SYLVANA BARRETT

An artist who has made a career of searching out the sumptuous materials of medieval and early renaissance painters, of learning to use these materials through the many original treatises left by these artists themselves and producing original artworks with them.

A frequent guest lecturer at major art museums and workshop leader making it a personal mission to share this knowledge, and these beautiful materials, with artists, historians, and art lovers alike, in addition to consulting on research projects with museum conservation research departments.

In addition to lecturing and producing museum didactics for exhibition, she has been featured in related technical videos, a National Geographic’s Television production “How It Was: Secrets of Mona Lisa” and a TEDx program “Putting the “art” back into “ART””.

SELECTED VIDEOS

Semi precious stones ground finely into powders, colorful rare earths, gossamer leaves of hammered gold and silver, these are the materials used by painters in the past; these are the materials that draw us into museums to gaze in awe at their works today.

Seventeenth-century Spanish polychrome sculpture was intended to appear as lifelike as possible. Compared to bronze or marble statues, sculpted and painted wooden figures–often with glass eyes and wigs–achieve a remarkable realistic effect. Artists specialized in particular Spanish polychromy techniques, such as estofado : painting and incising to create rich silk fabrics with raised patterns in gold and silver used for the garments, and encarnaciones : blending and applying of oil paint for lips, hair, and modulations of the skin.

Infrared cameras now reveal concealed drawings under the surface of many of the Renaissance’s most revered paintings. Learn how this radical drawing technique was done.