The Icon Last Supper of the Iconostasis of the Russian Memorial Church in Leipzig: Technological Investigation as Basis for the Modelling and the Numerical Simulation of Historical Works of Art

Abstract

In this work, the results of a detailed art technological investigation of the icon Last Supper from the Russian Memorial Church in Leipzig (Germany) are presented. The icons of the iconostasis of the church were made in the workshop of N.S. Emelyanov in Moscow in 1912. The investigation showed that the painter in principle technologically adhered to the traditional way of making icons. The panel is made of boards of lime wood with two crossbars on the reverse. The paint was applied to a chalk ground over a textile layer. The traditional iconographer's palette was expanded by a few contemporary pigments. The binding agent is classic egg tempera. Originally, the layers of paint had an oil varnish (olifa). The main aim of the project VirtEx, introduced in this paper, is to expand existing methods with numerical material and structural models to be able to predict quantitatively the behaviour of wooden artefacts under loads due to climate changes as well as mechanical loads. The detailed art technological investigation provides the required data for the computer models. The numerical data can then be validated with technologically exact copies and replicas. In the introduction to the article, the current state of research on icon painting techniques is also outlined.

Revealing the unseen: advanced digital imaging and spectroscopy for the documentation and non-invasive analysis of a 16th-century Cypriot composite icon

“…For example, the technical study of a painting by Botticelli, which accompanied the recent auction of the artwork at Sotheby's, included an older painting inserted into the master panel and provided valuable information about the practice of the re-use of paintings through their insertion into larger panels [5]. Unfortunately, hitherto no comparable analyses have been conducted on any composite icon, even though a broad range of technological and analytical examinations of icons have been published in recent years [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Among these approaches, noninvasive methods appear to be very effective in the study of the materiality and technique of icon painting [16][17][18][19][20].…”

Hygro-mechanical short-term behaviour of selected coatings: experiments and material modelling on vapour permeability and mechanical properties

“…The Russian icon ("Last supper") from 1912 is investigated within the project VirtEx (see funding statement). Also, this class of objects has been the object of technological [20][21][22][23] and numerical [24] research.…”

Sicilian Byzantine Icons through the Use of Non-Invasive Imaging Techniques and Optical Spectroscopy: The Case of the Madonna dell’Elemosina

“…To our knowledge, in the last few years, some studies have been conducted about the investigation of Icons [1,2], mainly from Albania (post-Byzantine icons) or Russia, or of Lipovian style [3][4][5]. Most of the investigations were performed by applying a noninvasive approach to identify the pigments [6,7] or to compare some Icons in order to give the proper attribution to a particular iconographer [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Moreover, this output is very small compared to the large number of unstudied artworks that are in need of conservation, and no similar work has been published about the Icons saved in Belarus, Poland, or Italy.…”