Me and my research
Mattia Patti on how infrared reflectography is revealing hidden details under some key Futurist paintings
My major field of study is painting techniques with a special focus on underdrawing. Together with conservators and physicists, I carry out measurements on paintings in museums, then study the results in the lab.
The Estorick Collection’s project has shed new light on Futurist painting techniques. At the beginning of the 1910s, Futurist artists were consistent with what they had declared in their manifestos, using new pigments and creating a revolutionary new pictorial language. But some habits were hard to break.
Infrared reflectography of a huge canvas entitled Music (1911) by Luigi Russolo, for example, reveals that in order to construct the painting with careful attention to the spatial distribution of its figures and colours, Russolo drew several concentric circles with a compass before applying the paint layers.
Those were skills he had acquired at the beginning of the 20th century as an apprentice in a fresco painting restoration in Milan.
The same analysis applied to the Futurist masterpiece The Hand of the Violinist (1912) by Giacomo Balla showed not only the preparatory drawings but also the presence, underneath the paint layers, of a previously unknown image.
It is one of the Düsseldorf views that Balla painted in the summer of 1912 for the living room of the new, big house of his pupil and friend Grethel Löwenstein. For some unknown reason, Balla abandoned this work only to cover it with one of the keystones of the entire Futurist avant-garde.
And by removing the frame of Deconstruction of the Planes of a Lamp (1913) by Ardengo Soffici, we discovered a picture of two naked female bathers painted upside down on the back and partially hidden by temporary exhibition labels.
Mattia Patti is the assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Pisa. The exhibition More than Meets the Eye: New Research on the Estorick Collection, London, runs until 20 December.
The Estorick Collection’s project has shed new light on Futurist painting techniques. At the beginning of the 1910s, Futurist artists were consistent with what they had declared in their manifestos, using new pigments and creating a revolutionary new pictorial language. But some habits were hard to break.
Infrared reflectography of a huge canvas entitled Music (1911) by Luigi Russolo, for example, reveals that in order to construct the painting with careful attention to the spatial distribution of its figures and colours, Russolo drew several concentric circles with a compass before applying the paint layers.
Those were skills he had acquired at the beginning of the 20th century as an apprentice in a fresco painting restoration in Milan.
The same analysis applied to the Futurist masterpiece The Hand of the Violinist (1912) by Giacomo Balla showed not only the preparatory drawings but also the presence, underneath the paint layers, of a previously unknown image.
It is one of the Düsseldorf views that Balla painted in the summer of 1912 for the living room of the new, big house of his pupil and friend Grethel Löwenstein. For some unknown reason, Balla abandoned this work only to cover it with one of the keystones of the entire Futurist avant-garde.
And by removing the frame of Deconstruction of the Planes of a Lamp (1913) by Ardengo Soffici, we discovered a picture of two naked female bathers painted upside down on the back and partially hidden by temporary exhibition labels.
Mattia Patti is the assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Pisa. The exhibition More than Meets the Eye: New Research on the Estorick Collection, London, runs until 20 December.