|
The painting McLean is working on at present March 2008.
Image from the Splendor solis manuscript
 I really love this image of the man with the glass sphere head emerging out of the swamp. I decided to make a copy not from the most familiar London, British Library manuscript of 1582, but from the earlier original of 1545 now in Nürnberg. On my easel I have printouts of the London on the left and the Nürnberg on the right. Because this was an detailed illumination on vellum it would not be possible to paint this in oils at the same size, so I have enlarged it to about twice the original size. Even on this larger scale reproducing the details is proving rather exacting. The painting McLean was working on in early March 2008.
Mary Magdelene by Rogier van der Weyden   The painting McLean was working on in February 2008.
I wanted to set myself a little challenge and make a facsimile copy of the Mona Lisa, just to see what was possible. Early on I decided to work from a 17th century copy rather than primarily from the familiar original. The original painting appears to have been damaged in some areas by some over vigorous cleaning in the past and detail and colour has been lost, especially from the background. When I looked at photographs of this copy, I could see the intact columns which framed the window in front of which the figure was sitting. These seem to have been cut off the original, leaving only shadows of the pillar bases. Also the figure is seated in a chair, something not now immediately obvious in the original painting, but if one looks deeply into it one can see the arm of this chair, though it is almost lost in the dark background. I decided that, rather than make an exact copy of the familiar Mona Lisa, I would attempt to do a little restoration or reconstruction to bring out some of the lost features. I have thus lightened her garment to bring out the folds and also lightened her translucent veil. This is a puzzling feature in the original painting, as it appears on the side of her face almost like the shadow of painted out hair, however, on deeper examination one can see that it continues around behind her head and emerges on the other side of her face. It is quite lost within the darkening of the paint and the varnish. I decided to lighten this and make it visible again. One can thus see that her hair is not let down in the modern style but is contained within this veil, as would be more seemly for 15th century aristocratic women. As I show in the photo above, I am about half way through completing the work. I have to apply a few more layers to the face in order to smooth the forms more and seemlessly blend the tones. Having now heightened the details in her garment and the wooden panelling under the window, I must now apply layers of earth tones over this to darken it down a bit and make the shadowed areas more realistic. In the original the paint has badly cracked (particularly where white pigment was used) into those fine filaments known as craquelure. In my painting the image is of course totally smooth.
Mona Lisa    |