Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne

Technical examination of the paint layer can confirm a work’s age or authenticity and add to knowledge of the painting’s execution and the artist’s intended effects. Examination can address either the materials or the ways they were handled—the techniques. Study of paint materials offers information that is specific but of limited interpretive use to the art historian. Pigment identification can deny (but rarely confirm) a paintings age, or can identify areas of repaint. Precise identification …

If the Third Crusade (1189–92) had done little to further Latin ambition apart from the capture of Cyprus, it had served to convince several leaders that the occupation of Constantinople was an essential preliminary to war against the infidel. So wrote Frederick Barbarossa to the Pope when asking for his blessing on such an enterprise. The marriage of Barbarossa’s son Henry to Constance, the heiress of Sicily, united two kingdoms hostile to the Greeks, and on becoming Holy Roman Emperor in 1190 …