Science, Museology and Connoisseurship: The Birth of the Scientific Study of Works of Art

This is an invitation to share thoughts on the disciplinary changes and methodological evolution that accompanied the controversial advent of technical art researchers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their methods of study and techniques had a deep effect on the scientific status of art historians as well as on the accrual of knowledge by connoisseurs in areas as relevant as those of authorship and the dating of works of art. Simultaneously to their appearance, discussions were being held, and agreements reached, on the modern defining elements of what makes a curator or a conservation scientist. At that point, the training of art historians was influenced by the ever-increasing methodologies available for the technical-scientific study of works – Technical Art History – as well as by the latest scientific advances in multispectral imaging, which made available technical images that were progressively more analytical and polysemic. These were major innovations in the interpretation and "communication" of works of art, and their impact was similar to that brought about by the birth of photography itself in the field of 19^th century art history, rooted, as it was at that point, in the biographical-literary model.

The congress, divided into eight sessions, will address different areas of research, among others, the historical and theoretical precedents of this disciplinary upheaval – from the birth of photography and the discovery of X-rays to the introduction of Giovanni Morelli’s experimental method – and the study of the pioneers and experimenters (doctors, criminologists, chemists) who flocked to the field of the Fine Arts from other disciplines. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle and the Office International des Musées fostered exchanges and witnessed debates between and among scholars, scientists, and institutions; this in turn led to the establishment of the first museum laboratories and to the verification of the compatibility of restoration techniques in use in different countries. The international conferences sponsored by these organizations led to the onset of new disciplines in the area of cultural heritage, such as museology, and to the scientific renewal of restoration methodologies and techniques. For this reason, the Conferenza Internazionale per lo studio dei metodi scientifici applicati all’esame e alla conservazione delle opere d’arte (Rome, October 1930) will also be studied with great interest, since, given the mix of its supporters and detractors, of participants and non-attendees, this conference was truly a watershed moment, spelling the dawn of the science of conservation and material research in the history of art.