ARTWORK DIGITIZATION AND INVESTIGATION A CASE STUDY OF THE LOOM WEAVER OIL PAINTING BY HOSNI EL-BANNANI

Art, Science and Technology are the main elements of Artwork Investigation which requires the mutual understanding of artistic, historical and technical issues in a multidisciplinary environment. In this research we will introduce an oil painting from the collection of Hosni El-Bannani who was one of the pioneer's artists of the impressionist art movement in Egypt. His oil painting was suffering from many deterioration aspects and was planned for conservation treatments. A digitization and investigation project was initiated to run in parallel to keep record of the physical condition of the painting and to monitor the remedial treatment process. This case study will focus on the digitization and investigation phases within the framework of a proposed workflow. Several acquisition techniques that have been used will be presented; multispectral imaging, high resolution scanning, microscopy, analytical qualitative and quantitative studies. The analysis of the results identified clear under-drawings and composition shift that correspond to the original style of the artist. Moreover, the digital record of the results for the surface and the strata will be used as an identifier of the art object and for further studies. Finally an interactive application has been developed to be used for investigation, layers comparison and presentation.