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Philippe Walter

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Friday, April 22nd | 3.00pm | Lecture | @ At The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum

Philippe Walter Lecture
Beyond the appearance of works of art: the chemist’s view

Friday, April 22nd at 3.00pm
At The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum
Florida International University, University Park
10975 SW 17th Street
Miami, FL 33199

Lecture in English
Free Admission, donations are highly appreciated.

Former student of l'Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon, Philippe Walter received his PhD in geochemistry from Université Paul Sabatier de Toulouse in 1993. He has organized numerous exhibitions that validate his work, from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 2002 to Paris in 2008.

Philippe Walter is the director of le Laboratoire du Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (CNRS-Ministère de la Culture), located at the Palais du Louvre in Paris. His research has led him to develop new analytical methods adapted to study ancient materials in his laboratory, with the help of the particle accelerator AGLAE, but also using other methods such as X-ray and other portable instruments of analysis.

The association between chemistry and art is nothing new. Since Antiquity, new products have been developed to prepare pigments used in the fields of art, cosmetics and health. During the Renaissance, artists looked for optical effects in preparing translucent glazes from complicated recipes.
Today, the technical know-how of the ancient chemists and artists can be rediscovered with analytical tools from physical chemistry. The priceless nature of the most famous works of history requires, however, particular precautions and the adjustment of methods providing the maximum amount of information from the minimum sample During the lecture, examples from ancient Egypt and from the works of Leonardo de Vinci will be used to illustrate this important work.