In this case, the tones of light blue reinforce that the shirt is painted with the same pigment. How did she do this?Īn infrared false color (IRFC) image typically distinguishes different pigments that appear the same to the naked eye. Chaplin succeeded in making an already white shirt a bit more white when you look at it from different angles, which was no easy task. Let’s try to understand how Elisabeth Chaplin, in her 1930 painting, Mercato, rendered the highlighting for a white shirt on an elegant street trader. Contemporary artists crave this information because they would like to recreate the effects of Old Masters’ secret techniques.

Art historians are eager to learn about old artists’ techniques because the information enables them to authenticate a work of art. Discovering the techniques of master artists throughout history is beneficial to both art historians and contemporary artists.

How do painters achieve their effects? How do they mix or overlap pigments in order to get a particular result? Each painter develops his or her own techniques based on the materials available as well as the contemporary practices of their time. How does the UVFC image differ from the VIS and IRFC images? What does that tell you about the pigments that the artist used?Įlisabeth Chaplin, Mercato, 1930, Galleria d'Arte Moderna Palazzo Pitti, Florence. From left to right, you can see a visible image of the whole painting followed VIS, IRFC, and UVFC images of a detail.

VIS, IRFC, and UVFC can each uncover revealing information about the pigments an artist uses.

Colors under black light