International Conference

Science, Museology and Connoisseurship: The Birth of the Scientific Study of Works of Art

September 27th, 28th and 29th, 2023

This international conference is intended as an opportunity to deepen our knowledge of the disciplinary transformations that took place in the early decades of the 20th century, when the intersection of scientific and historiographical research became irreversibly evident.

Under the impulse of scientific connoisseurship, the renewal of restoration practices and the new institutional purposes of museums, Art History changed. These changes happened due to the activity of a few pioneers and lovers of experimentation who went beyond disciplinary boundaries or purely professional practice, to find significant support in some initiatives of international institutions and the League of Nations organisations.

The Conference for the Study of Scientific Methods for the Examination and Preservation of Works of Art (Rome, 13-17 October 1930), in which most European countries took part, provided the decisive juncture for the establishment of a network, where a distinction between supporters and detractors, participants and absentees could be made. This conference led to the birth of a science of conservation and material research of cultural heritage in the History of Art.

Studies Center

Students College/University General Public Teachers Público especialista International Conference

RDF

Organized by:

Sign up: Online registration form available on the MNP website from June 26th to September 18th 2023.
Schedule: September 27th and 28th from 9.30 am to 7 pm. September 29th from 9.30 am to 2 pm. (Spain Mainland time, CEST)
Price: Free
Direction: Marco Cardinali
Ana González Mozo
Organization: Centro de Estudios del Prado
Contact: centro.estudios@museodelprado.es
In-person or online attendance: It is possible to attend the sessions until the Auditorium reaches full capacity or to attend the conference online through the Zoom link that will be provided for all those enrolled. When enrolling you must select a mode of attendance.
Languages: There will not be simultaneous translation of the conferences. The language of each lecture will be the same one of its title in the program.

Program

2023

Sep: 27

09.00 hReception and accreditation of participants

09.30 hWelcome and Introduction

Miguel Falomir (Director del Museo del Prado)

09.45 hInaugural lecture

Michel Hochmann (École Pratique des Hautes Études, París), L'œil et la main. Deux approches différentes de l'histoire de l'art

10.30 hBreak

11.30 hSECTION I

Paolo Bensi (Università degli Studi di Genova), Lo sviluppo delle analisi scientifiche applicate ai Beni Culturali in Europa nel XIX secolo e il ruolo dell'Italia

Maurizio Lorber (Università degli Studi di Trieste), “Una vera scienza dell’arte”. Giovanni Morelli e l’occhio del conoscitore

Ana González Mozo (Museo del Prado), Los inicios de la aplicación de la radiografía para el estudio de la pintura

Marco Cardinali (Università della Campania), Radiografia e connoisseurship: le indagini ai raggi x e le proposte critiche di Alan Burroughs

13.30 hDiscussion

(Chair: Miguel Falomir, Museo del Prado)

14.00 hBreak

16.00 hPANEL I

Llane Fragoso Maldonado (Freie Universität Berlin), El Pseudo-Boccaccino de Wilhelm Bode 1890. La individualización de un pintor desconocido del Renacimiento en el apogeo del connoisseurship y la disputa por el monopolio interpretativo del arte italiano

Pauline Deschamps-Kahn y Christopher Bakke (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Louis Pasteur and the Origins of the Interdisciplinary Study of Painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris

Nathael Cano (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Las ciencias que se cultivan en el museo. Alcances y pormenores de los estudios técnicos en el Museo Nacional, Ciudad de México (1900-1910)

Arjan De Koomen (Universiteit van Amsterdam), The Eye against Chemistry: Technical Studies in the Netherlands in the 1920s and 30s

Camille Polkownik (Hamilton Kerr Institute, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge), Early bridging of technical analysis and Conservation: focus on Stanley Kennedy North (1887–1942), artist, restorer and scientist

Kamila Kludkiewicz y Aldona Tolysz (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań), Trapped in the Past. Polish museums of the interwar period and new technologies

17.30 hDiscussion

(Chair: Marco Cardinali, Università della Campania)

Sep: 28

09.30 hSECTION II

Sven Dupré (Universiteit Utrecht), The Politics of Conservation and Art History: Science, Technologies, and Expertise in the Interbellum

Santiago Aragón (Sorbonne Université), Miradas convergentes: artistas y científicos ante el descubrimiento de la naturaleza

10.30 hBreak

11.30 hSECTION III

Maria Beatrice De Ruggieri (Emmebi diagnostica artistica, Roma), Il contesto britannico e le indagini scientifiche applicate alle opere d’arte, fra esperienze pionieristiche, storia dell’arte e problemi di conservazione

Andreas Burmester (formerly Doerner Institut, Munich), Museum laboratories, art academies and university research: Munich as a case-study

Francesca Bewer (Harvard Art Museums), Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts: the Fogg Museum and the Emergence of Conservation

Angela Cerasuolo (Museo di Capodimonte, Nápoles), La nascita del Laboratorio scientifico del Louvre e del Gabinetto pinacologico di Napoli

13.30 hDiscussion (Chair: Maria Clelia Galassi, Università degli Studi di Genova)

14.00 hBreak

16.00 hSECTION III

María Concepción García Cabarcos (Independence researcher), El taller de restauración del Museo Nacional del Prado bajo la dirección de Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón. La encuesta de 1932 y el primer Manual de conservación y restauración de pinturas de la Office International des Musées (1939)

16.30 hPANEL II

Silvia Cecchini (Università Roma Tre), Un nuovo modo di vedere. Diagnostica artistica, critica d’arte, restauro 1926-1939

Sabrina Norlander Eliasson (Stockholms Universitet), «Do not harm the paintings!» Carl Nordenfalk (1907-1992) and the first technical campaigns in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm

Silvio Mara (Università Cattolica di Milano), Renato Mancia y la Scuola Nazionale del Restauro (Milán 1935) en el debate contemporáneo

Elena Carrara (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Art under ultra-violet rays at the Metropolitan Museum: James Rorimer’s contribution to the 1930 Conference in Rome

Mireia Campuzano, Núria Oriols, Carles Ribó (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), Casi 100 años de ciencia en el Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya

Miriam Bueso Manzanas, Beatriz Mayans Zamora, Ana Rosa Garcia Pérez (Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España), Los estudios físicos de grandes formatos en el Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España

18.00 hDiscussion

(Chair: Ana González Mozo, Museo del Prado)

Sep: 29

09.30 hSECTION IV

Annamaria Ducci (Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara), L'Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle (SdN) et son action pour le patrimoine dans l'entre-deux-guerres

Reyes Carrasco (Museo del Prado), La internacionalización del Museo del Prado en los orígenes de la Oficina Internacional de Museos (OIM)

Maria Beatrice Failla (Università di Torino), Nuova museologia e riconfigurazione dei laboratori museali di restauro

11.00 hDiscussion

(Chair: Víctor Cageao, Museo del Prado)

11.30 hBreak

12.30 hSECTION V

Marco Cardinali, La Conferenza di Roma del 1930 e la (scarsa) partecipazione degli storici dell'arte italiani

Ana González Mozo, Una gran ausencia en la Conferencia de 1930: el Museo del Prado y la diagnóstica artística en el primer tercio del siglo XX

13.30 hDISCUSSION and CONCLUSIONS

(Chair: Javier Arnaldo, Museo del Prado)

Activity

Scientific Committee

Miguel Falomir (Museo Nacional del Prado)
Marina Chinchilla (Museo Nacional del Prado)
Javier Arnaldo (Museo Nacional del Prado)
Marco Cardinali (University of Campania)
Víctor Cageao (Museo Nacional del Prado)
Reyes Carrasco (Museo Nacional del Prado)
Angela Cerausolo (Museo Nazionale del Bosco di Capodimonte)
Maria Beatrice Failla (University of Turin)
Ana González Mozo (Museo Nacional del Prado)
Eva Martínez (Museo Nacional del Prado)
Elena López Calatayud (Museo Nacional del Prado)
David Bomford (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)
Maria Beatrice De Ruggieri (independent researcher)
Sven Dupré (Universiteit Utrecht)
Maria Clelia Galassi (University of Genoa)
Mario Micheli (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)

Ana González Mozo

Ana González Mozo holds a PhD in Fine Arts (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1998). In 1996 she joined the Museo del Prado, where she participated in numerous research and exhibition projects, specialising in the study of painting using infrared reflectography and other imaging methods. She has been a visitor scholar at several museums and research centres, including the National Gallery in London, the C2RMF in Paris, the laboratory of the Vatican Museums and the Laboratory of Molecular Archaeology at the Sorbonne. She is currently a Senior Museum Technician at the Restoration Department (Technical Documentation Office) and is responsible for the technical analysis of the Italian painting collection. Her research focuses on the study of the techniques and processes involved in artistic creation, particularly in the Italian Renaissance, and on the history of the relationship between art and science. She has been principal investigator of an I+D+i project for the development of a high-definition spectral imaging system for the analysis of works of art (ARTEC). She is the author of the book Arte y ciencia en el Museo del Prado. 1930-1960 (2022) and more than sixty articles in national and international journals and books, and has curated the exhibitions In lapide depictum. Painting on Stone in the Italian Renaissance (2018) and Leonardo and the copy of Mona Lisa (2021), both held at the Museo del Prado.

Marco Cardinali

Marco Cardinali is an art historian specialised in scientific investigations and multispectral imaging of works of art, both as a professional (Emmebi diagnostica artistica s.r.l.) and as a university researcher. In 2015, he was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institut for the History of Science (Berlin). Since 2018 he has been teaching Technical Art History in the Master in Technical Art History and the Art Museum (Stockholm University) and in the Master in Diagnóstico Artístico y Autentificación de obra de arte (Universitat Valencia). From 2019 to 2022, he was a research fellow at the University of Campania 'Luigi Vanvitelli' at the diagnostic laboratory of the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage, coordinating the scientific investigations for the exhibition Raffaello a Capodimonte. L'officina dell'artista (Museo di Capodimonte 2021). In 2023 he gets his PhD from the Università di Genova. He has published many contributions of a theoretical-methodological nature, including the monograph Dalla Diagnostica artistica alla Technical Art History. Nascita di una metodologia di studio della storia dell’arte (1874-1938) (Turin, Kermes 2020), as well as specific in-depth studies on 16th and 17th century painting techniques.