Anatomy of Osman Hamdi's portraits to be revealed in new project

Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently announced that the six Osman Hamdi Bey paintings included in the Sakıp Sabancı Museum's collection have received funding to be conserved through the company's global Art Conservation Project.

Within the scope of the project, the six paintings created by Osman Hamdi Bey, one of the pioneer artists of Turkish art, will be examined in detail in terms of the technique and materials used. While "Scrivener" is the first painting being examined in the framework of the project, Osman Hamdi Bey's other works to be examined are "Man Reading Quran," "Flowers in a White Vase," "Mosque," "Portrait of Kokona Despina" and "Portrait of Naile Hanim." Following the project, these works will be displayed in the Osman Hamdi Bey Exhibition opening in early 2017.

The examination of materials and techniques used by artists during the research process conducted by conservators on the paintings prior to restoration work provides information about a painting's previous restorations and possible damage that cannot be seen on the surface. In the X-Radiology technique frequently used by conservators, X-rays reveal information that cannot be detected with the naked eye by going through the materials in different densities. Varying by atomic structure, most materials used in the paintings are transparent under the X-ray. That's why this process enables experts to observe the stages that the painting has gone through since its creation and detect changes made by artists on the canvas and its following restorations.

Renowned for his unprecedented contributions to the field of culture and arts for a long period, ranging from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, Osman Hamdi Bey's "Scrivener" portrait has been scanned by X-ray, revealing the techniques, brush strokes and periodic changes carried out by the artist on the canvas. The painting's lighter-colored parts indicate areas where the artist used lead-bearing pigments.

Aside from works by Osman Hamdi Bey, the Art Conservation Project also includes other art pieces that have recently been taken into conservation in Turkey, namely restoration of the Urartian Jewelry Collection exhibited at the Istanbul Rezan Has Museum, which dates back to about the seventh century B.C. and an eighth century Umayyad period Quran included in the Turkish and Islamic Artworks Museum in Istanbul.