The roots of silhouette portraits are prehistoric. Ancient Greek vases have been discovered featuring black shapes of human figures in profile. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote in his final work, Natural History (AD 77–79), about Dibutades, the daughter of a potter in Corinth, who in 600...
CCAHA Mellon Conservation Fellow Juliet Baines recently recorded this time-lapse video over the course of three days in our lab. The painting in the video is one of a number of c. 1650-1750 Chinese watercolors that we have treated for the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University. The paper...
