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Technical Art History is a form of art history that focuses on materials, techniques and the process of creating an object of art. It is an broad and not easily defined disipline that has long been part of conservation and objects-based museum-research. Technical art history as a field grow in the 1970s and 1980s but was not referred to as Technical Art History until the mid 1990s.

Technical Art Historical research can be divided into two main categories: the study of documentary sources (sometimes called Art technological source research) and an experimental approach. Documentary sources in this context means texts that in some way describes the practice of the artist. This can mean maunscripts from the long tradition of painting-manuals, from Theophilus' De Diversis Artibus (early 12th century) through Cennino Cennini's Il libro dell'arte (15th century), to more recent examples. It can also mean, for example, the correspondence of Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, which details much of his artistic habits.



The experimental side of Technical Art History deals with analytical research or reconstructions. Scientific analysis of artistic materials like pigments, binders, canvas or wooden panels have been used to date and attribute artworks, to accertain the autenticity of artworks and to reveal forgeries. But it can also be used to understand how, and which, materials was applied, what historical technologies was available and what visual results they gave, or to better understand workshop-practices and artistic intention. This analytical part of technical history lies somewhere between traditional art history and conservation science, but where conservation science strives to understand material composition and ageing properties to better preserve objects of art, technical art history uses similar research to understand the material history of an object from an art historical viewpoint.

Development of scientific research in conservation and art history
The first museum laboratories were opened in the late 19th century because of the problems with fakes in quickly gathered collections, before that interest in old techniques and materials had mostly came from the artists themselves. More scientific research on artworks was introduced in the 1920s and 1930s and led to the development of new analytical methodologies. In 1928 the first department for conservation research in the United States was established at Harvard University's Fogg museum (today known as the Straus center for conservation and technical studies). The museum also issued a journal from 1932, Technical studies in the field of the fine arts. In the 1940s X-radiography was begun to be used on works of art in american museums by Alan Burroughs, building on earlier European experiments. In the late 1960s and the 1970s J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer developed the use of infrared reflectography to be able to investigate underdrawings. The use of dendrochronology, the dating of wood based on the evidence of year ring patterns, to analys artworks was developed by Peter Klein in the 1980s. Today a wide array of analytical equipment is available to the Technical Art Historian.

Technical Art History-research
One of the first large projects that can be described as Technical Art History was the research carried out in connection with the conservation of the Ghent altarpiece in 1950-51. Another early research-project can be said to be the Rembrandt Research Project which aimed to establish a more defenite oeuvre for Rembrandt. The research-group involved several scientists and employed scientific techniques like x-radiography.

Examples of more recent research are the ongoing Art in the making-project at the National Gallery in London and the Making and knowing-project at Columbia University.

Academical training in Technical art history
A two-year master-programme in Technical art history is currenctly offered at the University of Amsterdam, and a one-year master-programme at the University of Glasgow.