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Detail of a painting by Gustave Courbet. The work was finished in 1852 and shows the artist’s three sisters strolling in a valley. They wear French country style dresses. The woman in the center holds a white parasol, while the others wear hats to protect them from the sun.

Research Projects

Read project abstracts from featured research activities within Paintings Conservation.

Iron distribution map of the painting The Death of Socrates by Jacques Louis David

The Death of Socrates: New Discoveries

Technical examination of Jacques Louis David’s masterpiece reveals that the refinements seen in the artist’s preparatory drawings didn’t end when he began painting—rather, they continued through all stages of its execution.

Three images side by side, each depicts the same section of David’s portrait of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and Marie Anne Lavoisier. At left, Monsieur Lavoisier sits at a table covered in thick, red velvet tablecloth, looking at his wife. Madame Lavoisier stands to his right with her left arm lovingly draped across his shoulder. Center, an infrared reflectogram (an imaging technique that visualizes underlying compositions in a painting) shows initial features that were subsequently painted over. At right, an X-ray Fluorescence map (an imaging technique where elements contained within pigments are visualized with false colors) shows that initially Madame Lavoisier wore a large hat decorated with ribbons and artificial flowers which the artist decided to paint over.

Refashioning the Lavoisiers

A team of experts from across The Met gains new understanding of Jacques Louis David’s iconic portrait.

Two images side by side. At left, a painting by Vemeer from the Frick Collection, shows a woman receiving a letter from her maid in a dark room. At right, an X-ray Fluorescence map (an imaging technique where elements contained within pigments are visualized with false colors) shows that the artist initially painted a tapestry or painting with different figures between the two women in the background.

Scientific Discoveries in Johannes Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid Put Perennial Misunderstandings To Rest

Scientists, a conservator, and an art historian at The Met, The Frick Collection, and the Doerner Institut team up to investigate changes to the composition and the discoloration of some paint passages.

Two images side by side of the same x-ray of John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Madame X. The image on the right shows a black tracing from the painting of the profile and ear is overlaid on the x-ray. This shows the extent to which the features were shifted.

Revealing Madame X

Researchers at The Met describe methods used to uncover the artist John Singer Sargent's creative process.

A wide shot of a paintings conservator working on three panels from an Italian altarpiece depicting three religious figures on a gold background. A white triangular play-button set with a red circle appears atop the center of the full image.

Conserving the Giovanni di Paolo Altarpiece

Follow the two-year-long conservation treatment of the Madonna and Child with Saints altarpiece (1454) by Giovanni di Paolo, which hadn't been treated since it came into The Met collection in 1932.

Detail of The Card Players by Cezanne. This oil painting depicts three men with hats seated at a small blue table playing cards while a fourth man stands behind them watching them play. A heavy yellow curtain hangs on the left side of a room with blue walls.

Cezanne's Card Players

In preparation for the 2011 exhibition Cézanne's Card Players, organized in collaboration with the Courtauld Gallery, we investigated the creation of this series of masterpieces through technical examination.

Detail of Stanley Spencer’s painting titled King’s Cookham Rise depicting a flower garden surrounded by green shrubs.

Stanley Spencer's King's Cookham Rise

Stanley Spencer's King's Cookham Rise (1947) came to the studio to be examined and treated in preparation for an exhibition; a non-original varnish that had discolored over time and imparted a yellow cast as well as an overly saturated and glossy appearance was removed.

A detail of The Adoration of the Magi, a copy after Hugo van der Goes. It shows Joseph, the Virgin, and the Christ Child in the foreground, while the three magi stand behind them.

Examining the Adoration of the Magi

The Metropolitan's Adoration of the Magi (71.100) was painted in the southern Netherlands, probably in Antwerp, at the end of the fifteenth century, but little else is known regarding the circumstances of its creation. A recent conservation treatment provided the opportunity to examine the painting and to investigate the stages of its production.

The Triumph of Fame by Giovanni di ser Giovanni Guidi. This round panel painting in a gold gilded frame shows knights mounted on horses extending their hands in allegiance to a winged allegorical figure of Fame, who holds a sword and a small statue of cupid.

Italian Renaissance Frames

Pictures have always been required to live unobtrusively among furnishings of a period not their own, and frames have always been the vehicle enabling them to do so. Browse this richly illustrated essay on the structure, design, materials, and styles of Renaissance frames.

A detail of a portrait by Hugo van der Goes depicting a wrinkled old man wearing a black cloak with a red garment underneath in front of a uniform brown background.

Circle of Hugo van der Goes, Portrait of a Man

On arrival at the Museum for examination in October 2008, this painting's paper support was extremely brittle and delaminating from the wooden panel: a direct consequence of the work having been kept in an uncontrolled environment for many years.

Detail of a painting by Gustave Courbet. The work was finished in 1852 and shows the artist’s three sisters strolling in a valley. They wear French country style dresses. The woman in the center holds a white parasol, while the others wear hats to protect them from the sun.

Investigation of Heavy-Metal Soap Deterioration in Oil Paintings

A major goal of this project is to determine the causes and mechanisms of a degradation process in traditional oil paintings known as soap formation.

Granacci’s Scenes from the Life of Saint John the Baptist ca. 1506-7 in an Italian landscape. At the far left in the midground, men in robes walk up steps to an altar canopy. In the foreground, three quarters of the painting is dominated by a large building with an open colonnade and populated by several women in Renaissance garb.

Investigating the Formation and Structure of Lead Soaps in Traditional Oil Paintings

Lead and other heavy metal soaps have been detected and reported to be the cause of deterioration in hundreds of oil paintings dating from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Understanding the nature of the chemical processes gives art conservators information on ways to slow, stop, and prevent the deterioration of unique works of art.

Keep Exploring

Projects View from over the shoulder of a conservator holding a small rectangular painting in blue rubber gloves; the painting is rendered in short brush strokes that form a kenetic image of a dark, silhouetted tree trunk in the foreground and lone silhouetted figure standing and leaning against a solid, waist-high wall overlooking a faint building in the distance.

Conservation at The Met

The Metropolitan Museum houses a world-renowned complex of scientific research and conservation facilities, each of which serves as a training ground for conservators across a variety of specializations from around the world. This project list provides a small sample of conservation research activities across the Museum.