New results from the Rijksmuseum’s Operation Night Watch suggest that Rembrandt treated his canvas with a lead-based substance before painting the ground layer.
New results from the Rijksmuseum’s ongoing research into Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” suggest that he treated his canvas with a lead-based substance before painting the ground layer.
In 2019, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam started Operation Night Watch, a thorough investigation of Rembrandt’s famous painting, “The Night Watch”. For several months, researcher took X-rays of the painting and used several other techniques, even exploring the back of the canvas, to learn more about the massive masterpiece that Rembrandt finished in 1642.
Operation Night Watch already found a pencil sketch hidden below the painting and showed which type of drying oil Rembrandt used on the painting. Now, in a new research paper published last week in Science Advances, the museum researchers shared that they found that Rembrandt treated the canvas of “The Night Watch” with a lead-based substance even before painting his ground layer.
As part of the research on the painting, a miniscule sample of paint from the canvas was studied in detail. With a method called x-ray ptychography, the researchers were able to compare tiny differences in the molecular structures of the material to find the composition of each layer.
