When I think about publications on technical art examination first things that come in mind is the National Gallery London with its amazing and constant efforts into dissemination of their technical examinations on their “Technical Bulletin” and on publications such as the series “Art in the making” and “Closer look”. Unfortunately, I cannot think of anything like that in Italy. Though, there is a noteworthy exception, the “Archivio Gallone”
I want express with this post my appreciation for this effort. In brief, from their homepage: “The Archivio Gallone … comprises over 30 years’ work undertaken by dott.ssa Antonietta Gallone-Galassi….. …The intense scientific analysis of samples is accompanied by over 600 written reports, each of which presents the results and conclusions of analysis, along with images and, in many cases, significant graphs and tables….From this site, it is possible to search the database of the many documents within the Archive, based on the title of a work, a particular artist, the location, etc.”
Indeed, it is that simple. In few seconds the research can be run and the PDF document downloaded. Unfortunately, it is just in Italian.
There are a number of laboratories in Europe and North America which run examinations on art works. Basically, all of them keep their reports in their archives for their unique private use. The possibility of making this material available on the internet as for the Archivio Gallone, would represent an outstanding improvement in all the researches involving technical art examination, such as artists’ materials and techniques, to study the evolution of their working practices and lead to documented attributions. Indeed, the material published and available to the community it’s really just a small fraction of all the data collected.
