Displaying items by tag: XRadiography

On January 3, 2013 researchers at the National Portrait Gallery in London announced that they had discovered hidden paintings beneath a number of Tudor portraits in the museum’s collection. The findings will be presented in the exhibition Hidden: Unseen Paintings Beneath Tudor Portraits in the museum’s recently remodeled Room 3.

 The exciting discoveries were made while researchers were analyzing works as part of the Making Art in Tudor Britain project, which aims to shed light on the working practices of Tudor artists through scientific techniques including infrared reflectography and x-radiography. This technical research, which allows for examination beneath the paint surface, unveiled the images behind the portraits.

Works on view include a portrait of the Lord Treasurer and poet, Thomas Sackville; a portrait of the first Earl of Dorset by an unknown artist, which boasts a completed painting of the flagellation of Christ beneath its surface; and a portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham. Walsingham was Elizabeth I’s Protestant spymaster and Secretary of State. Hidden beneath the portrait of Walsingham is a depiction of the Virgin Mary with the infant Christ and another figure believed to be Joseph or an angel.

Hidden Treasures will be on view through June 2, 2013.

In the last half of the eighteenth century, wealthy New England schoolgirls often displayed their stitching skills by executing elaborately embroidered coats of arms.1 One such object (Fig. 1), likely from Boston and dated between 1790 and 1820, is now in the collection of Winterthur Museum. Much of the surface is elaborately embroidered, but in one location the word “Gold” has been written on the silk ground fabric, partially obscured between the worked shield and garlands (Fig. 2). This presented the distinct possibility that the wording was intended as a color instruction for the embroiderer and was provided by the artist who painted the design. Research suggests that the designs for coats of arms used by schoolgirls were typically chosen from books of heraldry and then a sign painter or artist was employed to reproduce and transfer them to the fabric using paint.2 The presence of the word “Gold” was exciting given that little is known about how the color instruction was relayed to the embroiderer when a design was purchased.