Scientists have made a colored view of an early rejected painting underneath Vincent van Gogh's 'Patch of Grass' painting, using advanced X-ray techniques.AMSTERDAM
(Reuters) - Scientists have made a colored view of an early rejected
painting underneath Vincent van Gogh's 'Patch of Grass' painting, using
advanced X-ray techniques, a Dutch university said on Wednesday.
The very detailed image shows the face of a woman and may give art
historians a better understanding of the way Van Gogh developed as a
painter.
"It is estimated that one third of Vincent van Gogh's early
paintings have been painted on top of existing ones. Van Gogh literally
recycled his own canvasses," scientist Joris Dik of the Delft
University of Technology said.
Conventional X-ray techniques give a colorless, partial view of the
hidden painting and only show vague contours of a person behind 'Patch
of Grass', the university said.
By recycling his work Van Gogh painted many layers over the original
painting but the scientists managed to scan all the different elements
in those layers of the relevant area with X-ray fluorescence.
"We can make a virtual 3-dimensional model of the painting and start
to peel off all the layers one by one. Then we get a nice detailed view
of the hidden face," Dik said.
Van Gogh painted 'Patch of grass' in 1887 in Paris and it hangs in
the Kroller-Muller museum in the Dutch eastern city of Otterlo.
(Reporting by Tineke van der Struik, editing by Paul Casciato)
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