Basic Info

• Instructors: Lisa Pincus, Andrew Weislogel, C. Richard Johnson, Jr., Arthur Woll


• Location + time: Johnson Museum, Thursdays, 2:30 - 4:25 pm


• Course Description: This interdisciplinary seminar capitalizes on the extraordinary loan of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings from a private collection to the Johnson Museum, and an ongoing Mellon Foundation initiative to study them and other objects from the Museum's collection, using both art-historical and scientific, data-driven modes of investigation. Both methods are invested in material culture: the communicative visible surface of the artwork and its underlying materials - support, ground, pigment. Within the context of early modern painting and works on paper, and drawing on Cornell's exceptional resources and key experts, we will employ various technical methods, including weave matching in historic canvases, pattern matching in historic papers, and microscopic pigment analysis, and will look for hidden images in paintings through x-ray fluorescence mapping at Cornell's synchrotron facility (CHESS).

Sessions on Weave Matching in Historic Canvases and Pattern Matching in Historic Papers

• Professor Rick Johnson (email: johnson at ece.cornell.edu; office: 390 Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall; phone: 255-0429; office hours: Mondays and Tuesdays 1:30 - 3:00 pm and other times by appointment) will deliver lectures in three of the seminar's sessions.
  
  
• Thread Counting and Rollmate Identification (Two sessions)
  • A Thread Counting Success Story
  • Fabric to Scanned Painting X-Radiograph
  • Manual Thread Counting
  • Computer-Assisted Thread Counting
  • Automated Thread Counting
  • Vermeer Case Study
  • Van Gogh Case Study
  • Other Published Matches
  
  
• Chain Line Pattern Matching for Moldmate Iedentification (One session)
  • Moldmate identification via pattern matching using watermarks and chain lines visible in radiographs
  • Making Paper
  • Chain line pattern properties: straight, parallel?
  • Match testing strategy
  • A found match
  • Looking ahead: Cross-matching betas and raking light photos
  
  
• Required Reading Material
  • A. Kirsh and R. S. Levenson, Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies, pp. 28-53, Yale University Press, 2000.
  • K. H. Lister, C. Peres, I. Fiedler, "Tracing an Interaction: Supporting Evidence, Experimental Grounds" in Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, ed. D. W. Druick and P. K. Zegers, pp. 354-369, Thames and Hudson, 2001.
  • E. van de Wetering, ``The Canvas Support'' (Chapter 5), Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, University of California Press, pp. 90-130, 2000.
  • E. van de Wetering, ``Canvas Research with Emil Bosshard, Remarks on Method,'' in Emil Bosshard, Paintings Conservator (1945-2006): Essays by Friends and Colleagues}, ed. M. De Peverelli, M. Grassi, H.-C. von Imhoff, Centro Di, pp. 256-269, 2009.
  • W. Liedtke, C. R. Johnson, Jr., and D. H. Johnson, ``Canvas Matches in Vermeer: A Case Study in the Computer Analysis of Fabric Supports,'' Metropolitan Museum Journal, 2012.
  • L. van Tilborgh, T. Meedendorp, E. Hendriks, D. H. Johnson, C. R. Johnson, Jr., and R. G. Erdmann, ``Weave Matching and Dating of Van Gogh's Paintings: An Interdisciplinary Approach,'' The Burlington Magazine, vol. 154, pp. 112-122, February 2012.
  • E. Hinterding, Rembrandt as an Etcher: The practice of production and distribution, vol. 1, pp.15-65, Sound and Vision, 2006.
  • C. A. Baker, From the Hand to the Machine: Nineteenth-century American paper and mediums: technologies, materials, and conservation, Legacy Press, pp. 34-50, 2010.
  • C. R. Johnson, Jr., W. A. Sethares. M. H. Ellis, S. Haqqi, R. Snyder, E. Hinterding, I. van Leeuwen, A. Wallert, D. Christoforou, J. van der Lubbe, N. Orenstein, A. Campbell, and G. Dietz, ``The Application of Automated Chain Line Pattern (CLiP) Matching to Identify Paper Moldmate Candidates in Rembrandt's Prints'', October 2014. (http://people.ece.cornell.edu/johnson/CLiP-Herst.pdf)
  
  

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  Each student in this course is expected to abide by the Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity.
  Any work submitted by a student in this course for academic credit will be the student's own work.



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Last Revised December 2, 2014