INTERACTIVE COMPUTER DISPLAY IN A RENAISSANCE GALLERY AT THE FOGG

June 18, 1997

Investigating the Renaissance online Site

The Harvard University Art Museums is pleased to announce the installation of a unique and highly interactive computer display in gallery II of the Fogg Art Museum as part of the ongoing exhibition Investigating the Renaissance. Visitors to the exhibition are now able to use the computer to see how technical analysis can be used to describe and study the physical character of Renaissance paintings. The display, which is manipulated through touching the screen, was conceived by members of the Straus Center for Conservation and the Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts. The authors are Ron Spronk, art historian and Andrew W. Mellon Research Associate in the Straus Center, and Robin Marlowe, programming specialist, who designed the interface. Funds for the computer display were provided by the Getty Grant Program.

"Paintings are three-dimensional objects," notes Ivan Gaskell, organizer of Investigating the Renaissance and the Margaret S. Winthrop Curator in the Fogg's Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts. "The computer display helps students and visitors to see just how they were made in a physical sense. It complements the paintings, tools and pigment samples on view nearby to demystify objects that might otherwise seem culturally very distant from us. I am confident that the understanding visitors gain from the computer display will carry over to their scrutiny of the great works of art on view throughout the installation."

With this new technology, visitors can examine several material aspects of three early Netherlandish paintings using digital imaging technology, an important research technique developed in the Straus Center. The featured works are The Virgin and Child from the workshop of Dirck Bouts, Portrait of a Man by the Master of the 1540s, and The Last Judgment by Jan Provoost. By touching and moving boxes across the surface of an image, visitors can examine aspects of the artists' technique by viewing magnified details of each painting. The display provides the viewer with a description of historical painting techniques and shows the recent cleaning of The Virgin and Child, using before, during, and after treatment images. The display also contains a glossary of terms which can be accessed by touching the text on the computer screen.

Through an innovative use of image software, infrared reflectograms, X-radiographs, ultraviolet photographs and visible light images are superimposed within a single, high-resolution computer file. The opacity of each superimposed layer can be manipulated by the viewer to examine the

paintings, or details within them. The layers can be used sequentially or simultaneously to reveal, for example, relationships between the initial sketch or underdrawing, the finished work and compositional changes within the paint layers. The technical examination methods are described in the display and related images of the three paintings are used to illustrate the importance of these methods to conservators and art historians.

According to Henry Lie, director of the Straus Center, "In addition to making our examination of documents fun to use, these virtual tours through the layers of a painting offer a faster and inherently more detailed means of comparing different types of information. We expect this technique will eventually become routine in studying and documenting the complexities of important paintings."

The exhibition Investigating the Renaissance has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Getty Grant Program, and The Scott Opler Foundation, Inc.