Why old paintings crack

Over the years, the paint layer on paintings hardens and loses its original elasticity. The support to which the canvas or wood to which the paint was applied is attached also “moves,” expanding and contracting and reacting to the environment. To adapt to these variations, the paint, which has become rigid, ends up cracking.

A history of layers

Temperature and humidity variations are the enemies of paintings. This is why museums attach so much importance to conservation conditions: they regularly install devices in the halls of cultural institutions to measure the temperature and humidity in the room.

The old masters often applied several layers of paint. Like the layers of a wedding cake, each layer dried at its own pace, depending on the pigments or mixtures (oil, glaze, etc.) used, which cooled at different rates. These variations in drying generated internal stresses that, over time, would manifest themselves in the form of cracks. These cracks tell us something about the work, attesting to its authenticity and history: they are clues that can help experts date or attribute a piece.

Nowadays, artists have at their disposal a whole range of paints and materials that limit the premature appearance of these cracks.

Starting in the 1970s, Alberto Burri (1915–1995) created surfaces crisscrossed by networks of cracks (“Grande cretto nero,” 1977) derived from his own monochrome paintings executed twenty years earlier. These cracks inspired him so much that, in the 1980s, Burri transposed his work into the landscape, creating a memorial in Sicily, Grande Cretto di Gibellina, one of the most impressive works of land art.

Foto credit: Gemäldegalerie, Jan van Eyck, „Portrait of a Man in a Red Chaperon”