Beneath the floor of an oil portray by Italian Renaissance grasp Titian, specialists have recognized a beforehand unknown work by the artist utilizing scientific evaluation, the Andreas Pittas Artwork Characterization Laboratories on the Cyprus Institute (APAC) introduced in a press launch for an exhibition of the portray on the Limassol Municipal Arts Heart.
Researchers from APAC have been initially tasked with documenting the materiality and state of preservation of Titian’s Ecce Homo (1543). As they ready the piece for conservation, the workforce took preliminary precautions to look at it beneath a microscope. There, completely different colour pigments revealed themselves within the cracks of the portray’s floor.
“Microscopic observations of the craqueleure of the portray allowed us to doc the stratigraphy of the canvas and to detect, by way of the cracks, the existence of various pigments beneath the Ecce Homo composition,” APAC director Nikolas Bakirtzis instructed Artnet Information.
Ecce Homo depicts Jesus Christ sure, carrying a crown of thorns, and standing subsequent to the Roman official Pontius Pilate. The portray beneath, nonetheless, is a picture of an unknown man with a mustache holding a quill and standing subsequent to a stack of papers. As such, it has been dubbed Portrait of an Unknown Man by the workforce.
Titian flipped the canvas when he started Ecce Homo, making it the wrong way up to the Portrait of an Unknown Man, and painted instantly over high the unique. Consultants imagine this impacted some traits of this iteration of Ecce Homo, which was a generally painted theme for the artist.
“We discovered that components of the facial traits, the contours of the person’s face, for instance a part of his jawline, comply with the portray execution of the ropes tying Christ’s arms,” Bakirtzis added. “There are another particulars within the background area and room represented within the portrait which additionally facilitate the drawing of the Ecce Homo composition.”
The tone of the works, nonetheless, varies enormously as they might have been made for various purchasers. In the end, the invention sheds larger mild on how the artist labored by reusing the canvas.
Additional evaluation might be wanted thus far and to establish the person within the authentic portray.
