TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AS AN AID TO ART HISTORIANS IN THE ATTRIBUTION OF ART WORKS

Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage, 2020

The topic of attribution and authentication of works of art is a well known one, and is currently the subject of heated debate. What must be highlighted is the importance of the terminology used to distinguish the different degrees of certainty within the system of art work attribution, and in the context of the different possibilities of evaluating a work of art. It is also necessary to integrate historical-humanistic and technical-experimental skills which should necessarily lead to a subjective and objective evaluation in order to arrive at a univocal scientific truth. As an emblematic case, also owing to the uniqueness of the work, the Mona Lisa, prototype of the Renaissance genius of Leonardo da Vinci, is examined. At the same time, the versions and copies of the Mona Lisa are also studied, basing the examination on in-depth archival and bibliographic research, and taking into account the results of the historical-artistic and technical-material analyses from a methodological p...

1988

2021

The topic of attribution and authentication of art works is a well-known one and is currently the subject of heated debate. To arrive at a univocal scientific truth, however, it is necessary to integrate historical- humanistic and technical-experimental skills with a subjective and objective evaluation. The first part of the volume deals with experimentation relating to three valuable artifacts of different material composition: a painting, a sculpture, a codex. The second part of the research regards the emblematic case of the Mona Lisa and its uniqueness. The question connected to this study is: "Is there a second Mona Lisa?" Is the Isleworth Mona Lisa, also known as the Earlier Mona Lisa, a second version of the Louvre Mona Lisa painted by the Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci? In order to provide an answer regarding attribution, a methodological path was applied to the painting on canvas "Mona Lisa with columns" (St. Petersburg), establishing that it was a copy, albeit a well-executed one. Numerous versions and copies of the Mona Lisa were also studied, basing their examination on the in-depth archival-bibliographic research of the many paintings on the same subject. The findings highlighted the distinction between two authentic versions by Leonardo, i.e. the Louvre Mona Lisa and the Isleworth Mona Lisa and two copies, i.e. the Prado and the Reynolds Mona Lisas. The latter two, considered to be the most complete and qualitatively better that many others are, in fact, either copies of previous Mona Lisas or of the two authentic versions. The final considerations are dedicated to the chronological sequence of historical sources, stylistic and aesthetic analyses, artistic techniques and experimental investigations to prove the authentication of the Isleworth Mona Lisa by Leonardo. Salvatore Lorusso, Andrea Natali L'ErmArte, 27 2021, 146 pp. 21,5 x 28,5 cm ISBN: 9788891321541 ISSN: 2612-4718

Kunsttexte, 2018

The LANIAC (Laboratorio di analisi non invasive su opere d’arte antica, moderna e contemporanea) of the University of Verona (Italy) and the CAEM (Centre d’Art d’Època Moderna) of the University of Lleida (Spain), two university twin centres, share their working methodologies on copies, forgeries and fakes using diferent diagnostic methods. The present paper delves with the universes of copies, fakes and forgeries. Concepts and practices like motifs reusing, pastiches confection and stylistic recreations are dealt here by displaying diferent cases of study examined by both centres. Through the technical imaging and the artistic diagnosis some conclusions on the proper identifcation of each object are drawn, in order to understand such artworks in the time and space axis and in their whole materiality and sense.

2018

2018

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012