The Artemisia UpClose project is sponsored by Calliope Arts and Christian Levett, in collaboration with Fondazione Casa Buonarroti at the Buonarroti Museum.

In this video, Physicist Raffaella Fontana, Director of Research, tells about the conservation of Artemisia’s Allegory of Inclination using 3D digital technology.

The project is hosted in The Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPD), in Fortezza da Basso (Florence).

It’s a distortion-free micrometric analysis in which they examined how the painting changes over time. The group of researchers examine the thickness of the varnish and record the painterly layer before and after the restoration procedure using an optical coherence tomography approach. 

At the end of the project, they’ll be able to investigate the canvas, the stretcher, and the level of tension that characterises the painting after conservator Elizabeth Wicks re-stretches the canvas and the 3D digital model will allow them to rotate the work in space and view it from all sides.

Director Fontana says “One day, if we would like, we will be able to transform this virtual model, using a CAD programme, and create a physical model, similar to what they did at the Guggenheim with Jackson Pollack’s Alchemy[…] 

We will be able to zoom into Artemisia’s pentimenti, where she changed her mind, and follow the contours of her craquelure, which is different from any other painting I have ever seen”.

Linda Falcane has written the article Science sisters: Artemisia visits the National Institute of Optics, in The Florentine about the project and the analysis.