Early shrinkage cracks

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Early shrinkage cracks can be categorized depending on the cause of their formation and their appearance.
An incorrect build-up of the paint layer ("lean" to "bold") by the artist caused early shrinkage cracks in the arm.

The early shrinkage cracks are a technical craquelé form ( craquelé ) in the paint layer of a painting. They arise during the drying (oxidation) of the paint layer, through chemical and / or physical processes. This can happen just a few hours after the paint is applied. Early shrinkage cracks can be a millimeter or more wide and partially expose the underlying layer of paint or primer . You can penetrate the entire layer of paint but never the primer.

Emergence

Very often early shrinkage cracks appear on primers with high, mostly oily proportions of binding agent ( binding agent ), which were not yet completely dry and therefore still elastic when the first paint was applied. Smooth primers can have the same effect. When drying or, more correctly, when oxidizing and polymerizing, the new layer of paint shrinks. It does not find a hold on the primer, which is still elastic or too smooth, and the resulting tensions lead to a more or less pronounced formation of cracks. The same effect occurs as soon as the next layer of paint is applied to a layer of paint that has not yet fully dried, which dries faster than the one below.

Occurrence

Early shrinkage cracks in Dutch painting of the 17th century are extremely rare.

Early shrinkage cracks can already be found in the medieval painting of Central and Northern Europe, as well as in the Dutch panel painting of the 15th century in individual layers of paint, such as red varnish. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was predominantly Italian pictures painted with walnut oil that occasionally showed this craquelé shape. They have been seen more frequently in paintings since the 18th century and appear very often and in pronounced form in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The reason is believed to be the more frequent use of poppy seed oil as a binder. Paintings that were underpainted with asphalt in the 19th century ( underpainting ) have very pronounced early shrinkage cracks .

meaning

The early shrinkage cracks above the woman's head indicate that there is a flaw in this area that has been painted over.

Early shrinkage cracks have a certain significance for the determination of the painting. For example, retouching and overpainting can show early shrinkage cracks that do not appear on the surrounding original color areas. Even copies, especially if they were made much later than the original model, are usually structured differently in terms of painting technology and can therefore be identified as a copy by the early shrinkage cracks in the paint layer. In summary, it can be said that the occurrence of this craquelé shape does not prove whether a painting is retouched, overpainted, real or false, but it is often the first indication that it should be examined more closely ( painting examination ).

Badly forged "old masters" often show an artificially produced early shrinkage craquelé instead of the naturally occurring age leaps.

Manifestations

The most varied forms of early shrinkage cracks can be found especially on paintings from the 18th to 20th centuries, most of which were caused by unsuitable binding agents and incorrect processing. Top row: flicker cracks (left) and network cracks, below brush stroke cracks (left) and spiral cracks.

In paintings of the 18th, but especially the 19th century and early 20th century, one finds a wide variety of forms such as small, short early shrinkage cracks in the paint layer, which one as Flimmerrisse referred . According to Eibner, they were probably created by "dotting" the colored areas with a brush when applying the paint.

Brush stroke cracks follow the more or less pronounced brush stroke furrows in a layer of paint, that is, they occur at the thinnest point of the paint application. Brushstroke cracks can occasionally be found in Dutch paintings from the 17th century. They are more common in 19th century paintings. Here they often follow the contours of a part of the picture.

The varnish cracks are described in more detail in the article varnish craquelé.

Mesh cracks and lattice cracks are caused by unsuitable and / or incorrectly processed materials ( binders , pigments ).

The spiral crack is a concentric craquelé with an early shrinkage character, of which it is not yet known in detail how it originates. The binding agent and tensions in the image carrier probably also play an important role here as the cause. The spiral crack has so far only been observed on canvas paintings.

The dark early shrinkage cracks on this fake were artificially created with a tear varnish in order to simulate age. The fake is so old that over the years there have been leaps in age.

literature

Knut Nicolaus: DuMo nt’s handbook of painting. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8321-7288-2

Individual proof

  1. ↑ A. Eibner: Development and materials of panel painting . Munich 1928.
  2. ↑ Knut Nicolaus: DuMont's image lexicon for determining paintings . DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-7701-1243-1 , p. 85 .

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