A visit from Valencia

August 16, Ana María García Castillo, started her four-month PhD stay at the Royal Danish Academy and Rosenborg Castle.

Ana is a PhD student from the Polytechnical University in Valencia (Universitat Politècnica de València). Her PhD project is part of CollectionCare and is about an epidemiological study of cracks in oil canvas paintings.

About the project, Ana writes:

“One of the most common pathologies in oil paintings are the cracks that often appear in their pictorial structure. Over the centuries, much research has been done to understand why these cracks appear and what factors trigger their formation. At the same time, it has been possible to identify some very specific and localized cracking patterns (those generated by the strainer/stretcher and/or by impacts or scrapes). However, it is not known exactly whether there are typical patterns of crack formation on the entire surface of oil canvas paintings.
Thus, the aim of this PhD is, by means of an epidemiological study, to examine and describe a number of characteristics of crack networks in oil canvas paintings between 1600 and 1900, in order to draw conclusions as to whether it is indeed possible to find and classify crack patterns in oil paintings between 1600 and 1900.
Therefore, the research stay here in Copenhagen will focus on gathering as much information as possible about cracks in oil canvas paintings from the collection of paintings at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the Rosenborg Castle.”

Ana’s epidemiological study of cracks in oil paintings is essential to our work of computational modelling degradation of canvas paintings, as it will provide a review of the crack patterns seen in a large group of real paintings from 1600 to 1900, which for example can be used to validate our modelling results by comparing with real cases, trends in degradation or pathologies.

We are happy to be able to work together with Ana here in Copenhagen and we are looking forward to seeing more of her research.