At the halfway point of the GRIEG project, we reached out to the authorities in the field of conservation and heritage science, who were invited to a mid-term meeting in Florence. The choice of the place was not accidental – this is where the famous conservation school is located, Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPD), which is a world leader in the restoration of works of art.
This allowed us to host Sandra Rossi, director of the OPD Museum, Cecilia Frosinini, a member of the Scientific Research Committee of the OPD, and several other OPD employees at the meeting. Apart from the experts from Opificio, we were advised by: Tone Olstad and Lena Stoveland from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), Mark Aronson from the Yale Center for British Art, George Bisacca from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Jørgen Wadum, founder of Wadum Art Technological Studies.
During several hours of meeting, we discussed the objectives of the project (Ł.Bratasz), the properties of oil and tempera paints (A. Janas, K. Poznańska and Aleksandra Hola, partner from the Academy of Fine Arts), modeling of the craquelure formation (M. Bury and Pietro Foti, partner from NTNU ) and its imaging by microscopic scans (S.Antropov).
We could count on both the support and constructive criticism of experts who shared with us their professional experience. Thanks to their inspiration, we have several ideas for further research to understand the mechanisms responsible for the craquelure patterns in paintings!
The research was performed within CRAQELURE project funded by Norway Grants 2014-2021, project number 2019/34/H/HS2/00581.