Investigations of a Gandharan stucco head of the Buddha at the Victoria and Albert Museum (IM.3-1931)

Abstract

and grey, stucco sculpture, by nature more porous than schist, often retains traces of their original painted decoration 2 . While the making of ancient Greek and Roman sculptural polychromy has been the subject of intense scholarly studies and fierce debates since at least the late 18th century 3 , Gandharan sculptural polychromy has received limited attention. Only a handful of technical investigations exist on metal and schist sculpture 4 , and on clay and stucco 5 . This paper focuses on the history, making and significance of a c. 4th-5th century stucco head in the Asian collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum (IM.3-1931) andThe appearance of ancient stone sculpture in the Mediterranean, Central Asia and the India Subcontinent is often associated with pristine, unpainted surfaces, appreciated for their unblemished appearance. This is certainly the case for ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, which has been long praised for its whiteness 1 . However, it is a well-known fact that ancient sculpture was generally painted and the Buddhist sculptures from the Gandharan region are not an exception. While most schist sculpture now appears "elegantly" uniform Résumé. Cette étude présente les résultats d'une recherche technique et historique sur une importante tête du Gandhara conservée auVictoria and Albert Museum, à Londres. Cette oeuvre occupe depuis des années une place éminente dans l'histoire de l'art gandharien en raison de sa grande qualité esthétique. Pourtant, elle n'a guère été étudiée scientifiquement depuis son exposition au musée dans les années 1930. Aux recherches sur les données matérielles, muséales et de conservation-restauration s'est ajoutée une analyse structurelle utilisant des techniques non-invasives hors contact : imagerie, spectroscopie IRTF (Spectrométrie infrarouge par transformée de Fourier), XRF (analyse par fluorescence X), FORS (Spectrométrie par réflexion à l'aide de fibre optique). Le support se compose de plusieurs couches de mortier chaux-plâtre (plâtre de gâchage). Les pigments, appliqués uniquement sur les principaux traits du visage (tels que les lèvres, les yeux) et sur les cheveux, sont respectivement une ocre rouge de grande qualité et un noir non identifié. Un examen attentif de la construction de la tête a permis de déterminer qu'elle appartenait probablement à une représentation iconique du Bouddha, par opposition aux scènes narratives.Mots-clés. Gandhara, stuc, plâtre de gâchage, polychromie.

The modeling pastes of the monumental terracruda sculpture of the Silk Roads: Archaeometric study of the Tepe Narenj and Qol‐e‐tut examples (Kabul, Afghanistan)

“…Considering all this information, the study presented in this paper was aimed at providing relevant data to elucidate some of the open questions about the technology and materials used in the production of the ancient Afghan sculptures. We wanted to understand if there were different layers of clay‐based pastes in the same sculpture, and their nature (coarser/smoother; Blänsdorf & Melzl, 2009; Klimburg‐Salter, 2018; Tarzi, 1986; Verardi, 1983), the composition of the material commonly known as ‘stucco’ (which is supposed to be lime or gypsum‐based; Middleton & Gill, 1996; Tarzi, 1986; Varma, 1987; Verri et al, 2019) and the addition of binding organic substances in the stucco or the clay‐based pastes (Bonaduce et al, 2009; Forgione, 2019; Lluveras‐Tenorio et al, 2022; Pannuzi et al, 2019). All of these data are of great relevance in addressing the design of conservation interventions on historic‐archaeological examples.…”