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The blanching of easel paintings can affect the varnish layer and also the paint layer with a blurring effect. The understanding of the physicochemical and optical phenomena involved in the whitening process remains an important challenge for the painting conservation. A set of ca. 50 microsamples from French, Flemish, and Italian blanched oil paintings, from sixteenth to nineteenth century, have been collected for in deep investigations. In parallel, the reproduction of the alteration was achieved by preparing some paint layers according to historical treatises and altering them in a climatic chamber in a humid environment or directly by immersing in ultrapure water. The observation of raw samples with a field-emission gun scanning electron microscope revealed for the first time that the altered layers have an unexpected highly porous structure with a pore size ranging from ca. 40 nm to 2 lm. The formation mechanism of these pores should mostly be physical as the supplementary analyses (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) do not reveal any noticeable molecular modification. Considering the tiny size of the pores, the alteration can be explained by the Rayleigh or Mie light scattering.

Fig. 5. Étude de l'effi cacité et de la réversibilité du perfl uoropolyéther a) visuellement et b) par microtomographie X en absorption. © C2RMF/A. Genty-Vincent.

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Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) is an artist highly valued by the public. However, his works have been little studied by natural scientists. The project “Modigliani and His Secrets” follows two closely correlated purposes: a better knowledge of the materiality of the works and a better understanding of the studio practice of the artist. The corpus (25 paintings and 3 sculptures, works belonging to French museums) covers the entire work of Modigliani in France from 1908 to 1920. The present article will focus on the beginning of Modigliani's artistic life through the analyses of two paintings dated from 1909 to 1913. The same multi‐analytical approach was implemented for each painting. It enables us to determine Modigliani's color palette, but also to unveil pentimenti and previous compositions. Complementary two‐dimensional imaging techniques operating in different spectral ranges (MA‐XRF, SWIR reflectance hyperspectral, X‐ray radiography…) were successful examining Modigliani's masterpieces to reveal the artistic know‐how and intentional strategy of the cursed and legendary artist.