Book review: Beneath the Surface: The Making of Paintings

For those in the business of conserving, identifying, authenticating or dating an artwork, understanding what lies beneath the surface is often crucial. Stylistic analysis, subject matter, a particular brushstroke or a signature may be quite far down the list of criteria for those more focused on the origin and value of art objects.

The supports used, the chemical composition of pigments and so on are determinant factors, due to the advanced science of museum conservation departments.

In Philippa Abrahams's multidisciplinary account, the making of western painting over the past 500 years is grouped according to techniques: drawing, illuminated manuscripts, fresco, egg tempera, oil paint, the artists' palette and pigments, watercolours and acrylics. Although informed by art history and conservation, it is written from the standpoint of making.

Illustrations of Renaissance drawings from the British Museum and the Royal Library at Windsor Castle are tempting hors d'oeuvre in this lavishly illustrated large-format book.

Abrahams devotes major sections to the labour-intensive process of making medieval manuscripts and that very English speciality, portrait miniatures. Delving into the closely guarded art of limning, she illustrates her efforts to reconstruct tiny masterpieces in the style of the 16th-century miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard.

It is fascinating to learn how Hilliard depicted gems: "For an emerald, adde to Turpentaine, Verdigreece and a little Trumericke root scrapt, with Vineger." Detailed comparisons of the Elizabethan originals with Abraham's own results will no doubt be instructive for specialists in the field.

Grappling with the practicality of things, she highlights the pitfalls that can occur in the making of, for example, a fresco. "Leonardo's Last Supper was doomed from the outset," she writes, "because there was no damp course in the refectory building where it was made. Centuries of restoration attempts - the most recent in the 20th century, taking 20 years - cannot bring back what has been permanently lost…."

From this, the book moves to the techniques of egg tempera panel painting used by the artists of the early Renaissance. Abrahams takes on the challenge of reconstructing Verrocchio's Madonna Adoring the Infant Christ, a late 15th-century work now in the National Gallery of Scotland.

She rightly promotes the use of reconstruction as a way of getting "the look and feel of how something may have been", pointing out that "digital technology creating virtual reconstruction is no substitute for real materials".

What makes this book such a good read is that Abrahams is not a reductionist. She has inspired insights into moments of high creativity. In explaining how early fresco paintings relied on underlying cartoons rendered in an earthy-coloured ochre, Abrahams writes: "It is as if the original drawing served as a rehearsal for what followed, the artist working like an actor or a musician remembering music."

The second half of the book is devoted to the rise of oil painting in Europe during the Renaissance. The development of new pigments during the industrial revolution, plus the advent of watercolours and acrylics, changed the nature of painting from an elite occupation to something that many could afford. This transformation is explored through the palettes and brushes of the impressionists, Turner and Seurat.

But for all of Abrahams's focus on technique and her ability to explain complex processes in layman's language, she remains sensitive to the contributions made by the masters.

Challenging the old chestnut that Matisse's late work was infantile, she gives a blow-by-blow account about how she followed the Tate conservation team's analysis to re-create his Snail in 1953.

Her conclusion? "A child could not do that." Abrahams's direct approach and enthusiasm are infectious and make this book a requisite for any museum dealing with painting and drawing.