media

Joen Hermans is Assistant Professor Conservation Science in a joint position between the Conservation & Restoration program and Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, both at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2017, he holds an additional position as researcher at the Conservation & Science department of the Rijksmuseum. He obtained his PhD on metal soap formation in oil paint under supervision of Piet Iedema and Katrien Keune at the University of Amsterdam in 2017. Between 2018-2022, he worked on a NWO/Veni project studying the influence of water on oil paint chemistry. A central question in paintings conservation is the influence of solvent exposure on detrimental chemical reactions in paint. Using infrared spectroscopy and a polymer model system that contains metastable amorphous zinc soaps, we could show that, while solvent swelling alone has no effect, water does induce zinc soap crystallization. In particular fast-diffusing polar organic solvents with water impurities are able to induce extensive crystallization, delivering high concentrations of water quickly deep into paint layers. Crucially, experiments with the model system and with real oil paint samples show that, even at very short solvent exposure times, significant quantities of crystalline zinc soaps are formed. This strong effect of water impurities in common solvents gives reason to be cautious when conservation treatments are being considered for oil paints that contain zinc white or other water-sensitive chemicals.

Amélie is a freelance paper and book conservator based in the Netherlands. She specialises in Islamic and South Asian manuscripts and works on paper. She has worked in several institutions such as the Rijksmuseum, the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, and the musée du Quai Branly in Paris. In addition, she has carried out several projects on the materials and techniques of Islamic and South Asian manuscripts. She is currently conducting a conservation and research project on the Pahari drawings and miniature paintings in the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden. The Museum Volkenkunde has 134 drawings and paintings on paper from the Punjab hills (north-western India) commonly known as “Pahari miniature paintings”. The collection covers a wide variety of themes (Hindu stories, vernacular poetry, portraits of rulers and historical figures) and echoes the interactions between local traditions, Mughal culture as well as western influences. The project, which began in 2020, has several interconnected strands, but the focus has been on studying the materials and techniques used by Pahari artists, particularly the so-called Sialkoti paper. To this end, an examination protocol was developed and fibre analyses were carried out to characterise the paper and thus gain a better understanding of papermaking in this region. The results will be used to build a database of paper fibres used in Asia.

Paul van Laar is a PhD fellow at Research Unit VICARTE (Glass and Ceramics for the Arts) and the department of conservation and restoration at FCT NOVA, Lisbon. Investigations into cultural heritage objects are most often focused on external features. While this is not surprising, simply due to ease of access, the interior often holds as many secrets at least! From traces of toolmarks that inform us about studio practice and making processes, to tree rings that allow for dating and attributing objects: unveiling an artwork’s internal structure may help uncover a myriad of aspects of an artwork previously hidden from the eye. The NICAS-funded IntACT project set out to create a visualisation tool that combines 3D surface scans with CT scans, to allow for an intuitive exploration of interior features of an object for any cultural heritage professional.

Thijs Hagendijk is a lecturer in technical art history at Utrecht University. Constructing furnaces and managing fire demanded serious skill and knowledge. While the importance of the historical 'art of fire' is recognized in material culture studies, I am starting a project that specifically traces how artisanal pyrotechnics developed in response to the changing relation between humans and their environment, including the early energy transition towards fossil fuels, concerns over wood shortages and air pollution in Early Modern Europe. I am looking to combine historical research with the interdisciplinary and collaborative reconstruction and re-operation of historical furnaces to analyze how the interplay between environment, pyrotechnology and artisanal demands shaped the quality, condition, and material composition of historical artefacts.

Mitra Almasian is a postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam UMC, University Medical Centers and a guest researcher at the Rijksmuseum. Her research focusses on the use of optical techniques for non-invasive imaging and diagnostics, with a main focus on OCT. She presents a NICAS project in which she investigated the influence of the addition of powdered-glass on morphology and visual appearance of cochineal and verdigris glazes. Therefore she has created a range of reconstructions based on historic recipes, which were studies using conventional techniques: OCT, hyperspectral imaging and ranking light photography. Furthermore, she presents a proof of principle combining depth-resolved spectroscopy and light-transport modelling in order to create virtual reconstructions.

Jennifer Bonetti is a senior forensic scientist with the Virginia Department of Forensic Science in the Controlled Substances section. At first glance, forensic science and art conservation research may not seem to have much in common. Yet for both fields there is a divide between the surface-level public perception of the work and the fascinating detailed reality of the inner workings of the science conducted behind the scenes. In May 2022, I was fortunate enough to be given an inside look at the conservation work performed at the Ateliergebouw of the Rijksmuseum. Now, I’m hoping to provide a similarly illuminating experience by presenting insight into the forensic chemistry research that I’m conducting in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam. This work focuses on the application of data science to seized drug analysis, with particular emphasis on identifying compounds that are too similar for typical analytical techniques to differentiate.

Guus Verhaar is a postdoctoral researcher at the Delft University of Technology. The Allard Pierson holds and exhibits the heritage collections of the University of Amsterdam. Part of this collection is group of 43 glass objects supposedly originating from Palmyra, Syria. There is, however, no supportive documentation as to their origins. A research project centered at the Delft University of Technology focuses on the non-destructive investigation of these objects, in order to learn more about their provenance, production techniques and condition. This presentation will focus on the application of neutron tomography and X-ray tomography to four objects from the Palmyra collection. Being sensitive to different elements in the periodic table, the two techniques complement each other well. In combination with compositional analysis, using x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and gamma spectroscopy, we obtain more information on the potential origin of the artefacts. The benefits and challenges of this approach will be discussed in the presentation.

In this presentation, Jorien Duivenvoorden speaks about the behavior of water in oil paint. It is increasingly recognised that water plays an important role in chemical degradation of oil paint, yet little is known about the concentration and distribution of water inside a painting. This talk will discuss two different approaches to enhance our understanding of an oil painting’s response to moisture. One way to look at a painting is as a multi-layered system, in which moisture transport takes place due to humidity fluctuations in the environment. We developed a computational model that predicts the behaviour of a multi-layered painting by considering the bulk sorption and diffusion properties of the individual layers. This approach assumes the layers to be homogeneous, even though from a molecular perspective, oil paint is a heterogeneous system consisting of a complex cross-linked polymer network interspersed with pigment particles The second part of this talk will therefore discuss our experimental approach to elucidate the local distribution and character of water inside oil paint on a molecular scale.