Spectres d’art du Trecento : à propos de quelques peintures de personnages couronnés (Giotto, Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi et Ambrogio Lorenzetti)

Les spectres de l’art peuvent être définis comme des objets figurés souvent très abîmés et parfois invisibles (mais pouvant réapparaître), qui portent des traces d’agression ou d’autres types de gestes intentionnels destinés à modifier l’apparence des images. Cette contribution met l’accent non seulement sur les actes iconoclastes et les altérations des images, mais aussi sur les efforts déployés pour restaurer des œuvres d’art qui ont été modifiées au fil du temps. Les traces des palimpsestes prises en compte appartiennent à un ensemble homogène de peintures du Trecento représentant des personnages couronnés. Faisant référence à l’iconographie du Christ en majesté, traditionnellement associée à celle de l’empereur, l’image d’un dominus qui tient un sceptre et un globe communique un puissant sentiment de domination conduisant à des actes de manipulation et de destruction. Les histoires inédites de spectres d’art de Giotto, d’Ambrogio Lorenzetti et de Simone Martini sont mises en rapport avec la domination angevine en Italie et avec le Risorgimento. Elles amènent à réfléchir aux théories de la restauration, encore trop attachées au paradigme de la singularité de la peinture comme art autographique, ainsi qu’à la conservation restauration future.The spectra of art can be defined as figurative objects that are often very damaged, sometimes invisible (but able to reappear), and which bear traces of assault or other types of intentional gestures destined to modify the appearance of images. This contribution focuses not only iconoclastic acts and meaningful alterations, but also on the efforts made to restore works of art that were altered over time. The palimpsest traces taken under consideration belong to a coherent body of paintings from the Trecento that depict crowned figures. Referring to the Christ in majesty iconography, in turn traditionally associated with that of the emperor, the image of a dominus holding a sceptre and a globe communicates a powerful feeling of domination, leading to acts of manipulation and destruction. In this view, the overlooked spectra of art cases concerning Giotto, Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Simone Martini are read in the context of the Angevine domination of Italy and the Risorgimento. Ultimately, the spectra of art call into question the traditional theories of restoration attached to the paradigmatic singularity of painting as an autographic art and to art conservation and restoration

Deep image prior inpainting of ancient frescoes in the Mediterranean Alpine arc

The unprecedented success of image reconstruction approaches based on deep neural networks has revolutionised both the processing and the analysis paradigms in several applied disciplines. In the field of digital humanities, the task of digital reconstruction of ancient frescoes is particularly challenging due to the scarce amount of available training data caused by ageing, wear, tear and retouching over time. To overcome these difficulties, we consider the Deep Image Prior (DIP) inpainting approach which computes appropriate reconstructions by relying on the progressive updating of an untrained convolutional neural network so as to match the reliable piece of information in the image at hand while promoting regularisation elsewhere. In comparison with state-of-the-art approaches (based on variational/PDEs and patch-based methods), DIP-based inpainting reduces artefacts and better adapts to contextual/non-local information, thus providing a valuable and effective tool for art historians. As a case study, we apply such approach to reconstruct missing image contents in a dataset of highly damaged digital images of medieval paintings located into several chapels in the Mediterranean Alpine Arc and provide a detailed description on how visible and invisible (e.g., infrared) information can be integrated for identifying and reconstructing damaged image regions.Comment: 26 page

Guelfi e Ghibellini, prima e dopo la battaglia di Montaperti (1246-1358)

International audienceGuelfi e Ghibellini, prima e dopo la battaglia di Montapert

As igrejas pintadas na Capela São Marcial do Palácio dos papas de Avignon

National audienceAs igrejas pintadas na Capela São Marcial do Palácio dos papas de Avigno