Truemors
Vincent van Gogh is perhaps one of the best known of the post-impressionist painters. The later years of his life were his most prolific, but the total number of his known works has just increased by one, as X-rays have recently revealed a previously hidden portrait.
It is well known that van Gogh re-used his canvases - as do many artists - reworking older compositions, or replacing abandoned works. It is estimated that almost one-third of his early works are on such 'recycled' canvases.
"Grasgrond" ("Patch of Grass") was painted while van Gogh was in Paris, in 1887. It's owners, the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, had long been aware of there being a vague outline of a head, lurking beneath the grass. Investigation of this area by conventional X-ray techniques have only ever revealed a partial, colourless impression of the under-painting.
Now this head has been fully revealed for the first time, by a team led by materials expert and art historian Joris Dik and chemist Koen Janssens.
Their technique is based on synchrotron-radiation-induced X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The painting was scanned with a very small but intense X-ray beam from a synchrotron radiation source for two days, and the fluorescence of the layers of paint calculated, even those well below the visible surface.
Using the measurements of all the atoms and individual paint pigments in the painting, the researchers were able to reconstruct the concealed painting in unprecedented detail.
The combination of the distribution of the elements mercury and antimony (from specific paint pigments) even provided information on the colour of the portrait below. This technique is faster and more accurate than existing methods usually used to reveal concealed paintings.
The full report of these findings is presented online in the journal Analytical Chemistry
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