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In the last days some clamorous news about a rediscovered picture by Van Gogh has been published in the magazine “Analytical Chemistry”, and has already been spread out loud to the whole world. Under the surface of a painting by the great Dutch artist there is another one, realized previously and then covered, portraying the face of a woman.“Grasgrond” is the painting that has been examined with particular attention by researchers of the University of Delft, in Holland, where the interesting discovery has come to light: under a flowery meadow, among all the blades of grass of a field described with vehement traits, there is a hidden face of a woman with dark colours, typical of the first painting period of Van Gogh (Zundert, 1853 – Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890).
Joris Dik, expert from the university of Delft who led the investigation, explains that his team of researchers arrived at this result by using advanced X-ray technologies, confirming the suspect, already raised by previous analyses, of the presence of the outlines of a head, covered by a subsequent composition.
The 17.5×17.5 canvas, which belongs to the Kröller-Müller Museum of Otterlo, underwent for two days the synchrotron, a special accelerator of particles that, thanks to its powerful – but not damaging – energetic sheaf, excites the atoms of metals that make up the pigments of colours making it possible to immortalize them.
Once the map had been drawn up with the disposition of the metals contained in the pigments, the physicists used the computer to reconstruct layer by layer the colours laid on the canvas. The two subjects represented on the same canvas were revealed to be of a different nature also from a chemical point of view: the meadow now visible is mainly made up of zinc, barium and sulphur, whereas the covered face is made up of antimony, mainly found in yellow pigments, and mercury, base for red pigments. Therefore, this procedure has allowed to distinguish the different work stages of the painter. The portrait obviously precedes the field which was painted in 1887 in Paris, the great capital of art and modernity, where he had arrived only a year before, in 1886. It was there that, coming from Holland, he abandoned the dark and cold colours of his homeland to discover a bright and livelier palette, it was there that his trait became more refined due to experience, and the observation of the works by the great artists kept in museums, being in contact with the fertile artistic context of the big metropolis and confronting the impressionist expressive ways. In France, Vincent inhaled the air of spring, he saw in the outskirts and the parks a lush nature and he rediscovered its tonalities to revive them with ardour in his paintings of that period.
Could it be that Van Gogh was so inebriated and enraptured by those fascinating colours that he laid aside and even wanted to cover a dark portrait from the previous Dutch period with a lush meadow? Or could it simply be that his difficult economic situation did not allow him to buy new and expensive material, to the point that he had to reuse the old canvases to paint on their reverse, or even cover them with a different subject? This last hypothesis seems the most likely: at that time, in fact, materials for artists, especially for who painted a lot and used a generous quantity of colour like Van Gogh did, were really expensive, in particular in a big city and in the studios where sophisticated artists went, in search for first-quality colours. On the other hand, during the period spent in Paris Van Gogh paid tribute to “Père Tanguy”(Dad Tanguy), as the painter affectionately called the owner of a paint factory, Julienne François Tanguy, for his kindness and benevolent spirit, which often made him buy the pictures of artists who otherwise could not afford the materials to paint.
Anyhow, we cannot either shelve the first hypothesis, considering that the troubled painter had a particular bond with his paintings, to the point that while he was alive he only sold one, but in this case he decided to cover an old portrait – maybe a preparative workshop for potato eaters – whom he probably did not care enough about to avoid covering it with renewed enthusiasm. The hidden subject, now revealed, is the portrait of a countrywoman painted in Nuenen, Holland, between 1883 and 1885: a face marked by strong and coarse traits, furrowed by strain and resignation, wearing the colour of the ground and work under the sun, similar to other portraits from that period, dominated by a faint light and the dark colours of the Flemish land and mines. It is also true that, according to experts, it is not the first case in which Van Gogh changed his mind by hiding a painting under another: it even seems possible that at least a third of his works hide under their “skin” another subject.
The question about what background this event had is certainly fascinating, but for now we can be satisfied with this precious discovery and by the fact of having learnt another little secret that brings us closer to the intimate language of the intense Van Gogh.
Link for further details on the research carried out by the university of Delft:
http://www.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=6383a391-d2c6-4341-bcd0-62cba4cff50b〈=nl
translated by Giorgina Arcuri
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