Artworks hidden under 2,000 years of soot and grime in Petra, Jordan, have been restored.

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose “exceptional” artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art.

Virtually no Hellenistic paintings survive today, and fragments only hint at antiquity’s lost masterpieces, while revealing little about their colours and composition, so the revelation of these wall paintings in Jordan is all the more significant. They were created by the Nabataeans, who traded extensively with the Greek, Roman and Egyptian empires and whose dominion once stretched from Damascus to the Red Sea, and from Sinai to the Arabian desert.

Such is the naturalistic intricacy of these paintings that the actual species of flowers, birds and insects bursting with life can be identified. They were probably painted in the first century, but may go back further. Professor David Park, an eminent wall paintings expert at the Courtauld, said that the paintings “should make jaws drop”.

[Full story]

X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy has been used on the Mona Lisa, revealing the secret behind how Leonardo da Vinci, using rudimentary pigments in 1503, created such subtle shadows and light on the painting.

Da Vinci used a renaissance painting technique called “sfumato,” mixing thin layers of pigment, glaze and oil intricately to yield the appearance of lifelike shadows and light. The technique is well known and has been employed by other artists over the years. But only now have scientists been able to analyze just how intricate da Vinci’s layers are.

They believe da Vinci used up to 30 layers of paint on his works. But altogether they only add up to a thickness of less than 40 micrometers of paint — about half the width of a human hair. Details were reported Friday by several news agencies.

The scientists were able to beam X-ray technology at the paintings without even removing them from the museum wall.

[Full story]

A wall of paintings has been found inside a Roman residence at Novae in Bulgaria.

Over 21 days, Pavlina Vladkova, an archaeologist from the Regional History Museum in Veliko Tarnovo, researched a residence, located outside of the territory of the erstwhile legionary base, which was located in Novae. She studies rooms that date to the second, third and fourth centuries.

One of the premises she studied was a dining room with a length of 12 metres and width of 4.5 metres and heating built into the floor and walls. The room was divided into two parts, and Vladkova stumbled onto the valuable frescos in one of them.

One of the room’s walls was covered in coloured paint, while the other had paintings on it. The decoration is reminiscent of contemporary wall paper, the archaeologist explained and added that the colouring has been well preserved.

The residence where the frescos were found used to house representatives of the imperial family, Vladkova said. Work on preserving the wall paintings has already started.

[Full story]

An Italian scholar is claiming to have found a previously unknown Michelangelo sculpture in a private collection.

“The sandstone Arrotino lacks of the nose and two left fingers. At a first look, this made me suspicious: Nose-missing statues are often forgeries. This was a known expedient to give a statue an antique look,” Flavia Zisa, archaeologist at the Kore University of Enna, Sicily, told Discovery News.

Believed to be an original Greek sculpture, the Uffizi Arrotino became the subject of innumerable faithful copies, especially in the 17th century.

Upon further investigation, “it became clear that the sandstone Arrotino, was not a copy at all. Many features make this a unique sculpture,” Zisa said.

Following extensive archival research, Zisa found the first reference to the sandstone statue in a 1751 book on Pisa’s monuments.

In his description of the Palazzo Lanfranchi, author Pandolfo Titi wrote that when the building was under construction, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564) “was working there at that beautiful statue of the Arrotino, which he copied from the ancient Greek one in the Tribuna of the Galleria dei Medici.”

“I would be inclined to say that this statue crafted by Michelangelo’s chisel, while made of Gonfolina sandstone, better brings out the softness of the flesh. … And next to it is displayed a beautiful Harpy for a fountain, a figure astride a frog,” Titi wrote.

[Full story]

Art restorers in Italy believe they have found the oldest known images of some of Jesus Christ’s apostles.

The faces of Apostles Andrew, John, Peter and Paul were uncovered using new laser technology in a catacomb in Rome.

The paintings date from the second half of the 4th Century or the early 5th Century, the restorers and Vatican officials believe.

The images may have influenced later depictions of Christ’s early followers.

“These are the first images that we know of the faces of these four apostles,” said Fabrizio Bisconti, head of archaeology for Rome’s numerous Vatican-owned catacombs.

[Full story]