Over the last few weeks, pre-program conservation interns Natasha Kung and Meredith Menache have bee

Over the last few weeks, pre-program conservation interns Natasha Kung and Meredith Menache have been making custom paint swatches according to historic procedures. Although the tools they use are up to modern standards of practice – their gloves, masks, and clean glass beakers, for instance – the paint materials themselves and the methodology used are similar to those of artists making Romano-Egyptian funerary portraits (fayum portraits) about 2000 years ago. Dry pigments are mixed with water for form a paste then blended with a binding medium. Natasha and Meredith apply each type of paint mixed to a board that has also been prepared using historic materials and practices.Conservators are particularly interested in paint made with indigo for this project. Since indigo was often used in a mixture with other pigments (adding orpiment makes green; adding madder makes purple), each board of paint outs that Natasha and Meredith create includes indigo mixed in different proportions with a different historic pigment. So far they have worked on mixtures with vine black and with gypsum. The binding media for the paint is also varied to include the range of options found on the Brooklyn Museum’s fayum portraits: each board will show the pigment mixtures applied using three different types of animal-based glue and two different types of wax.The goal of this highly methodical process is to learn more about one of the analytical imaging techniques recently adopted at the Brooklyn Museum, used in the characterization of indigo. Studying known mixtures of indigo in a variety of binding media on these boards will help conservators know what information is most reliable when studying the fayum portraits using the same imaging techniques. In the next few months, conservators and interns will complete these paint outs and conduct the imaging. Stay tuned for the progress of this project!Posted by Jessica Ford -- source link

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