ART HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY

APAC Labs' research builds on previous work and expands the analysis of works of art and the related interpretation of the results of digital 2D and 3D imaging and analytical methodologies toward a better understanding of the painting technique, materials and style of past artists.

Among the highlights of our laboratories' research has been the focus on selected works by El Greco and Titian. 

Advanced technical imaging has allowed APAC Labs to shed new light on the most intriguing aspect of the work of El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos): his artistic development and transformation as he travelled between Crete, Italy and finally Spain during the 1560s and 1570s. Utilizing imaging techniques like Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), research work focused on a series of early works by El Greco to address the artist's growing sensibility to the material qualities of painting surfaces as a means to facilitate iconographic narrative.
In collaboration with museums and collections, the study of works like the Herakleion Baptism, the Syros Dormition, the Herakleion View of Mt Sinai, Benaki Museum's St. Luke painting the Virgin and the Visitation of the Magi, among others, addressed the materiality of the great master's art, issues of his technique and artistic development, the identification of pigments, as well as aspects related to the works' conservation. Ever evolving as an artist, El Greco experimented with materials and used the application of color pigment and moulding brush strokes to animate his paintings, manipulate the reflection of light and thus emphasize the visual narrative of his works.

The technical analysis of the painting of Ecce Homo ("behold the man") attributed to Titian and his studio, with a tentative date in the 1550s, revealed the hidden portrait of a man under the Ecce Homo composition. The work depicts a theme explored by Titian in the later phase of his artistic career in a series of paintings kept in museums and collections worldwide. The X-Ray Radiography study of the work revealed an underpainting depicting the portrait of an unidentified standing man. This work was overpainted at an angle of 180° in relation to the Ecce Homo composition. More importantly, it sheds light on the development of the iconography of the particular theme.