Data collected on the hidden Titian portrait resulted in a recreated version now on exhibit in … [+]
Sometime around 1570, celebrated Renaissance artist Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, painted a scene of Pontius Pilate, the Roman ruler of ancient Judea, presenting Jesus to an unseen crowd. More than 450 years later, high-tech tools have revealed a surprise hidden beneath Titian’s artwork: a completed portrait of an unknown man.
The mustachioed gentleman is seen standing, holding a quill in his right hand while resting his other hand on a desk. Though his identity remains unknown, the scene suggests he’s a professional, perhaps a merchant or a banker, in his study or place of business, said Nikolas Bakirtzis, director of the Cyprus Institute’s Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Laboratories, which led the research into the concealed portrait.
An exhibit currently on display in Limassol, Cyprus titled “Unseen Gaze – The Hidden Portrait under Titian’s Ecce Homo” details how a team of heritage scientists and technologists discovered the masked portrait through the use of advanced digital imaging and spectroscopy. The exhibit, at the Limassol Municipal Arts Center through March 10, includes a recreated painting of the concealed image that an artist made based on the collected data.
Beneath this 16th-century painting by Renaissance master artist Tiziano Vecellio, a portrait of an … [+]
The exhibit highlights yet another instance of science and technology uncovering old art mysteries. Just this week, researchers announced the discovery of a portrait of a woman hidden underneath a Picasso portrait of a man. In 2023, imaging technologies helped undress a female nude that had been painted over for centuries, and the same year, tech provided new insights into how Leonardo daVinci painted “Mona Lisa.”
Titian, A Multi Talented Master
Titian, an Italian master, was known for his skill across styles from landscapes to portraits and religious subjects. In the painting “Ecce Homo” (Latin for “behold the man,” the words Pontius Pilate said to the crowd before Jesus’ crucifixion, according to the Bible), Pontius Pilate wears an elaborate fur garment, while Jesus, bound and nearly naked, dons a crown of thorns.
Titian painted ecce homo scenes multiple times during his career. The discovery of a portrait underneath this version began in 2017 when APAC Labs was asked to examine the oil painting ahead of conservation work.
Guided by a preliminary X-ray and the observations of Paul Joannides, a University of Cambridge emeritus professor of art history, a painting beneath Titian’s dramatic Christ scene began to come into view. Researchers then used a powerful digital microscope to observe the fine cracks that form on the surface of old paintings, and noticed different pigments under the composition.
“It felt like uncovering pieces of a hidden puzzle,” Bakirtzis said in an email interview. “Being able to fully map the materiality of the portrait and finally to visualize it was a truly exciting journey of recovery and recreation.”
An enhanced visualization of the underlying portrait observed beneath Titian’s oil painting “Ecce … [+]
Reuse And Recycle, Renaissance Style
It wasn’t uncommon for painters of Titian’s day to reuse canvases. Bakirtzis speculates that the veiled portrait never made it to the client, who perhaps passed away before procuring it. “Why throw away a stretched canvas and not reuse it? There are other examples of reused canvases from the work of Titian and his studio,” Bakirtzis said.
Based on the way paint was applied on the upper left of “Ecce Homo, art experts have determined that the work remained unfinished when Titian died in 1576. Nonetheless, “the fact that the new composition was effectively executed directly on the portrait painting points to an experienced, confident artistic hand,” according to APAC Labs.
Based on images collected of the underpainting, artist Erato Hadjisavva, dean of the Athens School of Fine Arts, redrew the portrait that had been lost to time. It’s a work in progress.
Piecing together the portrait has been a multidisciplinary effort. Last year, after a new multimodal scanner enabled the team to fully map the underpainting, Harvard University professor Ioli Kalavrezou, a specialist in early Christian art, shared insights into how elements of the portrait influenced the compositional development of “Ecce Homo.”
“Some details and contours of the facial characteristics of the unknown man were used to delineate the execution of parts of the ropes tying Christ’s hands,” Bakirtzis said. “Similar choices were observed in a couple of other areas of ‘Ecce Homo.’”
With continued imaging advancements, who knows what other art mysteries we might behold?
Using advanced digital microscopy, researchers were able to peer beneath the delicate layers of a … [+]
