Why did a team of six researchers decide to submit Jan van Goyen’s paintings to dendrochronological dating* and X-ray computed tomography? Among other in situ imaging techniques and complementary microanalysis techniques… And how did they manage to do it?

This video tells the story of IN2PAST’s exploratory project ‘The Materials and Techniques of Jan van Goyen: A Technical Study of Eight Small Paintings’, highlighting the interdisciplinary contributions of each team member and the (crucial) partnership with the Medeiros e Almeida Museum (which owns the paintings), taking us on a journey from the project’s objectives to its main findings, focusing on the central research question: how did Van Goyen’s artistic production technique evolve over the course of his career?

‘Through this interdisciplinary research we can finally prove that there was in fact an artistic evolution towards the simplification of the technical and material processes, both in terms of the preparatory extracts and the gradual reduction of the colour palette.’, says project PI Sara Valadas (HERCULES – University of Évora / IN2PAST) in the video.

The video features interviews with all six members of the research team, which includes art historians, materials scientists, and dendrochronologists, and never-before-seen images of Van Goyen’s paintings under analysis, as well as microscopic images of pigments and layers. By showing the team in action, both at the Museum and in the lab, the video helps to illustrate the technical analysis processes and its outcomes, contextualising the findings of the project within the broader history of Dutch painting of the 17th century.

Directed by Henrique Guerreiro for IN2PAST, an official teaser had already premiered in Oslo, Norway, at InART2024, in the beginning of June, 2024. The team and IN2PAST hope this video succeeds in engaging a broad and diverse audience in the exploration of the fascinating world of technical art history.

*Dendrochronological dating is the same method used to determine the age of a tree based on the growth of its trunk rings.

Check out the photo gallery below.