Hidden paintings revealed under Tudor portraits go on show at the National Portrait Gallery

The National Por­trait Gal­lery has dis­covered hid­den paint­ings beneath Tudor por­traits in the Col­lec­tion. The dis­cov­er­ies are dis­played from today as part of Hid­den: Unseen Paint­ings Beneath Tudor Por­traits in the recently remod­elled Room 3; admis­sion if free.

Recent ana­lysis under­taken as part of the Mak­ing Art in Tudor Bri­tain pro­ject used sci­entific tech­niques to ana­lyse the por­traits in the dis­play to increase the under­stand­ing of the work­ing prac­tices of Tudor artists. The pro­ject has used infrared reflec­to­graphy and x-radiography to explore the pro­cesses employed in mak­ing these por­traits, which has enabled exam­in­a­tion of the lay­ers beneath the paint sur­face. It was dur­ing this tech­nical research that hid­den images behind the por­traits were discovered.

Thomas Sack­ville, 1st Earl of Dor­set, Unknown artist, 1601 © National Por­trait Gal­lery, London

X-ray image of the por­trait of Thomas Sack­ville, 1st Earl of Dorset

The Fla­gel­la­tion of Christ, After Michelan­gelo, print by Adamo Scultori, Italian, 1547–1587 ©The Trust­ees of the Brit­ish Museum

X-rays revealed that under­neath the por­trait of the Lord Treas­urer and poet Thomas Sack­ville (by an unknown artist in 1601), was a fully worked up ver­sion of The Fla­gel­la­tion of Christ painted under the sur­face. The com­pos­i­tion is derived from a fresco in the Borgher­ini Chapel in San Pietro in Mon­torio, Rome by Sebasti­ano del Piombo after designs by Michelan­gelo. After the chapel’s unveil­ing in 1524 the artist Adamo Scultori pro­duced an engrav­ing and the com­pos­i­tion became more widely known. An engrav­ing from The Brit­ish Museum is dis­played along­side the x-ray of Thomas Sackville’s portrait.

Other works in the dis­play include the NPG’s por­trait of Sir Fran­cis Walsing­ham, Eliza­beth I’s Prot­est­ant spy­mas­ter and Sec­ret­ary of State, which appears to have been painted over an earlier devo­tional depic­tion of the Vir­gin and Child. Infrared reflec­to­graphy revealed there were at least three fig­ures beneath the por­trait and in x-ray it became evid­ent that these were likely to be of the Vir­gin Mary with the infant Christ, with either the fig­ure of Joseph or an angel also vis­ible. The cir­cum­stances of the re-use of the panel are unknown and given Walsingham’s ardent reli­gious beliefs had he known of this re-use he would not have approved. Dendro­chrono­logy (tree-ring) ana­lysis has sug­ges­ted that the panel was first used between 1547 and 1579, whilst the por­trait of Sir Fran­cis Walsing­ham dates to the mid 1580s. This por­trait hangs along­side the tech­nical images that revealed the secret paint­ing and also The Vir­gin and Child in a Garden, style of Mar­tin Schongauer (The National Gal­lery, Lon­don), which gives an impres­sion of what the ori­ginal com­pos­i­tion may have looked like.

Dr Tar­nya Cooper, Chief Cur­ator of the National Por­trait Gal­lery, Lon­don, says,

It has been really excit­ing to dis­cover these images beneath por­traits; they were unex­pec­ted and have raised some inter­est­ing ques­tions about mater­i­als and the inten­tions of artists.  The re-use of wooden pan­els is an example of Tudor recyc­ling, which was an essen­tial part of life in the past. And yet, the people in the por­traits painted over the top were per­haps unlikely to have known the pan­els were second hand. In the case of Sir Fran­cis Walsing­ham, the Prot­est­ant Spy­mas­ter with the Roman Cath­olic image of the Vir­gin and child beneath, you do won­der if the artist might be enjoy­ing a private joke at the expense of the sitter.

HIDDEN: UNSEEN PAINTINGS BENEATH TUDOR PORTRAITS
3 Janu­ary until 2 June 2013, at the National Por­trait Gal­lery, Lon­don. www.npg.org.uk
Admis­sion Free

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