Enlarge / NIST researchers collaborated with the National Gallery of Art and other organizations to study “metal soaps” found in oil paintings. The soaps can cause the painting to degrade over time. (credit: National Gallery of Art/A. Centrone/NIST) Scientists at the National Institute of Standards of Technology collaborated with the National Gallery of Art and […]
Enlarge / Detail of Michelangelo’s unfinished painting The Virgin and Child with Saint John and Angels (tempera on wood, ca. 1497), aka The Manchester Madonna. The outlines of two angelic figures on left are rendered in green earth tempera underpaint. (credit: The National Gallery London/Public domain) Tempera is a painting medium that has been used […]
Enlarge The French 18th-century chemist Antoine Lavoisier is a complicated historical figure. Scientifically, of course, he is an undisputed giant, helping usher in the chemical revolution as the field shifted from a qualitative to a quantitative approach, among many other achievements. He was also a wealthy nobleman and tax collector for the Ferme Generale, one of […]
Enlarge / A new restoration of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window has revealed a Cupid in the background. The restored painting will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany, from September 10, 2021, through January 2, 2022. (credit: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, SKD) […]
Enlarge / Detail from Matina Stavropoulou’s original painting, Triton and Nereid, one of several used for a series of experiments with graphene veils. (credit: Matina Stavropoulou) Graphene is the thinnest material yet known, composed of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. That structure gives it many unusual properties that hold […]
Enlarge / A five-year-old boy with boxing gloves poses in front of a huge mural of himself in Denver, Colorado. (credit: Blaine Harrington III/Image Bank/Getty Images) Mention the word “graffiti,” and many people’s thoughts immediately turn to vandalism in the form of defacement of property. But there is also graffiti that rises above such negative […]
Expand / Sampling germs out of Leonardo da Vinci’s Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk (1512). (charge: Guadalupe Piñar et al..) Microbiomes are {} scientific anger, in art conservation, even in which studying the parasitic species that contrasts on works of art can bring about new tactics to slow the deterioration of aging that […]