Dorothy Mahon

Metropolitan Museum of Art · Paintings Conservation

Quite a few of the most innovative and best-known paintings by Frans Hals exist in several variants. Attributing some of these versions or imitations is a notoriously difficult challenge. A case in point is the Malle Babbe painting at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which has a rich attribution history: it has been called an original Frans Hal...

Rembrandt's Aristotle with a Bust of Homer was examined and analysed to investigate the origin of a disfiguring hazy bloom, most visible in the dark paint passages that had been developing in the painting for decades. By combining the results of macro X-ray fluorescence imaging and the re-examination of photographic documentation, X-radiographs, au...

Recent technical examination of Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne Lavoisier in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, painted between 1787 and 1788, has revealed significant and previously unknown alterations that transform our understanding of this celebrated portrait, its author and its sitters

Jacques-Louis David’s (1748–1825) iconic portrait of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) and Marie-Anne Lavoisier (Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, 1758–1836) has come to epitomize a modern couple born of the Enlightenment. An analytical approach that combined macro-X-ray fluorescence with the examination and microanalysis of samples by Raman spectro...

The unique crystal shapes and skeletal structures of calcite particles associated with plant ash are crucial markers for the unambiguous identification of this material in the ground layers of paintings, particularly when small amounts of sample are available and/or when the heterogeneity of the elemental compositions make it difficult to assign wi...

Abstract Among the thirty-six paintings ascribed to the Dutch seventeenth century artist Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), Mistress and Maid, in The Frick Collection, stands out for the large-scale figures set against a rather plain background depicting a barely discernible curtain. Although generally accepted as among the late works of the artist and...

The nature of ground preparations is of critical interest to those engaging in the study of historical painting tech- niques, as certain materials can be identi ed with speci c regions and school of painting. This is the case of a particu- lar ash-based, calcite-rich material obtained as a byproduct of lye production, recently identi ed for the rst...

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The authenticity of a double-sided painted processional crucifix acquired as Spanish 13th century from a private collection in Barcelona was questioned shortly after the piece entered The Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum of Art) collection in 1955. At the time, a combination of connoisseurship and limited technical analysis was employed to conclude t...