Sources and serendipity : Testimonies of artists’ practice. Proceedings of the third symposium of the Art Technological Source Research Working Group.

Synopsis: This publication is a collection of papers from the third symposium of the Art Technological Source Research Working Group held in 2008. The papers in this volume focus on the exploration of artists' practice found in the evidence recorded in visual and written documents, treatises, manuals, correspondence, ledgers, diaries and journals, paintings, drawings, cartoons, prints, photographs, as well as from the testimony of collections of pigments. Early accounts are compared to the latest analytical findings, and past deductions about art technology are questioned and critically assessed. Topics include: techniques used by 15th-century Romanian illuminators and early modern printers; documentary evidence on the use of moulds in the production of tin relief work from the 13th to the 16th century; a discussion of 'impossible recipes' from medieval times; the making of colours and special-use inks by scribes; an evaluation of the sources for the Strasbourg manuscript family; a comparison between Rubens' retouching practice as described in contemporary sources, eye witness accounts and the paintings themselves; a training manual for the later 18th-century Spanish military cadet; Oudry's lectures on painting technique to the French Royal Academy; Vigani's 18th-century cabinet containing 80 organic and 90 inorganic art materials; the 19th-century Austrian artist Kupelweiser's extensive sketches for a monumental fresco; James McNeill Whistler's use of memory drawing; a study of materials from a late 19th-century Persian workshop of the master potter Ali Muhammad Isfahani; and contemporary art practice as described in artists' interviews, notebooks and diaries. [Publisher's abstract]