Using a high-intensity X-ray beam and sophisticated optics, they created a full-color reproduction of the earlier Wyeth work. It had been hidden for decades, ever since the artist painted his family portrait on top of it.
Scientists often have used X-rays to look at covered-up paintings in the past, and did so with this one in 1997. But that method, the same one doctors use to scan broken bones, is fairly primitive and is limited to a black-and-white palette.
The new technique, developed by physicists at Cornell University, relies on a phenomenon called X-ray fluorescence. It unlocks a broad spectrum of color that is sure to whet the appetite of the art-history world.
Christine Podmaniczky, associate curator for the N.C. Wyeth collections at the Brandywine River Museum, was delighted after getting a sneak peek at the reproduction last week.
"I am amazed," she said, noting that the colors in the hidden painting are similar to those in another Wyeth work from the same series.
The covered-up painting was an illustration for a short story, "The Mildest-Mannered Man," in a 1919 issue of a popular review called Everybody's Magazine. It is the melodramatic tale of a love triangle in which villain Slag Harshmeyer, shown charging in the picture, meets an untimely end in the furnace flames.
Wyeth, a prolific illustrator, was known to have painted over some of these works once they had appeared in print.
He painted the family portrait over the Slag Harshmeyer illustration around 1927. The portrait, titled Study for Wyeth Family mural, was done in preparation for a larger work that Wyeth intended to paint in his living room, but never did. Son Andrew Wyeth, who would go on to artistic fame himself, is shown as a young boy at the far right, chin resting on his fist.
