Thursday, July 31, 2008

Unknown Woman's Portrait Found Beneath a Van Gogh Painting


Here's the link to the story of how modern technology reveals what's beneath the final version of a painting. In this case a portrait of a woman painted in mostly subdued browns and reds buried beneath the gorgeous light filled painting of blue, green and yellow grass in the painting we know as Patch of Grass, by Vincent Van Gogh. It seems that experts have suspected that there was some kind of portrait underneath and the new testing revealed the image. How did they know?? Sometimes ghost images of portions of paintings that have been painted over as the artists adjusts the composition, or complete paintings that have been obliterated by a new image, begin to show through over time as pigments in the paint become lighter and more transparent over time. It's called called pentimento, roughly, repentance, in Italian.


2 comments:

Marie Louise said...

Hi, I'm just discovering your blog along with your "Painting a Day" site as well. Love your work. Do you ever do anything larger format. ie" 36" or more?

Jan Blencowe said...

Hi Marie Louise,

Thanks for visiting. I do work larger, in the 20x30, 24x36, 30x40 range and I am always happy to accept commissions for any size painting. You can visit my website janblencowe.com to see all my work, or view my gallery at dailypainters.com, one of the categories in my gallery is "large landscapes". If there's anything you'd like jsut e-mail me directly jan.blencowe@comcast.net

Please visit again!
Best,
Jan