New paint sample documentation online
5 February 2015
The RCE (Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands) in Amsterdam/Amersfoort presents new paint sample documentation in The Rembrandt Database. They keep samples and sample documentation from Karin Groen, who carried out sample analyses on paintings worldwide. In particular, she performed many sample examinations on paintings in the frame of the Art and Autoradiography project at The Metropolitan Museum in the early 80’s. Colleagues from RCE and The Rembrandt Database have been working closely together on this documentation in the past year. They rephotographed Groen’s samples and digitized text documentation and is available as of now on the website.
Images and reports on sample analyses performed by another partner of The Rembrandt Database, the Doerner Institut in Munich, have also been published in the database. This institute keeps sample documentation from Prof. Dr. Hermann Kühn. In the 60’s he took the samples at the painting's institution with a stereomicroscope after which he analyzed them at the Doerner Institut in Munich. Visitors of the database can now view the digitized sample images and text documents.
Many thanks to Muriel Geldof, Klaas-Jan van den Berg and Margriet van Eikema Hommes from the RCE and to Andreas Burmeister and Jeanine Walcher from the Doerner Institut in Munich, who have generously provided the database with the data and have been working on the presentation in close collaboration with the RKD.