Research of the Romanesque Pictorial Techniques

Examining an altar frontalOne of the main goals of the project “Artistas, patronos y público. Cataluña y el Mediterraneo (s. XI-XV) - MAGISTRI CATALONIAE” (MICINN HAR2011-23015) is to study the medieval artists’ techniques by methods of scientific analysis applied to the artwork.

The interdisciplinary of the work provided by the different specialists (restorers, art historians, chemicals) makes possible a comprehensive and rigorous research of the Romanesque Catalan painting network (mural painting and panel painting). The sum  and the association of the study of the materials and the execution technologies, also the historical artistic documentation of the work, and as well the comparison with other contemporary examples, will help us to answer some of the questions that this project has the aim to resolve: the origin, the formation and trajectory of the Romanesque painter.

Through a transversal collaboration between the UAB, the MEV and the CRBMC -the last two as EPOS of the project- three panels of the Museu Episcopal of Vic (altar frontals from Lluçà, Espinelves and Puigbò) have been analysed at the Centre de Conservació i Restauració de Catalunya. The results of the study of the material components will be confronted, in comparative terms, with the results of the scientific tests of two mural paintings that present stylistic affinities with two panels from de MEV (Lluçà, Espinelves). These two mural painting sets are those from Sant Martí de Puig-Reig and from the chapel of Sant Thomas Becket’s of Santa Maria de Terrassa. This first step of the research should determine the connection between the different pictorial Romanesque technologies and evaluate, for certain examples, the existence of a unique profile or a shared learning of the medieval painter.

Testing an altar frontal with ultraviolet light