Discovered in Rembrandt's 'Night Watch' an unusual lead compound that until now had never been identified in ancient paintings: it is an absolute first in the field of scientific investigations applied to works of art, which provides a new vision of the technique painting of the seventeenth century and the history of the conservation of this famous oil on canvas, made in 1642 and now kept in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
The study is published in the international edition of the journal Angewandte Chemie by researchers from the Dutch museum in collaboration with the French National Research Center (CNRS), the European synchrotron ESRF and the universities of Amsterdam and Antwerp.
Rembrandt's painting is in fact at the center of a major research and conservation project called 'Operation Night Watch', which involves an international and multidisciplinary team of experts to analyze how the pictorial materials used by the artist evolve chemically over time.
Thanks to a first scan of the canvas with a particular X-ray scanner developed by the University of Antwerp, the scholars have identified traces of an unexpected lead compound in areas of the painting, where among other things, there are no lead-based pigments. lead.
The discovery was confirmed by analyzing some micro samples of the work with the powerful X-rays of the European Esrf synchrotron in Grenoble and thanks to the Petra-III accelerator in Germany.
The study hypothesizes that this compound vanishes quickly, so it would never have been detected in ancient paintings.
The fact that it is still present on Rembrandt's work may provide valuable clues on the possibility that the Dutch painter used linseed oil with dissolved lead oxide to improve its drying properties, as well as on the impact that restoration treatments could have had done in the past.