Peeking Beneath the Paint

Scholastic Art: What is your job?

Anya Shutova: I’m a painting conservator at the Barnes Foundation. Art conservators study, care for, and repair damaged works of art, preserving them to be enjoyed by future generations.

SA: How do you study paintings?

AS: Our process starts with close looking, often with a microscope. When we look at the painting, we might see what’s on the surface. But there are things hidden beyond the surface, and that’s where technology becomes really useful. Once we have done an examination with natural light, we might turn to other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum: X-rays, ultraviolet light, and infrared light.

SA: What new information can those technologies reveal?

AS: X-rays can show the kind of canvas the artist used, how much damage is on the painting, and even if an artist reused a canvas. Infrared light penetrates the paint layers. The underdrawing, which is the preparatory sketch the artist used to guide the painting process, becomes visible. Ultraviolet light helps us distinguish between materials that might have been added during a previous restoration effort and the original materials.

SA: Are there rules about what you can and can’t do to a painting?

AS: There are two criteria. Any restoration we do should be stable and reversible. We use stable materials that don’t change with time. And any materials that we put on must be different from what the artist used. This allows any changes we make to be reversible in the future if scholarship about the artwork or artist changes.

AS: I’ve always been interested in art, and I also love science. In college, I studied chemistry and art. Then I found art conservation, which combined them.