We are pleased to announce a new, online edition of the NICAS colloquium on Thursday 29 October 2020 from 12.00 to 13.00 hrs. The colloquium will take place online through Microsoft Teams.
Throughout the year, NICAS organises a bi-weekly Colloquium consisting of two short research lectures. It provides researchers with the opportunity to present ideas for, updates on or results of their activities. The NICAS Colloquium allows people to stay informed on a regular basis about the latest developments and results of research and to exchange information and expertise.
The chair of this colloquium will be Gauthier Patin (University of Amsterdam)
The presenters are:
► Margriet van Eikema Hommes – The remarkable genesis of Ferdinand Bol’s portrait of Lieutenant Cornelis Tromp. New light on Bol’s late artistic career
Abstract:
Recently the Scheepvaartmuseum Amsterdam acquired a monumental portrait of the Dutch naval hero Lieutenant Cornelis Tromp (1629-1691) by Ferdinand Bol. The portrait had recently been “recovered” in a private collection; previously it was only known from a seventeenth-century reproduction print. Because of the restoration of the portrait, its materials and painting technique and its (art)historical context were examined by the Cultural Heritage Laboratory (RCE). This has resulted in new insights into its dating, original appearance and function. Bol appears to have radically revised the portrait, in order to keep it in line with a new flight in Tromp’s career. The research also sheds new light on Bol’s artistic career. It has always been assumed that he definitely stopped painting in 1669. However, Bol appears to have painted Tromp’s portrait in the mid-1670s. Archival documents, furthermore, indicate that Bol had hung Tromp’s portrait in his own house, as a token of his friendship with the naval hero.
Bio:
Dr Margriet van Eikema Hommes is an art historian specialized in historical painting techniques and Dutch 17th and 18th century painting ensembles. Since 2011, she has supervised a NWO vidi-grant program on such ensembles (FromIsolationToCoherece.nl). Margriet is senior researcher at the Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the RCE. She is also Associate Professor at the research group Materials in Art and Archaeology at Delft University of Technology.
► Joen Hermans – Water chemistry and transport in oil paint
Abstract:
Many researchers have demonstrated that water/humidity exposure has the potential to greatly accelerate oil paint ageing. However, it remains difficult to estimate whether typical environmental conditions or cleaning methods have a significant impact on paintings. Towards our goal of reliable risk assessment, we study both the precise effects of water molecules on chemical processes in paint, and the transport processes that determine the local water concentrations in oil paint layers. In this presentation, I will present some recent results on chemical reactivity and transport of water. These results are not just relevant to the role of water in paint ageing, but they also provide important insights on general characteristics of oil paint as a chemical system.
Bio:
Joen Hermans studied chemistry at Utrecht University. In 2017, he obtained his PhD at the University of Amsterdam under supervision of Piet Iedema and Katrien Keune, studying the structures and processes behind metal soap formation in oil paintings. After a short post-doctoral project at the Rijksmuseum to develop new spectroscopic techniques to study paint model systems, he was awarded a Veni grant by NWO in 2018 to investigate the role of water in oil paint degradation. This research is currently taking part both at the Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences of the University of Amsterdam and the Conservation & Science group of the Rijksmuseum.