New Technology Helps Conserve Paintings

Museums and art galleries are repositories of treasured artworks created by notable artists throughout history. These artworks are archived, conserved and studied for they dictate artistic styles that would aid in understanding history and expanding the existing knowledge in art.

Unfortunately, defects are inevitable especially in old pieces due to human interventions and changing environmental conditions. In the Philippines today, no current quantitative procedures are used in order to closely analyze paintings and accurately determine qualities and defects. The only bases for authentication, archiving, and restoration are history, material, style of the painter, and other visually identifiable characteristics of the artwork.

Motivated by the need to restore, preserve and contribute to the study of Philippine Art, experts from the University of the Philippines, Diliman (UPD) are currently working on a project funded by the Office of the Chancellor entitled “Art Beyond Appearances: Physics Looks into Paintings.” The Art Analysis team led by Dr. Ana Maria Theresa Labrador has collaborated with the Physics team led by Dr. Maricor Soriano to develop an optical imaging technique that would provide quantitative analysis of artworks which may guide curators, conservators and researchers.

The ongoing research uses artworks in the Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center as test subjects. Examples are Fernando Amorsolo’s paintings like Malacañang by the River (Oil on canvas, 1948). Using only a digital camera and locally developed software, the Physics team can perform Spectral Imaging and Photometric Stereo for the measurement and analysis of reflectance spectra and texture of paintings, respectively. With Spectral Imaging, the spectral reflectance that shows the characteristics of colors are determined, thus aiding in the documentation of the color use of selected Filipino artists and making possible accurate color reproduction for inpainting restoration work. Determining the surface topography of oil paintings through Photometric Stereo facilitates in the detection of defects (discolorations, cracks, deformations, etc.) and canvas weaves. Through multiple images of the surface taken at different light source locations, a three-dimensional visualization of the surface structure is created, thus achieving a clear view of the imperfections of the painting surface.

Discolorations and defects in oil on canvases are usually due to the changes in temperature and relative humidity within the museum or any storage location. There are existing guidelines for the conservation of paintings from the West, but the different climate in the Philippines, where temperature and relative humidity are higher, is significant to the conservation process and thus, should be considered in the study. Through the help of a team from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) led by Marc Caesar Talampas, a wireless sensor network has been developed and installed in a selected location inside the Vargas Museum to monitor and control its temperature and relative humidity. Such monitoring and control is done through the SHT15 sensor from Sensirion, which has a serial interface and consumes very little power; it is connected to a Z8! Encore microcontroller readily available at the Instrumentation, Robotics and Control Laboratory in EEE. Through these processes, the right environmental condition for the paintings is maintained and the conservation methods of the museum are improved.

Working on the results gathered by the Physics team on the hidden signatures of painters and the artworks’ color and texture are the members of the Arts Analysis team. They study implications of such findings to the preconceived notions in the history of art including the exposition on the “Philippine Light” (a product of a painting technique called backlighting) which according to artists is seen in most of Fernando Amorsolo’s paintings. They also research on the paintings’ pigments, materials used and their sources, and review other related studies.

Dr. Labrador reports that this project has been featured in different media for public awareness such as in the UP Newsletter, Manila Bulletin, Business World, and on the evening news of RPN 9. More events are being planned to promote the study. According to Dr. Labrador, the project not only aims to develop tools to study and preserve masterpieces, but also to establish interdisciplinary courses on preventive conservation, color analysis, monitoring of environments of collections, and art historical construction.