Characterization and monitoring over time of oil-based pictorial products purchased by the Belgian company Jacques Blockx and their use in the 20th century painting "The temptation of Saint Anthony" by Salvador Dalí

Abstract

Since 1865, Blockx artists’ paints manufacture has been widely used by artists all over the world for its quality oil paints. Among these artists stands Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), as the Spanish painter himself states in his book “50 Secrets of Magical Craftsmanship” (1948). Starting from this important reference, the aim of this thesis is to characterize and study the oil painting products purchased by the Belgian company over time and to relate them to the material used by the artist Salvador Dalí. This project was developed by the University of Liège, in particular the Centre Européen d'Archéométrie, and then carried out at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice thanks to an Erasmus+ internship. The first phase of the research consisted of the preparation of a uniform set of samples made with selected Blockx commercial oil paints. A multi-analytical approach was adopted to gather information on the composition and hlm-forming processes of the mock-ups made using attenuated total reiection infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and weight percentage variation calculation. The study of chemical and morphological variations over time was essential to correlate the Blockx material with the samples studied in real cases. In this regard, the study of Salvador Dalí's 20th century painting "The temptation of Saint Anthony" was performed using X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Micro-Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) and GC-MS. This research has allowed to shed light on the possible correlation between Blockx pictorial products and Dalí artistic production.