Join CNN’s Surprise Principle science publication. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
—
In Rembrandt’s huge Seventeenth-century masterpiece “The Evening Watch,” a troupe of Dutch civilian troopers gathers in a darkened room and prepares to march out to defend their metropolis. Rembrandt, a grasp of sunshine and shadow, strategically illuminated his topics’ expressive fingers and faces, whereas dimness hid the room’s particulars and obscured most of the guardsmen’s our bodies.
That wasn’t all that the well-known portray was hiding, researchers not too long ago discovered.
When conservators used X-rays to see beneath the varnish and paint of “The Evening Watch,” they found one thing sudden underneath its floor: a layer that was stuffed with lead.
This was the primary analysis within the portray’s 400-year historical past that mixed X-rays with spectroscopy of a paint pattern and 3D digital reconstructions, and it revealed a lead-rich layer that had by no means been seen earlier than in Rembrandt’s works, researchers reported Friday within the journal Science Advances.
Rembrandt and his artist contemporaries sometimes began a portray by first coating the canvas with a stiffening layer of glue, then including a base coat of underlying pigment, generally known as a floor layer, to prime the canvas.
However there was no glue layer in “The Evening Watch.” The lead-saturated layer could have been used as a substitute as a result of it might higher shield the canvas, the examine authors instructed.
When the portray was accomplished in 1642, it was hung in Amsterdam’s Kloveniersdoelen — a musketeers’ capturing vary — on a wall going through a row of home windows, the place it might have been weak to break from moisture.
Rembrandt could have gotten the concept to strengthen his canvas with lead from a publication in regards to the chemistry of portray, penned round that point by a doctor from Geneva named Théodore de Mayern, mentioned lead examine creator Fréderique Broers, a analysis scientist of microscopy on the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the place “The Evening Watch” is on show.
In his writings, Mayern talked about observing a portray that had been prepped with glue, and the paint and glue layers had separated after the art work hung for a number of years on a humid wall. In such circumstances, Mayern wrote, a canvas required a foundational layer of lead-rich oil. The researchers suspected that Rembrandt opted to work with lead “because it has extra drying properties compared to the traditional glue layer for making ready the canvas,” Broers advised CNN.
Whether or not the inspiration got here from Mayern or dialogue amongst painters, Rembrandt seemingly embraced the unusual approach as a promising safeguard for a portray that he knew can be displayed in a damp spot, Broers mentioned. The brand new findings recommend that Rembrandt was open to exploring unconventional strategies that deviated from his normal practices, with the intention to execute his distinctive creative imaginative and prescient.
Fréderique Broers/Rijksmuseum
A beforehand unknown lead-containing layer was found in Rembrandt’s The Evening Watch after a paint pattern was analyzed utilizing completely different strategies.
The researchers’ detective work was a part of a conservation and evaluation undertaking known as Operation Evening Watch, which the Rijksmuseum launched in 2019. The portray’s actual identify — “Militia Firm of District II underneath the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq” — turned “The Evening Watch” within the 18th century, partially as a result of its heavy varnish coating and the passage of time. Because the varnish yellowed and darkened from years of grime, viewers mistakenly got here to imagine that the scene happened at evening.
Layers of varnish had been eliminated when the portray was cleaned within the Forties, lifting a lot of the darkness. However there was nonetheless a lot work to be completed restoring and analyzing the art work. Operation Evening Watch is “the most important and most wide-ranging analysis and conservation undertaking within the historical past of Rembrandt’s masterpiece,” with a purpose of delving deeper into Rembrandt’s course of than ever earlier than and preserving the portray for a lot of many years to come back, in line with the Rijksmuseum’s website.
For the examine, the researchers mixed information from large-scale scans of the portray utilizing X-ray fluorescence and powder diffraction, in addition to reflective imaging spectroscopy. These novel strategies created visualizations of chemical components and molecules, revealed their distribution, and confirmed the place crystalline constructions shaped.
A tiny paint pattern measuring simply 0.002 inches (55 micrometers) broad and 0.006 (160 micrometers) lengthy was faraway from the portray, scanned after which digitally modeled in 3D — a brand new method that make clear how the portray was assembled, Broers mentioned.
“Usually you see a portray as a 2D object, however truly, it’s actually a 3D object as a result of now we have all of those paint layers,” she defined. Analysis on 3D objects requires a 3D perspective, “to essentially perceive the dimensions of the particles and the way the completely different pigment particles are associated to one another.”
For many years, specialists had been mystified by the looks all through the portray of tiny “pimples” of lead crystals that rose to the floor seemingly out of nowhere. Lead is usually discovered within the pigment lead white, however there was little shiny white in “The Evening Watch.”
The tiny lead flecks had been even popping up within the darkest areas of the portray, additional compounding the enigma, Broers mentioned. With the identification of a lead-rich layer coating the canvas, that thriller has lastly been laid to relaxation.
“It’s a very large puzzle piece to grasp the present situation of the paint,” she mentioned.
One other necessary discovery made throughout prior investigations was the composition of the bottom layer, which is positioned above the lead one and made from quartz and clay. It was the earliest proof of Rembrandt utilizing that combination, which he continued to make use of (although not solely) for the remainder of his profession.
Beforehand, Rembrandt had primed his canvasses with a double floor layer: certainly one of crimson earth after which one other of white pigment. However “The Evening Watch” was a lot bigger than any of his different works, measuring 12.5 toes (3.795 meters) excessive and 14.9 toes (4.535 meters) lengthy. A single floor layer would have been lighter, extra versatile and cheaper than his normal double layer, in line with the examine.
The successes of Operation Evening Watch come from a multi-pronged method to its preservation and safety, Broers added. Information from X-ray scans was evaluated alongside particulars uncovered by cleansing and conservation specialists. Curatorial interpretation supplied a historic backdrop for the chemical elements uncovered within the paint and primer layers. Collectively, these various disciplines usher “The Evening Watch” into the fashionable age for generations of art-lovers to come back.
“We actually wanted the entire experience from the entire crew of Operation Evening Watch to deliver it into context,” Broers mentioned.
Mindy Weisberger is a science author and media producer whose work has appeared in Reside Science, Scientific American and How It Works journal.
