repeated features independent of who the sitter is and usually these are implemented for the hands or costume items so it would not be odd to see similar hand gestures from one painting to the next in an artist’s oeuvre comparisons with other female Tudor portraits of the time demonstrate quite a few paintings with similar facial features however none are as close as the San Francisco portrait stock features as previously mentioned were used for the hands rather than having composite faces made up of stock features for the nose eyes and mouth if we were to find another match for the Parham portrait the features would then have to match both in style and facial arrangement only portraits with some likeness and features have been found namely in those painted by Marcus Gheeraert the II or portraits of Elizabeth the First fashion tastes were heavily influenced by the Royals at court making it possible to date a portrait according to the style of the dress the black and white costume of the sitter in the Parham portrait and the extensive use of pearls the both typical of the late 16th century where the white and pearls especially were used by the queen to allude to her chastity French farthingale worn by the sitter a Wheel like structure placed under the dress to exaggerate the woman’s figure was introduced by Elizabeth the I in the 1580s another interesting part of the costume is the inclusion of a muff covering the sitter’s hand another Tudor portrait Lady in a Court Dress can be found at Ordsall Hall in Salford which also displays the sitter holding a prominent muff like the muff in the Parham portrait is it is designed with intricate motifs which likely had a significance to the sitter in our technical analysis the X-Ray has shown the most surprising changes were made to the costume so lace at the outer edge of the ruff has been painted over by the background and the sitter’s dress the section of the ruff that is still visible appears somewhat different in its application to other areas of the painting it is loosely applied with little thought to the fabric it is trying to emulate this begs the question is it a later addition by a different hand and was the action of shortening the ruff done at the same time as the change of pattern while the lace detail that has been covered up appears to be a of a thicker fabric belonging to a collar of a thinner fabric belonging to a collar like the San Francisco portrait the current collar mimics that of a heavily starched linen with a graphic design added in black strokes interestingly in another portrait by Peake an unknown woman called Elizabeth a similar graphic style is used to render the design in a woman’s dress in either case ruffs are known to get bigger rather than shorter in the late 16th century so it’s an interesting change to note changes were also made to the sleeve pattern and the pearl design on the bodice these alterations show that instead of a single pearl above the tower in the sleeve there was previously three pearls outlined by a design similarly the repeated cluster of five pearls along the centre of the bodice was previously three pearls with the same type of outlining shape while the covered design do look like crests of some of some sort elemental mapping has shown that the pigments making them up do not form any traceable motif um elemental maps showed that mercury the identifier for vermilion was used for the design a similar pearl design appears in the sleeve of a portrait of Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester by William Segar the copper map believed to be indicative of azurite is present in the pearls that make up the long necklace and the larger ones in the sleeves of the dress and the bodice but not in the singular pearl atop the tower which is the newer design in these areas a wash of azurite has been used to cover up the earlier design and then a single pearl was laid on top in a more X-ray dense material like lead white obscuring this copper signal as part of the as the art of painting is not completely formulaic there are multiple possibilities as to why this would happen so first the change in the costume could be said to be made by a different artist since the new pearls are different in their layering system from the other large pearls in the costume the change was possibly made at a later date following fashion trends or due to the changes being so small and somewhat in insignificant to the reading of the portrait it is possible that these were made quickly by the same studio after the patron had seen them and did not like the design the style was mimicked rather than the paint’s exact composition and the wash of copper below would have contributed to the somewhat to the final look of the pearls making them appear as the others do without exactly matching them the sitter’s costume is decorated with designs of flowers stars snakes columns flames and arrows in her ruff muff and in the details of her sleeves the symbols relate to the Tudor tradition of emblems or visual devices in the form of small illustrations which when combined convey significant and often poetic meaning about an individual emblems were disseminated by emblem books often alongside mottoes and some of these books still exist the emblems present in the portrait can be found in varying forms and in accompaniment with varying mods in Tudor emblem books and artworks contemporary to the Parham portrait for example both arrows and columns are relatively common in emblem books in portraits of the queen columns perhaps symbolized her constancy as a monarch likewise snakes find precedent in portraits of the queen where unlike their biblical associations they represented wisdom snakes also frequently appear in emblem books that survive and their accompanying mottoes often point to their association with wisdom fire often appears in emblem books inflaming an object an emblem found in Geoffrey Whitney’s 1586 Choice of Emblems and Other Devices depicts a particularly noteworthy example of a serpent suspended over a fire biting the finger of a hand just in the top right corner um therefore calling to mind several of the Parham portraits emblems in considering these emblematic devices several things emerge as important in our attempts to identify the sitter first is that it appears as if several of the symbols have been quite self-consciously included in reference to the queen symbols such as snakes columns arrows and more generally the portraits use of fashionable pearls and black and white clothing seem to point to a desire to desire for affinity with the court second the various mottoes associated with these emblems speak to a vague sense of strength thoughtfulness or consistency but it is the final emblem present in the Parham portrait which most interests us for the purpose of identifying the sitter this last symbol is the so-called ragged staff a wide bow of wood with severed branches depicted on its side and sewn into the sitter’s ruff as a heraldic device the ragged staff alongside the symbol of the bear with which it is most often accompanied is most associated with the Earldom of Warwickshire and Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester Statesman and particular favourite to Queen Elizabeth it appears on his tomb in St Mary’s Church Warwick is an embroidered design on the dress of a portrait of his wife Lettice Knollys and is documented to have been part of the design for Leicester’s gift to the queen in 1580 Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester was connected to Frances Walsingham Elise Effmann Clifford’s proposed sitter for the Parham portrait in three significant ways the first of these connections is through Frances’s father Leicester is a statement to the queen alongside William Cecil and Frances’s father Francis Walsingham so Philip Sydney Frances’s first husband and with whose name she is identified in the San Francisco portrait was Leicester’s nephew heir and political protege the connection between the nephew and uncle was strong enough that in 1584 after a series of criticisms were leveled at Leicester Sydney penned his defense of the Earl of Leicester stating that it was his chiefest honor to be a dudling Philip Sydney also traveled with his uncle to the Netherlands in 1585 on the occasion of Leicester’s military expedition to aid in overthrowing decades long Spanish occupation Frances Walsingham joined her husband and uncle-in-law in the Netherlands in June 1586 it was in the Netherlands on this military duty that Sydney sustained the gunshot wound that would eventually kill him and thus all the of Leicester’s Netherlandish endeavors were to eventually cause much upheaval for the Earl and his family his arrival in the low countries was initially cause for much celebration he was appointed Governor General and Dutch Imperial dollars were minted with his image in several he is depicted clutching seven arrows symbolizing his union of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic it is difficult to overlook the small grasping arrow fist in these imperial dollars and those which are present in the Parham portrait extraordinarily the connection between Leicester and Frances does not end with her father first husband or the Netherlandish expedition after Sydney’s death Frances married Robert Devereux Leicester’s stepson being the son of his wife Lettice Knollys’s first marriage after Sydney Robert Devereux became Leicester’s subsequent heir Elizabeth Golding who has published most extensively on Leicester writes that by 1592 Devereux became came to be seen as the successor to the political and cultural mantles of both Leicester and Sydney and as a final note on Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester’s ostensible presence in this portrait we know that in 1585 the Earl was presented with a manuscript copy of Geoffrey Wittney’s a choice of emblems and other devices this book is today preserved in the Penn State University libraries and retains the inscription gifting it to Sir Robert Dudley it is from Wittney A Choice of Emblems and Other Devices that we have found the most direct and convincing parallels to the emblems present in the Parham portrait including the arrows serpents flames and hands while we can say with no certainty that there exists a direct link between this book of emblems presented to Leicester and the Parham portrait in which related symbols can be found Frances Walsingham emerges at the periphery of Leicester and his heir’s lives as two-time wife niece and step-daughter-in-law considering the connection to the San Francisco portrait and inclusion of these emblematic devices it is tempting to conclude with some confidence that Parham’s Portrait of a Lady is in fact a portrait of Frances Walsingham so while we are unlikely to ever definitively prove that the sitter’s identity of the sitter’s identity in this portrait technical analysis and art historical research appear to substantiate the identification of the sitter as Frances Walsingham although similarities with other Tudor portraits of the time exist none seem to correlate in both likeness of features and their placement to those of the San Francisco portrait what remains to be answered in terms of the Parhamr portrait arm’s portrait of a lady is why and when changes were made to the costume as for the change present in the sitter’s eye and probable relationship to the San Francisco portrait we can offer an initial dating of the Parham portrait to Circa 1585 for this dating the sitter is appropriately dressed in a simple dress with pearls and a wider lace ruff which is currently overpainted Philip Sydney died in 1586 and Leicester only shortly after him in 1588 considering the costume was changed in the later date the emblems were perhaps included in memorial of Frances’s relationship with Philip Sydney Robert Dudley or indeed both men the work’s possible attribution to Peake needs further investigation reexamining the painting’s application technique once it under goes a conservation treatment will possibly help in further determining the artistic attribution and reveal further details about the portrait we’d like to thank the professors at The Courtauld and the many external researchers who we consulted for their time and expertise on this subject we’d also like to thank all those at Parham house for access to the archives and the opportunity to research the Portrait of a Lady [Applause] hi my name is Sarah Brokenborough I’m an MA History of Art student and I’m Grace Storey and I’m the second year at MA Conservation of Easel Painting student uh to start our presentation I will first discuss some key aspects of the iconography of Mary Queen of Scots then we’ll both present our main findings in the conclusion my part of the project really drills into how our painting fits into the wider scholarship of Mary Queen of Scots and more importantly how our portrait relates to the Boudan drawing shown here on the right I wanted to dive into the social history of our painting to see how it connects to costume balls studio portraits and and photographs of Victorian woman dressed as Mary Queen of Scots but I realized that I had skipped the step and needed to further research how our painting relates to the existing scholarship on the historical figure as I began to dive into the iconography of Mary Queen of Scots I realized that there are two main interests on the one hand we have scholarship focusing on the social cultural and political legacies of Mary Queens of Scots as a historical figure in film theater historical novels museum exhibitions and biographies on the other hand we have a long tradition of portraiture including paintings drawing engravings and sculpture attempting to capture her true likeness her most accurate anatomical countenance this method seeks to answer questions such as what did she look like how can we know who saw her and was able to describe her physical appearance in words or comparable images altogether these studies focus on our ongoing quest to better understand Mary Queen of Scots and her impact on society today essentially asking who was she this slide includes two of the most agreed upon authentic portraits of Mary Queen of Scots drawn by Francois Clouet during her time in France beyond these drawings there has been much debate and conflicting information regarding the attribution provenance dates and authenticity of Mary Queen of Scots portraits not to mention that so many images of Mary Queen of Scots are simply creative but fictitious renderings of the iconic figure as a result scholars and curators have needed to consistently pass through an immense amount of visual culture and archival records to identify probable sources I want to quickly share a brief example we start with the current web page of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an engraving of Mary Queen of Scots there is no definitive information here about the maker of the specific print when it was made or why it was made now many of you may already be trying to work out the source perhaps you’ve seen this particular composition but you can’t put your finger on where or you immediately recognize that the image is a derivative of the monumental effigy of Mary Queen of Scots here in London at Westminster Abbey this marble effigy was believed to derive from either the Hilliard miniature or the Sheffield portrait Jeremy L Smith has convincingly argued that the Sheffield portrait is the specific model for the tomb’s effigy both the Hilliard and Sheffield portraits are believed to be authentic portrayals of Mary Queen of Scots although only within the last decade has it been widely accepted that the Hilliard miniature derived from the Sheffield portrait and not vice versa but there is still a missing link of how a 19th century print derives a marble effigy made in 1612 and well it was a very convenient surprise to find the answer in The Courtauld’s library in a catalogue published in 1856 where George Scharf a friend of the editor provided a drawing that was engraved and now serves as the catalogue frontispiece this catalogue of antiquities works of arts and historical Scottish relics was compiled from an exhibition in Edinburgh trying to ascertain the true likeness of Mary Mary Stuart this exhibition was hosted by the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland under the patronage of Prince Albert who had acquired our painting a few years prior in 1845 while our particular portrait was not displayed the exhibition speaks to Prince Albert’s antiquarian interest in collecting identifying and preserving rare artistic treasures and helps us better understand our particular portrait’s social use during the Victorian era in the case of the specific print at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the source material is most likely a copy of the catalogue frontispiece rather than the marble effigy itself to summarize in regard to Queen of Scots portraits we are constantly working backwards trying to find a comfortable stopping point hoping to arrive at Mary Queen of Scots herself or an image made during her lifetime however there are several intermediary points that should also be noted and technical analyses can provide useful information that can then help us make sense of the relationships between various images of Mary Queen of Scots as paintings drawings and engravings so building on this notion that artworkss informed and influenced one another as Sarah’s already mentioned one of the key aims for our research centered around the relationship between this portrait and the 17th century Boudan drawing the goals of our technical analysis were therefore to try and establish the probable materials and techniques used to create this painting as if materials such as pigments with known introduction dates could be identified they would stand as key indicators for when the composition was undertaken allowing us to establish which artwork may have come first and by extension which could have influenced the other as some of you may remember from our last presentation this painting was previously believed to have been produced during the reign of Queen Victoria that is from 1857 to 1901 primarily on stylistic grounds however when dendrochronological analysis was undertaken on the panel by Ian Tyus in February 2023 the findings put this date into question dendrochronological analysis as you may remember from our last presentation can be used as a way of dating wooden material based on an analysis of the tree rings present Tyus established that the tree ring width series for this board matched reference data from 17th century Southern Germany and indicated the board was still growing as late as 1609 the board featured no sapwood or the outermost rings um so but still accounting for the minimum number of expected sapwood rings for wooden material sourced in Germany this furnished the panel with a terminus post quem or earliest possible date of around 1617 there are several other examples of portraits of Mary Queen of Scots including these two examples here from the National Portrait Gallery and Heaver Castle respectively which were originally believed to be from later centuries but were allocated a much earlier date in these cases within the lifetime of Mary Queen of Scots owing to the dendrochronological analysis which has critically impacted how they were received as images of Mary Queen of Scots for this portrait although a date of more than two centuries earlier would still postdate Mary Queen of Scots’ execution in 1587 it would predate the Louis Boudan illustration raising questions as to their similarity and whether the Boudan drawing could possibly have been influenced by this painting with that said just because the panel may date from earlier than expected does not mean that the composition must also date from this time firstly the panel could have come from a larger board that was trimmed of its outer rings as I mentioned briefly before the board contains no sapwood indicative of the outermost rings of the tree meaning as seen here in this diagram supplied by Ian Tyres in his report that if the panel was cut down from a wider board of an unspecified width the tree rings would have continued meaning the tree could have been felled after 1617 the panel could have also been reused or repurposed to this end various methods of technical examination including X radiography infrared imaging macro X-Ray fluorescence scanning or elemental mapping were all used to investigate the possibility of underlying compositions which could indicate that the panel had previously been used for another painting ultimately however as you can see we found no evidence of another composition underneath that still is not to say that the panel may not have been repurposed it could instead have been sourced from a redundant bit of unpainted timber like 17th or 18th century paneling which anecdotal evidence does suggest was not unusual for supports sourced in the 19th century but how can the window of production be narrowed down then when was this painting executed through X-Ray fluorescent point analysis the spot indicated with red X there and Elemental mapping the green brown background was found to contain both copper and arsenic which is demonstrated by the two peaks labeled on the board there this immediately caught my attention as copper and arsenic are key chemical components of both scheele’s and emerald green which are indicated at the top of the board there scheele’s green is a dull green acid copper arsenite discovered in 1775 by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele which was superseded by the brighter emerald green a copper aceto arsinate first produced commercially in 1814 and used widely from 1820s onwards analysis of a cross-section produced from a sample of the background taken from a loss indicated at the top there reveals the presence of multiple round blue green pigment particles which are fairly characteristic of emerald green as you can see by their similarity to the emerald green particles in this reference photo micrograph these observations were further confirmed by subsequent analysis using SEM EDX scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy which showed that these specific particles were indeed made up of copper and arsenic the cross-section further indicates the background was applied as a single layer directly over the ground meaning that it is unlikely that this paint was added at a later date given these findings then the painting is almost certainly from the 19th century and painted at some point between 1814 when emerald green was introduced and the painting’s is acquisition by Prince Albert in 1845 pigment analysis also highlighted the use of chromium indicated in the chromium XRF Elemental map here chrome green was first advertised as oxium of oxide of chromium by Windsor and Newton in their catalogue of around 1840 and chrome yellow was referenced in 1835 by the Colman George field along with chromium the barium and iron maps indicate the presence of these elements in the rows of gold colored studs adorning the dress and the yellow details of the chair barium and chromium are the principal components of lemon yellow first mentioned by Field in 1835 and iron is the main component of yellow ochre which interestingly according to additives found in an examination of the tube paints used by the 19th century painter James McNeil Whistler was sometimes adulterated through the addition of barium sulfate a range of yellow pigments appear to have been used then and one possible interpretation is that yellow ochre was used for the darker and mid yellow tones and lemon or chrome yellow subsequently employed with lead white to pick out the lighter details on both the chair and in the jewelry if these pigments are indeed present as the elemental maps suggest they would date the painting to an even later point between around 1830 and 1845 and further imply that the artist was engaging with the very latest modern pigments focusing in on the 19th century then and deepening our investigation we employed organic analysis to try and better understand binding media used for the painting the 19th century saw many artists experiment with binding media often employing natural resin based additives such as Robesons and cope based mediums or McGill to alter the handling qualities of the paint and to create their desired visual effects hoping to find evidence of one of these additions a sample from the painting was analyzed using transmission FTIR that is Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy to generate the spectra you see at the top of the image here the spectra generated do imply the presence of natural resin in the sample given their similarity to reference spectra for other natural resins including copal and mastic at the bottom there however it’s very difficult to differentiate between similar components in a complex sample using FTIR alone a natural resin is also most likely used to varnish the painting so these results do not necessarily reflect an additive in the paint and as a result we are not currently able to determine whether any of these mediums have been used or not but that is not to say more solid conclusions could not be drawn in the future through the use of additional equipment and techniques such as gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy for example now thus far we’ve primarily focused on the materials used to create the painting but an an informed knowledge of the techniques used can also inform our understanding so looking closely at the infrared image here there are faint regular lines visible along the side of the chair there which it is possible that they could be grid lines executed in a carbon containing material the presence of these lines could provide a crucial piece of evidence that the composition was copied from another source and transferred onto the panel using the grid method taking this information together then with the other conclusions reached through our technical analysis inorganic analysis of the pigments indicates that regardless of the earlier date for the panel indicated through dendrochronology the panel was most likely completed um sorry the painting was most likely completed during the 19th century sometime between 1830 and 1845 which would mean that the painting was indeed completed after the illustration was made the presence of grid lines further suggests the composition could have been copied from another source but I’ll hand you back over to Sarah to discuss the implications of this further so the the inscription on Boudan’s drawing notes that he copied Gaignieres’s portrait of Mary Stuart as the Queen of France and the Queen of Scotland this drawing is now stored at the National Library of France however several 18th century prints helped link our painting to the Boudan drawing in 1733 Montfaucon published his fifth volume of Monuments on the French monarchy where he only notes that he sourced his engraving of Mary Queen of Scots from Gagnieres’s collection in 1797 John Pinkerton published Iconographia Scotia where he notes that he copied Montfaucon’s engraving these engravings and their subsequent copies serve as the intermediary points of transmission between the Boudan drawing and the Osborne portrait in 1888 George Scar’s article A Brief Account of of a Small Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots preserved at Osborne house in the Isle of Wight noted that immediately after the portrait was first displayed at an exhibition in London in 1857 critics began interpreting our painting as a copy of Montfaucon’s engraving in 1903 Lionel Cusk’s catalogue notes on the authentic portraits of Mary Queen of Scots had again suggested that the Osborne portrait may be a copy of the Montfaucon engraving in some during the Victorian era a portrait was consistently linked to the Montfaucon’s engraving rather than any specific drawing in the Gaignieres’s collection furthermore we are incredibly grateful for the Royal Collection Trust Curator’s research which identified the Boudan drawing as the specific source material for Montfaucon and Pinkerton engravings yet it is unlikely that our painting derives directly from the Boudan drawing itself this would explain the various differences among the extent Osborne type portraits as Sir Roy Strong described them in 19 in his 1969 publication Tudor and Jacobean Portraits if their respective painters were looking from a black and white engraving that it is understandable why we have varying colors for the chair jewels handkerchief background and floor all the while the central composition remains the same additionally the engravings only denote a striped floor which could be interpreted in oil s a brown wooden floor yet the Boudan drawing only includes horizontal lines to denote shadows next to the chair and its central figure furthermore the Boudan drawing has an altogether different texture for the floor these subtle differences help to align our Osborne portrait with the Montfaucon print rather than the Boudan drawing itself yet this drive to locate compare and authenticate various images of Mary Queen of Scots is what most likely led Prince Albert to purchase our portrait in 1845 to first display our painting at an exhibition hosted by the Royal Archaeological Institute in London in 1857 and then to have our painting photographed and published in 1858 in a catalogue entitled a series of photographs from portraits of Mary Queen of Scots all in all a variety of antiquarians art historians and royal figures were interested in comparing the Osborne portrait to other images of Mary Queen of Scots yet there is also a noticeable sense of derision to amongst Victorian critics towards the Osborne portrait when viewed as a copy as a possible copy of the Montfaucon engraving for example in 1907 Louis de Mier described our Osborne portrait as a bad copy with such altered features that it becomes impossible to recognize the person painted in it however today the Osborne portrait now prompts us to consider how Prince Albert and other British antiquarians viewed Mary Queen of Scots portraits as historical artifacts in effect asking us to focus more on Victorian attitudes towards Mary Queen of Scots and less about her physical appearance our archival records state that Queen Victoria displayed this particular portrait of Mary Queen of Scots in her sitting room these are photographs of the room but I haven’t been able to locate our painting in them however when situated in this intimate domestic setting our our portrait can also be interpreted as material culture rather than as a static historical object with a singular meaning or purpose with new technologies comes a renewed interest to use them to authenticate our collection of Mary Queen of Scot portraits or at least confirm whether or not a painting was made during her lifetime however our project shows that dendrochronology reports alone cannot authenticate a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots the wood panel itself may be dated to the 17th century but the painting’s oil pigments may be dated to a completely different century additionally our research has shown that in the case of Mary Queen of Scots portraits her physical appearance may have been sourced from a variety of engravings sculptures paintings or subsequent prints made thereafter which further complicates our search for authenticity however the current public interest in Mary Queen of Scots does not only pertain to a search for her authentic physical appearance thus the Osborne portrait is still incredibly valuable for art historians and museum curators we look forward to seeing the portrait back on display at the Palace of Hollyroodhouse and we encourage viewers to consider the ways Prince Albert and other 19th century antiquarians travel to Edinburgh and London to view and discuss the Osborne portrait as an artistic treasure [Applause] hi um so I’m Anna Maria Delmar and I’m on the the uh MA curating course and I’m joined by Christina O’Brien who’s the conservator in this pair so today we’ll be speaking about the portrait of Stephanie Pilkington which was made in 1919 by an artist who signed EK and the grandchildren of the sitter brought it into the department for this collaborative research as well as conservation treatment so in the second presentation we’re excited to share with you some of the answers we found to questions we raised in our first presentation so this presentation will follow two main areas of focus so the first will be we’ll be addressing our questions about the immediate context meaning the painting’s physical history and the sort of figure Stephanie is represented as and then secondly we’ll discuss the wider context including enquiry into art historical affiliations and potential attributions and we wanted to mention that the timing of the expressionist exhibition at Tate Modern couldn’t be better and we’ve integrated a lot of material from it as well as other contextual visits to Germany as part of this study um okay so as a recap Stephanie Mary Pilkington was part of the Pilkington family known for its glass manufacturing company so learning about her biography through her granddaughters showed us that she led an interesting life and this portrait captures an important period of it as well as reflects a sociopolitical turning point in Germany’s history so Stephanie was born on August 16th 1889 in Lancashire she later moved to Germany and married Frederick Fritz Brand a a German Jewish composer and musician on May 30th 1914 and he first worked as a conductor in Freiburg and then as a kapellmeister in Munster and Osterburg and Stephanie likely remained in Freiburg until 1920 her son Thomas was born on November 30th 1921 in Kaiserslautern in Germany and after Fritz uh faced persecution from the gestapo they moved around Germany so following their divorce around 1926 Stephanie returned to the UK with Thomas to escape anti-Semitism so in 1940 a few years after their divorce Stephanie changed both their surnames back to her maiden name that we see in the following notice so Germany specifically the mountainous forest regions clearly meant a lot to Stephanie she continued receiving scenic postcards from friends while in the UK and the family has albums of photographs from her holidays with friends in the Black Forest near Freiburg and the photos bear a strong resemblance with the scenery in our painting and sadly the family notes that her social life and her relationships suffered after she moved back to the UK evidenced by the lack of photographs from that time period so the photographs of Stephanie often posed by herself or with other women make it clear that the artist captured her well um the portrait accurately captures her stern expression her long hair tied in a low bun and her slight androgyny her granddaughters maintain that images of Stephanie on vacation with other women indicate that she was a lesbian and believe that she mixed with artistic groups and this information has highlighted really interesting avenues of social research about women’s changing roles during the Weimar Republic and the soon to come oppressive context of Nazi Germany so namely the photographs of Stephanie bring to life the idea of the newly emancipated German woman known as the new woman associated with lesbianism and androgyny often sporting bobbed hair and masculine attire like suits and monocles so Stephanie embodies this spirit and style in inviting us to ponder its deep social implications um the mass adoption of the Bubikopf a term for women short haircuts was controversial symbolizing modernity yet stirring anxieties about gender ambiguity as critics linked it to the masculinization of women in the photographs Stephanie adopted varieties of this style and and likewise the tuxedo or the smoking became a prominent visual symbol of the quote unquote masculinization of women so central to the wardrobe of this cosmopolitan garconne it reflected a broader cultural fascination with gender ambiguity and queerness and Stephanie’s photographs vividly illustrate this fashion trend as well as the evolving gender norms of the era and her granddaughters found a ring with their Pilkington family motto on it so were wondering could this be the one in the painting the ring in the painting has a flat face at the top of the knuckle and a wide band similar to the one in the photos they’ve provided us so the insignia isn’t visible on the painting but this is possibly by the artist’s choice so in the last presentation I began to build a story of the painting’s physical history through superficial visual examination see that painting is made on a white commercially primed canvas unevenly cut from a larger roll of linen we could also tell the painting was framed soon after it was painted so you can see from the corresponding piece of uh trace of paint dried on the in rebate UV light told us that there’s some sort of fluorescent surface coating sitting within the site size um and I also related aspects of the painting’s condition to its journey from Germany to the UK the duck tail tear in the sitter’s eyebrow was likely created through gradual pressure against something sharp stacked against it during storage and the thick layer of surface dulling dulling relationships between colours reflects um over 100 years of traveling through different environments since January I’ve used techniques to work out how the artist went about creating the portrait infrared as you now learned from previous talks can help us see behind the paint layers in a sense exploiting the useful tendency of carbon containing materials to absorb um the rays creating dark areas in the image you can see a fine layer of carbon contained dirt across the surface especially by contrast with the cleaning test um in the yellow passage um the blue pigment used here is also absorbent in this infrared range infrared range um so appears dark as well what the image does tell us of the under drawing is that it’s minimal and simple and we can see it is this powdery dark material inconsistent with the normal light image um around the areas like the sitter’s hairline and the larynx marked here but mostly we can see the composition is structured using paint and this is typical of the expressionist artists working around the same time I’ve included some images um I took of Marianne von Werefkin portraits at the Tate Modern exhibition um you can see how some um some sketchily drawn pencil lines underneath the more translucent paint um the compositions are largely dictated by paint the X-ray makes this painterly approach the composition even clearer x-rays are stopped by x-ray dense material largely um this is lead white and as you can see the artist has lightened almost every colour with lead white this is really helpful for tracing the brush work um and you can identify at least three main sizes of brush used here at different angles and pressures most importantly it shows us the confidence with which the artist worked there are very few compositional changes evident in the X-ray you can see the face has been made slightly more angular and the hands been made slightly smaller just by drawing in the still wet blue paint from around the background so from this confidence and the little detailed underdrawing we’ve got evidence for the obvious question is whether this was worked from a photograph like one of the ones that Ana-Maria has shown you we can tell that the artist decides has changed the position of the sitter’s left arm um from the inconsistency with the underlier I’ve marked here choosing to show the elbow across the chest gives the sitter a lot more character and life I’d say but decision also informs the photography argument sitters in the early days of photography during the 19th century often pose with their hands giving them support this to compensate for the long exposure times of early cameras and portable cameras around 1919 would have had an average of two second exposure times some of the images of Stephanie are actually quite blurred um Gabriele Munter um member of the blue the Blue Rider group um used a Kodak Bulls-Eye number two to shoot images of her travels in in America she was an early proponent of pictorialism um embracing photography as an expressive art form rather than just a merely documentary medium so you can see the relationship between photography and portraiture I think in some of the more tonal portraits that she does so combining all these evidence um these elements I think it’s plausible to say that the artist did work from a photograph so in terms of the wider artistic context we believe that the artist engaged with various influences to produce the portrait so by closely examining the painting and the way the artist modelled the background and the sitter we’ve identified uh several probable influences so the background with its gestural brush strokes and colourful palette aligns with Expressionism which was widespread before the First World War and popular in the early Weimar Republic it resembles work by early 20th century German expressionists in groups such as Die Brucke and the Blue Rider who manipulated form and colour and the rolling hills and the cathedral in our painting mirror the landscapes that fascinated these Expressionists and additionally the sitter’s sideways sort of three quarter pose resembles portraits by expressionists like Marianne von Werefkin and Gabriel Munter in the slide suggesting that our artists might have taken cues from this type of positioning so the artist rendering of Stephanie might reflect a new movement that emerged in the early 1920s amongst German artists and this movement known as New Objectivity is characterized by representationalism clear pictorial concepts and objective depictions of real conditions so it revived and diversified older artistic traditions and techniques while taking gender relations and the image of of the new woman as subjects so without a unifying manifesto the artists um in New Objectivity focused on the visible world rejecting the formal disarray of expressionism and the anti Bourgeois stance of Dada and new Objectivist paintings like those in the slide display a range of personal styles while sort of soberly isolating their subjects within their settings so Stephanie’s face is painted in a stern and matter of fact manner so it’s approach to figuration reflects an aspiration to resemble human likeness so unlike expressionists our artist does not take colourful liberties while rendering the sitter rather they use a darker outline around her body to separate her lifelike appearance from the whimsical and expressionist background so these elements suggest the artist might have been influenced by the New Objectivity movement and the artist also might have been familiar with avant-garde movements in Germany such as the New Secession so in 1910 a group of young artists split from the Berlin Secession to found the New Secession so this association which lasted until 1914 played a crucial role in the breakthrough of Expressionism in Berlin and the rest of Germany so in the painting we see here by Georg Tappert a founder of the New Secession we see a similar approach to our painting with lifelike tones for the figures and a vibrant palette for the background so in terms of attributions when we started this project we thought the painter the painter might be a woman based on Stephanie’s female friends and the family photos so we researched all artists with EK initials in the 1922 edition of the Allgemeines Kunstler Lexicon paying special attention to female names and one name we found was Eva Knopf whose teacher Eugen Speiro used similar poses in his 1950s work but while it’s not Eva given her signature differs from our EK the similarities between her instructor’s work and art painting suggest that this pose might have been a common instruction style so the question is who is EK so at the outside of research into possible identities for EK the fam’s the sitter’s family suggested Erich Kahn a Lost Generation Jewish um German Jewish artist whose largest collection of work is now in the Berardo Gallery in Lisbon the artist’s later figurative paintings and drawings show stylistic similarities with the Pilkington portrait in their dense brush work and their use of saturated colors and are often signed with an EK monogram followed by a two-letter date Eric Kahn would have been active in Stuttgart and 15 years old in 1919 so although exceedingly young he himself complained what they taught I did not care to learn and what I cared to learn they could not teach which led his parents which led his parents to encourage him to put together a portfolio of artwork for the Stuttgart Art Academy in 19 1919 for entrance in 1920 so we’re wondering could this be a study for art school entrance by a 15-year-old Erich Kahn so he went on to study at the Academy and subsequently trained under Fernand Leger in Paris and our painting also seems to resonate with an idea of Expressive Realism that art students during his time were interested in they sought to find their find their own way of expressing themselves without adhering to a specific style and that kind of that’s what our painting seems to do exactly and Kahn’s life was sadly upturned by the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation in Germany and he was detained in the Hutchinson Camp off the coast of the UK after fleeing there and at this point while no firm attribution can be made Eric Kahn is an important artist socio-historically whose possible connection to the Pilkington portrait should be considered further technical analysis has been particularly helpful to determining from pallette and how the materials and techniques hang together in the context of Ana-Maria’s research last time I showed the evidence of use of tube paints areas like this green passage look as though um paint has been squeezed straight into the canvas and brushed outwards the Bavarian monarchy had invested a lot into research finding more permanent painting materials in the late 19th century as a result Munich became a center for paint technology around the turn of the century artists and scientists like Max Doner Adolf Klein Max von Pettenkoffer had funding set of institutions and publications dedicated to this sort of research you get a sense from this quote from Heiner Trillich’s book on painting materials there was a great emphasis on using only very pure readymade paints in my inorganic analysis of samples from the Pilkington portrait I haven’t found any evidence for the use of additives or extenders and I found that the paint has a very high pigment volume concentration I believe that this is what allows the artist to create beautiful impasto and texture across the painting including details like this mint green on the side of the architecture contemporary artists in Munich like Lovis Corinth also seem to exploit highly pigmented stiff paint to maintain separation between colours in heterogeneous brush strokes like that in the top right Heinrich Trillich included swatches of oil paint manufactured in Stuttgart by Seegle and Co in 1923 I’m not saying this is the brand that the artists used but um we can see the paint industry was adapting to changing preferences amongst artists um this is really the era for the emancipation of colour and there’s a great interest in the psychological force colours can have um especially when together um you come across this a lot in well known writings by Kandinsky such as On the Spiritual in Art um EK clearly draws um on the range of colours available particularly in the expressionistic background in this table I’ve summarized um the pigments which I’ve identified just through non-invasive elemental analysis using X-Ray fluorescence um as well as inorganic analysis cross-sections um so I’m just going to go through these in conjunction with the painting technique it’s quite challenging to decide for the order in which elements were painted with the number of colours used in all the wet and wet mixing but we can see from the way that the brush strokes converge on the figure this was painted first the skin tones uh the most naturalistic element were mostly done using lead white and iron oxide red the brows you can see from this cross- section in the eyebrow um were made using a sort of an end of palette mixture of various colours um as you as you’ve seen most paint the paints are brightened with lead white much like artists from the Blue Rider group um were doing were intend to making their colours more luminous but the artist did use um zinc white in some elements like uh in the smoke from the cigarette um subsequent detail that doesn’t correspond in the X-ray the sky was worked from left to right beginning with cobalt blue the blue used for the rest of the painting um and cadmium yellow coming afterwards you can see from the way that overlaps with the blue in some areas um a brush minimally loaded with red was used to create the purple in the blue um and this was pulled down in places so easing the transition um between the yellow and blue the architecture seems to been painted in reserve um meaning there’s a space left for it while other areas around it were painted um painted first you can see the yellow doesn’t quite meet the spire in this detail to the top right the hot reds and pinks were some of the last elements to be added um and you can see they were used for the open work spire and for the signature in the lower right green the green’s chromium containing I think this means that it’s got veridian quite a cool green um the grass in the corner looks as though it’s made from veridian squeezed onto and worked into a layer of cadmium yellow below you can see from this cross section and the um distribution of um chromium from the green relative to the cadmium yellow below in the EDX maps um that this layering system is going on and I think it makes the um the colour a lot richer in that area but unlike many works by expressionists in groups like Die Brucke and Blue Rider which Ana-Maria’s mentioned this painting is actually varnished expressionist are known for avoiding the glossiness of varnish using benzene and wax additives to mattify their paints um and absorbent grounds to wick away medium minimizing gloss in the last presentation I only suspected that the thin patchy fluorescent surface coating was a varnish but now I can see it consistently fluorescing as a top player on the um on the paint on top of the paint nose in various samples the topographical imaging you can see here of an unmounted um sample was taken using an electron microscope um and it shows that there is a very thin brittle layer but it is still there publications at the time suggest there was a general shift amongst German artists away from unifying saturating thick varnishes towards thinner more dilutely applied ones um including synthetic resins and I think that’s what we’re seeing here so I hope to bring out the saturation which this gives the bright colours in the surface cleaning I haven’t had time to address how helpful technical analysis has been to the treatment of this painting so far but there’ll be more details of this in the report so to conclude we’ve really enjoyed pulling together um our technical and art historical research to get an in-depth understanding of the portrait and its enigmatic sitter um I’m looking forward to continuing the treatment and hope to track down early examples for Eric Kahn’s work in further research we finally like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff who helped the project and the Pilkington family for providing such fantastic material and for your investment of time in the project so I hope you enjoy the report and thank you for listening [Applause]