Alan Burroughs X-Radiographs online
2 November 2015
One of the partners of The Rembrandt Database is the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies (Harvard Art Museums) in Cambridge MA. This institute houses the Alan Burroughs Collection of X-Radiographs; the first systematic, large-scale X-ray documentation project assembled to address issues of the authenticity and attribution of paintings. Many of the X-rays were produced between 1925 and 1944 by Alan Burroughs (1897-1965)- a Harvard graduate (1920) who became a Fogg Museum research fellow and the keeper of X-ray "shadowgraphs". Today the collection contains approximately 8,000 X-radiographs of over 4,450 paintings from collections in America and Europe.
The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies has enriched the database with the Burroughs X-radiographs of paintings in the following collections: Amsterdam Museum, Louvre, Mauritshuis, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, National Gallery of Art in Washington, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Gemäldegaleries in Kassel and Berlin. More X-radiographs of paintings from other collections will be launched in stages over the course of the project.