Scientific secrets of works of art

Today you are talking to us about works of art

Yes, because next Wednesday, March 8, there will be in the Liliad Education Center for Innovation, in the Scientific City of Villeneuve-d’Ascq, a conference open to all and free of charge by the journalist and columnist Loic Mangin, who will reveal some works of scientific secrets of art.

Some of these secrets will be revealed to us before time!

naturally ! There is for example one relating to Christ on the Cross by Salvador Dali entitled Corpus Hypercubus. Well, this painting is a real window into the fourth dimension! Like the Dali Cross there as a four-dimensional supercube seen from our three-dimensional space. Yes, Dali had some really good concepts of mathematics! Another example concerns the Altar of the Mystical Lamb by the Van Eyck brothers, which can be admired in Ghent Cathedral. The secret concerns the fruit that Eve holds in her hand.

Isn’t it an apple?

no. And in fact, nowhere in the Bible is it written that the forbidden fruit was an apple. Lucas Cranach depicts an apple in his Adam and Eve, but Michelangelo depicts a fig in the Sistine Chapel. On the altar of the van Eyck brothers, it is clearly not an apple, the skin is like a citrus fruit, and it took a real investigation to finally identify … Adam’s apple. This is the name of a variety of lemons that Jan van Eyck may have discovered during one of his trips to Spain.

Eve biting the Adam’s apple! great !

Science also makes it possible to date works of art very accurately. This is the time astronomy and geography that we will seek. The position of the moon in Lever de lune – Haystacks by Vincent van Gogh indicates that it was painted on July 13, 1889 at 9:08 pm. The level of the tide and the position of the sun in the painting Impression Soleil levant by Monnet allow us to date it to Wednesday, November 13, 1872, at 7:35 a.m., which is uniquely personal. For example, it is physics that makes it possible to understand the little miracle of the colors of the Lycurgus cup.

Lycurgus cup?

It is a Roman glass cup from the 4th century, which is currently in the British Museum. When the cup is lit normally, it is green. If you put the light source inside the cup, it is red.

Does the color change depending on the lighting position?

exactly ! This is because it is made of glass, sapphire gold, which contains gold foil. They are nanoscale flakes, and therefore are not visible to the naked eye, and the extraordinary thing is that they are not pigments or dyes, which usually give things their color.

But where do the colors come from?

These are called structural colors, because they come from the interaction of light with the structure of the material itself. There are also skeletal colors in the butterfly’s wings, notably the morpho, which is a very metallic blue when viewed through reflection, while the wings are translucent if the light source is behind the butterfly. To find out more, I encourage you to come and listen to Loïc Mangin next Wednesday. And if you have time, come early and visit the exhibition on the precious paintings of Auguste Ponsot, in the building just opposite. You will see the accurate structural color images. They are centenarians, and since there are no dyes involved, they have not wrinkled, and their colors are more vibrant than usual pictures. I put for you as always all the information on ramenetascience.fr.