The tricky-to-paint armour was probably executed by a second artist
THE 17th-century Flemish oil painter David Teniers hit upon a cunning plan to overcome the difficulty of capturing the metallic highlights in a collection of armour. He took a painting of armour by his talented brother-in-law Jan Brueghel, fixed boards around it, and created his own painting – The Armourer’s Shop (right) – around it.
At least that’s what Jennifer Mass, a researcher in painting chemistry at the Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware, thinks. She is part of a team that has probed the painting’s chemistry in three dimensions for the first time.…
