New Research Reveals Revolutionary Finding About Rembrandt’s Technique
A groundbreaking new discovery has shed light on Rembrandt’s inventive way of working, showing that he impregnated the canvas for “The Night Watch” with a lead-containing substance before applying the first ground layer. Never before observed in Rembrandt’s or his contemporaries’ works, this discovery is detailed in a study published today in Science Advances. The finding underscores Rembrandt’s innovative approach to his art.
This surprising observation arises from Operation Night Watch, the largest and most wide-ranging research and conservation project in the history of Rembrandt’s masterpiece. The revelation is a result of sophisticated analysis of a paint sample taken from the historical painting.
Fréderique Broers, a researcher at the Rijksmuseum and Ph.D. student, is the first author of the paper. Her research, done in collaboration with professors Katrien Keune (University of Amsterdam), Koen Janssens (University of Antwerp), and Florian Meirer (Utrecht University), is part of the research project 3D Understanding of Degradation Products in Paintings of the Netherlands Institute for Conservation+Art+Science+ (NICAS).
Broers and her colleagues utilized a combination of X-ray fluorescence and ptychography to identify and visualize sub-microscale chemical compounds in the lower layers of the canvas. They then discovered a lead-rich layer below the quartz-clay ground layer of the canvas after sampling a small Night Watch paint fragment at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Hamburg).
Implications of the Findings
Rembrandt’s use of a lead-rich layer was previously unknown. The tradition has been that Rembrandt used a quartz-clay ground on the Night Watch. This new discovery challenges and expands our understanding of Rembrandt’s artistry.
Moreover, the large size of The Night Watch, intended for a damp outer wall of the great hall of the musketeers’ shooting range in Amsterdam, may have led Rembrandt to seek a new ground layer. It’s been reported that under humid conditions, the common method of preparing the canvas using animal glue could fail. In this context, impregnation with lead-rich oil as an alternative, inspired by contemporary sources on painting techniques, was proposed and may have been utilized by Rembrandt to improve the durability of his masterpiece.
State-of-the-Art Imaging Techniques
The presence of the lead-containing layer was discovered through the first-ever use of correlated X-ray fluorescence and ptychographic nano-tomography on a historical paint sample, highlighting the power of computational imaging in art historical research.