The art
detective
Cambridge & Great Eastern Regional Group's lecture, ‘Science in the
fight against art forgery’, by Nicolas Eastaugh of the
Pigmentum Project and the
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University
1 June 2006
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| A painting by Russian artist Mikhail Fedorovich Larionov (1881-1964), which Eastaugh
recently analysed and found several key dating pigments |
Recent advances in the analysis of
paintings are leading to a revolution in how we look
at art, the people who made it and, perhaps surprisingly,
the social and economic climates in which
they worked. By looking in detail at the material
structure of paintings we can learn much about the
choices artists made, why they made them and
where their materials came from. An essential
strand in these developments is the application of
various forms of analytical science.
In the international art market there are two key
questions: ‘how much?’ and ‘is it genuine?’ For example,
Rubens’ famous work, Massacre of the Innocents,
painted in 1610, was largely unknown for many years
and was even attributed to another artist, Frans de
Neve. However, after authentification as a genuine
Rubens, it was sold for £49.5m ($91.2m) in 2002.
When probing the physical evidence for the
provenance of a work of art (setting aside the stylistic
and artistic evalution), one starts with the basic
structure – what it is made from, and what materials
were used. Then one assesses the authenticity of
the materials using various analytical techniques –
such as dendrochronology for the wooden components
of the frame or panels, and radiocarbon dating,
x-ray and infrared analysis, polarised light
microscopy, Raman microscopy, x-ray spectrometry,
isotopic composition, particle size and morphology
analysis to assess the physical and chemical composition
of the pigments and other materials. Such
analysis is difficult as individual samples are generall
smaller than a pinhead.
In his lecture ‘Science in the fight against art forgery’,
Nicolas Eastaugh described the way in which
these techniques can be used to track specific pigments,
using lapis lazuli (lazurite or natural ultramarine),
lead tin yellow and the modern pigment
titanium dioxide. Each of these involved a complex
web of time-dependent factors including availability,
geographical source and chemical composition
(isotope) and production technologies. Eastaugh
suggested that the application of Bayesian statistics
may be necessary to collate all these diverse sources
of evidence.
The way that the paint has been applied to a
painting can also be informative, as artists generally
have their own characteristic way of layering the
various pigments.
Eastaugh’s lecture detailed the many techniques
– from simple surface microscopy to the most
advanced laser Raman analysis – that are used in
the ongoing fight against art forgery. He also mentioned
what other information – such as an artist’s
particular technique or his choice of materials – can
help tell us when, where and by whom a picture
was painted. Eastaugh delivered a fascinating lecture,
drawing together many strands of science and
art (as well as geography, politics and economics).
There will be an opportunity to see Eastaugh in
action, attempting to authenticate a painting attributed
to Leonardo da Vinci in a Channel 5 television
documentary, The Mystery Da Vinci, to be aired later
this summer in the UK.
 Dr Nicholas Eastaugh is a scientific consultant
specialising in the analysis of fine art and other
historical objects. He has a background in physics
and is also a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of
Art. He is an honorary fellow of the Research Laboratory
for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford
University. The Pigmentum Project (www.pigmentum.
org) is an ongoing programme to develop and
catalogue quality data on historical pigments. Its
cutting-edge research and superlative technology is
dedicated to providing the definitive picture of the
field. Eastaugh is overseeing much of the project as
well as preparing entries for the dictionary and the
optical microscopy books and developing the database.
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