Yellow paints, old vs new
A close-up of a yellow rose from Abraham Mignon's 17th-century oil painting Still Life with Flowers and a Watch shows that the rose has flattened and lost detail due to degradation over time. What a museum viewer sees may differ from what the artist created years, decades, or even centuries ago.
When we look at paintings now, we may not see what the creator intended. Paints degrade, and artists have tried to change their methods to preserve their original intentions intact for ages.
The researchers analyzed a 17th-century oil painting to discover how different types of paint degraded, notably the yellow color in a rose. The rose seems flat at first glance, but the original details have been lost as the pigments he used degraded over time.
Arsenic-based pigments, such as the yellow orpiment (As2S3) used to paint the rose, are light sensitive. Thus, De Keyser, a researcher at the University of Antwerp and the University of Amsterdam, advises that mobile apps or digital reconstructions be utilized alongside paintings on exhibit to embrace the degradation of the original painting. We can retrace the artist's original intent and communicate it to the audience through chemical imaging.
References:
https://cen.acs.org/analytical-chemistry/art-&-artifacts/Yellow-paints-old-new/100/i25#