According to records, Danish house painters used beer to create glossy, decorative paint. Cecil Krarup Andersen, a conservator at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, discovered this while studying paintings from the Danish Golden Age at the National Gallery of Denmark. Andersen and her colleagues analyzed 10 pieces by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg and Christen Schiellerup Købke, and found Saccharomyces cerevisiae proteins, as well as various combinations of wheat, barley, buckwheat, and rye proteins in seven paintings. All these proteins are involved in beer fermentation. Understanding the chemical compositions of these paintings is crucial to preserving them, and canvas trimmings from an earlier conservation effort allowed for an in-depth analysis that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible since the process destroys samples (SN: 9/19/17).
2023-05-24 13:00:00
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