Good morning.
Today’s forecast calls for a breezy day, with a high temperature of forty-five degrees.
Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5 p.m. today. The meeting agenda is available online.
Over at Wired Science, Rachel Ehrenberg begins a story on the alteration of a 19th century painting with these clever lines:
Experimenting with a vivacious blonde, only to settle instead on a somber brunette, is an old, clichéd storyline — in fact, it’s at least 200 years old. A new analysis of a 19th century painting reveals that the artist first depicted a blonde with purple ribbons in her hair, before painting the canvas over with a sedate, unadorned brunette.
Ehrenberg’s story, X-Rays Reveal 19th-Century Artist’s Cover-Up, describes an example of pentimenti, where a painter covers over an initial figure with a different one. X-ray imaging revealed that
the painting now known as “Pauline in a white dress” emerged after substantial changes. The presence of cobalt indicated that blue pigment was used in the woman’s purple hair ribbons, and the orange-red pigment vermilion was indicated by mercury. The presence and distribution of antimony, which is associated with the pigment Naples yellow, and lead, indicating white paint, suggest that the woman initially had blond curls that tumbled loosely over her shoulders, contrasting sharply with the tidy brown pulled-back hair of the visible work.
In any event, whatever the motivation for the alteration, the woman in the final version is lovely in her own right.