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Portrait of a Woman Found in Van Gogh Painting
3-Aug-2008
Written by: Marshall Burns
A portrait of a woman was uncovered in an already finished piece by van Gogh.
There is a new X-ray technique that has uncovered an unknown portrait of a woman by van Gogh, which was painted over by the artist, reported the BBC. The face of the woman was hidden behind the work, “Patch of Grass,” which was completed in Paris by the artist in 1887.
Van Gogh was known to have reused canvases often to save money. The peasant woman’s identity is unknown. The X-ray bombardment causes atoms in the picture’s layers of paint to emit “fluorescent” X-rays of their own, which indicated the chemicals they originated from, reported the BBC. A color map was then formed and the hidden picture was formed.
The portrait is in a square area that is about 6.8 by 6.8 inches. Joris Dik and Koen Janssens used high-intensity X-rays from a particle accelerator to scan the painting and see the face beneath. The two published their findings in a scientific paper online in Analytical Chemistry, an online journal.
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