BACKGROUND Although the pigment composition of Pompeian wall paintings has been the object of several studies, a comprehensive characterization of paint binder components is still lacking. This work aimed investigated at a molecular level the binder composition differences among wall paintings belonging to different periods of Pompeii's history. Analytical investigations were performed on repre...

Background/Aim Approaching art from the standpoint of optics and the artist’s eye pathology can sometimes explain the shift of the spectral colors in the work of some artists with cataract and aphakia. This may not be obvious in the paintings of other artists with the same eye pathology. The aim of this study was to create a timeline from the recently obtained details of the cataract surgery, h...

Jackson Pollock introduced a revolutionary artistic style of dripping paint on a horizontal canvas. Here we study Pollock’s unique artistic style by using computational methods for characterizing the low-level numerical differences between original Pollock drip paintings and drip paintings of other painters who attempted to mimic his signature drip painting style. Four thousands and twenty four...

Paintings are usually paintings of things: a room in a palace, a princess, a dog. But what would it be to paint not those things, but the experience of seeing those things? Las Meninas is sufficiently sophisticated and masterfully executed to help us explore this question. Of course, there are many kinds of paintings: some abstract, some conceptual, some with more traditional subjects. Let us s...

In 1952, contemporary artist Federico Silva (Mexico City, 1923–2022) carried out the first outdoor mural painting: The technique at service of peace. At end 2021, project for study and conservation this began with a diagnosis its conservation, which was done through multi-technique based on experience acquired in research projects from other paintings. This included proposal an adequate strateg...

The long-term programme of technical examination conducted at the National Gallery, London, during cataloguing of the Netherlandish School paintings surveyed the materials and techniques of a wide range of artists, including not only Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Bosch, Bruegel, Massys and Gossaert but also lesser known painters from the same period. The research presented in this article brings to...

Stylometry in visual art—the mathematical description of artists’ styles—has been based on a number of properties of works, such as color, brush stroke shape, visual texture, and measures of contours’ curvatures. We introduce the concept of quantitative measures of lighting, such as statistical descriptions of spatial coherence, diffuseness, and so forth, as properties of artistic style. Some a...

OBJECTIVE Artwork and psychiatric disorders are often linked. Accomplished artists with psychiatric disorders express themselves and their emotional distress through their works, and art therapists use the visual arts to help clients understand their problems and cope with them. There have been a number of psychiatric patients with no previous art training who produced artwork that many conside...

Renaissance painting from the early 15th to the mid-16th centuries originated in the area of present-day Italy. Inspired by the works of ancient Greece and Rome, artists produced painting based on topographic observation and the idealistic body proportion. Most of the paintings depict the human figure in perfect shape.