To follow up on my last posting, the Northern European paintings have been installed in the Cloister and they look wonderful.
As I was admiring them today, one of my colleagues pointed out an interesting fact. These paintings were all done on wooden panels. During research for the recently published catalog German and Netherlandish Paintings 1450-1600, the paintings were examined by a dendochonologist from the University of Hamburg to verify the attributed dates. Dendocrhonology is the study of tree rings that helps determine the age of wooden objects. I fetched our copy of the catalogue and found a very interesting article by Peter Klein about the process. He writes:
"Dendochronology allows us to establish a terminus post quem, or the earliest possible date, of a painting on a panel by determining the felling date of the tree from which the panel was cut....However, the dendrochronological analyses of the fourteen oak panels in the Nelson-Atkins Museum provide an important technical confirmation of the dates arrived at for these pictures based on art-historical evidence..."
Through research, it was discovered the boards used in the Museum's Portrait of a Man by Lucas Cranach the Younger, were from the same tree as nine other paintings that now reside in museums in Berlin, Chicago, Hamburg and Stockholm. How amazing.
Comments (1)
The new paintings are indeed beautifully displayed in this space. There's something about seeing an art object in a space similar to the space in which it was created, that adds a depth to the experience of looking at it.
Another thing I like about these works in this space is the illustration it provides of the gradual evolution of thought and aesthetics in Western cultures. Before, a visitor or student might experience the Cloister as a firmly medieval space, and passing through the doorway into the next gallery with the armor gives the impression that the Renaissance just happened over night. The cloisters now describe the gradual, overlapping changes that occur as history flows on. What a great story.
Posted by David Adelman | April 18, 2007 9:39 AM
Posted on April 18, 2007 09:39