Style criticism

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The painting detail (left) shows the typical Dutch painting technique of the 17th century on a wooden support, the detail on the right is a modern copy on canvas.

The stylistic analysis is an auxiliary science of art history . In the course of the 19th century, it developed from purely aesthetic and historical criticism to become the most important method for identifying paintings , alongside scientific painting studies .

application

If there is no reference to a painter ( signature , monogram ) on a painting , it is attributed to a particular artist through the style criticism and / or traditional documents (historical criticism).

Style criticism means capturing, organizing, highlighting and evaluating the characteristics of a painting in order to assign it to a time, an art landscape and / or an artist. The style criticism is basically similar to the graphology . When criticizing style, the expert, often an art historian , checks not only the “handwriting” of the artist, but also the invention, composition , coloring and painting technique of the painting.

Every period develops characteristic artistic conceptions to which the individual artist is - more or less - subject and which he gives expression to with his artistic and technical means. In painting, the time style influences both the painting technique and the selection of materials, motifs, formal elements and the way in which they are combined into a work of art .

The possibilities of style criticism are expanded by the macro examination , the infrared examination and the x-ray examination.

X-ray examination

The lead-white structure of the original painting (left) differs significantly from that of its later copy.

The X-ray examination expands the possibilities of style criticism, the analysis of which is based only on findings that are visible on the surface. The X-ray image, on the other hand, captures the entire structure of the painting in a summation image and reduces it to a more or less pronounced black and white structure. It only shows the lead content of the paint layer. By eliminating the color scheme, the style-critical evaluation is "simplified".

The possibilities of this field of work were first demonstrated by Christian Wolters using examples from Dutch and German artists of the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1958 Aulmann published an extensive work on X-ray examinations of paintings by Konrad Witz . The material shown is so extensive that this work can be described as the first X-ray atlas. In 1971 Meier-Siem published a work on Rembrandt's self-portraits in X-rays.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Knut Nicolaus: Painting. Explore-Discover-Explore . Klinckhardt & Biermann, Braunschweig 1979.
  2. ↑ Christian Wolters: The significance of the x-ray examination of paintings for art history. Frankfurt / Main 1938.
  3. ^ H. Aulmann: Painting studies with X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared rays . Basel 1958.
  4. ↑ M. Meier-Siem: Rembrandt self-portraits in x-rays . In: Dupont special issue . Frankfurt 1971.