Beneath the brushstrokes of Old Master paintings are intricate linen canvases which are works of art in themselves
streets of a small town in the south of Portugal seem an unlikely place for investigations into the way great European paintings were created. Yet patient research by a passionate and curious weaver, working from a modest studio in one of Odemira’s whitewashed lanes, is yielding important insights into the work of Spanish and Italian masters.
So far she has focused on two Italian masters, Titian and Caravaggio, and on Diego Velázquez of Spain . Above all, she has studied the intriguing figure of El Greco, who was born in Crete in 1541, trained in Venice and Rome, and flourished in Spain until his death in 1614. At least 250 extant works by Spanish and Italian masters from that period were produced on ornate canvases; to date Ms Loermans has worked out weave drafts for 30 of them and physically reproduced nine.
According to Cleo Nisse, a doctoral student at Columbia University, there are several theories as to why painters used such sophisticated canvases. One is that beautiful underlying patterns created a more striking visual effect, albeit subtly; another is that complex canvases were more robust than plain ones, as some modern artists will attest.
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