20-10-2025, 08:18 PM
This image (a clip of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. magnified 400%) shows some of the challenges on the way to uncovering drawings that have been painted over.
There are some ink traces, like (A), that were quite dark to begin with and suffered little from being painted over, apart from their color getting mixed with the paint color.
But there are some ink traces, like (B), that are very faint, almost invisible. Would we be able to recover them if they were painted over? I think that smudges at ( C) look like they were the original outline of the nymph's left foot which was incorrectly retraced as the thick dark stroke a bit further to the NW. Those smudges are only a little fainter than the toes of that same foot, which almost certainly were there.
To make things worse, when ink strokes were painted over, sometimes the ink would dissolve and either would spread around, or would be pushed by the brush for a small distance; as seems to have happened at (D). Presumably, some strokes were completely washed away and spread over a larger area, mixed with the green paint.
At (E) there are some smudges which look like those at ( C) or at the nymph's toes, and they seem to form a rounded shape that does not seem to be just a random stain or vellum defects. Will we be able to determine if it was indeed painted-over ink, and, if so, recover enough of it to tell what it is?
All the best, --stolfi
There are some ink traces, like (A), that were quite dark to begin with and suffered little from being painted over, apart from their color getting mixed with the paint color.
But there are some ink traces, like (B), that are very faint, almost invisible. Would we be able to recover them if they were painted over? I think that smudges at ( C) look like they were the original outline of the nymph's left foot which was incorrectly retraced as the thick dark stroke a bit further to the NW. Those smudges are only a little fainter than the toes of that same foot, which almost certainly were there.
To make things worse, when ink strokes were painted over, sometimes the ink would dissolve and either would spread around, or would be pushed by the brush for a small distance; as seems to have happened at (D). Presumably, some strokes were completely washed away and spread over a larger area, mixed with the green paint.
At (E) there are some smudges which look like those at ( C) or at the nymph's toes, and they seem to form a rounded shape that does not seem to be just a random stain or vellum defects. Will we be able to determine if it was indeed painted-over ink, and, if so, recover enough of it to tell what it is?
All the best, --stolfi