'Something stirring beneath the surface': What eight ghostly portraits found hidden inside masterpieces reveal
表面之下涌动的情感：八幅隐藏在杰作中的幽灵肖像揭示的秘密

In the past month alone, shadowy portraits have been found hidden in longstanding masterpieces by Titian and Picasso. What can they and other such discoveries tell us?
仅过去一个月，就在提香和毕加索的长期杰作中发现了隐藏的阴影肖像。这些发现以及其他类似发现能告诉我们什么？

Something's stirring. Every few weeks, it seems, brings news of a sensational discovery in the world of art – of paintings hidden under other paintings and vanished visages twitching beneath the varnish of masterpieces whose every square millimetre we thought we knew. This past month alone has brought to light the detection of mysterious figures trapped beneath the surface of works by Titian and Picasso. But what are we to make of this slowly swelling collection of secret stares – these absent presences that simultaneously delight and disturb?
有些东西正在涌动。似乎每隔几周，艺术界就会传来令人震惊的发现——隐藏在其他画作下的画作，以及消失的面容在大师作品的漆面下抽搐。仅在过去的一个月里，就发现了被囚禁在提香和毕加索作品表面之下的神秘人物。但我们对这逐渐膨胀的秘密凝视的收藏又该如何解读——这些既令人愉悦又令人不安的缺席存在？

In early February, it was revealed that researchers at the Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Laboratories at the Cyprus Institute, using advanced imaging and a new multi-modal scanner combining different techniques, had proved the existence of an upside-down portrait of a mustachioed man holding a quill beneath the Italian Renaissance master Titian's painting Ecce Homo, 1570-75. On its surface, Titian's canvas portrays a bedraggled Jesus, hands bound by ropes, standing shoulder to shoulder with a sumptuously dressed Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who will sentence him to death. What is this strange, erased, anachronistic scribe doing here and what is he trying to tell us?
二月份初，有报道称，塞浦路斯学院的安德烈亚斯·皮塔斯艺术特征实验室的研究人员，利用先进的成像技术和一种结合不同技术的全新多模态扫描仪，证实了在意大利文艺复兴大师提香的画作《耶稣显圣》1570-75 年）下方存在一幅倒置的蓄须男子手持羽毛笔的肖像。在画布表面，提香的画作描绘了一个衣衫褴褛的耶稣，双手被绳索捆绑，与盛装打扮的彼拉多肩并肩站立，彼拉多将是判处他死刑的罗马总督。这个奇怪的、被抹去的、不合时宜的书记员在这里做什么，他试图告诉我们什么？

Titian, Ecce Homo, 1570-75 (Credit: The Cyprus Institute)
提香，《基督显现》，1570-75 年（版权：塞浦路斯学院）

The presence of the hidden portrait, who peers imperceptibly through the craquelure – those alluring cracks in old master paintings – was first described by the art historian Paul Joannides and its significance to the surface narrative is more than incidental. While the identity of the topsy-turvy figure has yet to be determined, it is clear he helped shape the wrenching composition under which he has been buried for the past 450 years. The analysis of the materiality of the painting's layers in Cyprus has shown that the contours of the hidden figure's face dictated the curve of ropes binding Jesus's hands – establishing notes of harmony between the successive and seemingly contrary compositions.
隐藏肖像的存在，透过老大师画作上的微裂纹——那些迷人的裂缝——几乎不被察觉地窥视，这一现象最初由艺术史学家保罗·约阿尼德斯描述，其对表面叙事的意义远不止偶然。尽管颠倒的角色的身份尚未确定，但很明显，他在过去 450 年里被埋葬的扭曲构图中起到了塑造作用。在塞浦路斯的绘画层材料分析表明，隐藏人物面部的轮廓决定了捆绑耶稣双手的绳索的曲线——在连续的、看似相反的构图之间建立了和谐的音符。

That sense of quiet collaboration between layers of paint – between what is there and what used to be there – is more striking still in the hidden countenance of a woman found by conservators at The Courtauld Institute of Art beneath a painting from Pablo Picasso's Blue Period – a portrait of the artist's friend and sculptor Mateu Fernández de Soto. Also discovered with the use of infrared imaging technology, the portrait of the as-yet unidentified woman is rendered in an earlier, more impressionistic style, and appears, when brought to the surface, to be whispering into de Soto's ear, as if the past and present had merged into a single suspended moment.
那层层的颜料之间的宁静合作感——存在于那里的和曾经存在那里的——在考陶德艺术学院修复师在巴勃罗·毕加索蓝色时期的一幅画作下发现的女性隐藏面容中更为引人注目——这是一幅艺术家朋友和雕塑家马特乌·费尔南德斯·德·索托的肖像。此外，通过红外成像技术的使用，发现的这位尚未确定的女性肖像以更早、更印象派的方式呈现，当它被带到表面时，仿佛在向德·索托耳边低语，就像过去和现在融合成了一个单一的悬停时刻。

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto, 1901 (Credit: The Courtauld Institute of Art)
巴勃罗·毕加索，《马特乌·费尔南德斯·德索托肖像》，1901 年（版权：考陶德艺术研究所）

In most instances, these buried portraits are merely the ghosts of rejected compositions that we were never intended to see – and could not have, were it not for the aid of advanced imaging tools that allow experts safely to peer beneath the paint without harming a work's surface. X-rays uncover hidden sketches, while infrared reflectography is capable of exposing subtle details masked by old varnish – details which, once glimpsed, are impossible to unknow. Once revealed, these portraits demand to be reckoned with. What follows is a short survey of some of the most intriguing and mysterious portraits – very often self-portraits – found wriggling restlessly beneath familiar masterpieces: unsettling presences that remain forever immeasurably close and worlds away.
在大多数情况下，这些埋藏的肖像仅仅是未被我们意图看到的被拒绝的构图的幽灵——如果不是先进的成像工具的帮助，我们本来无法看到，因为这些工具允许专家在不妨碍作品表面的情况下安全地窥视画布之下——X 射线揭示了隐藏的草图，而红外反射摄影能够揭露被旧漆掩盖的微妙细节——一旦瞥见，这些细节就难以忘怀。一旦揭露，这些肖像就要求被认真对待。以下是对一些最引人入胜和神秘的肖像——通常是自画像——的简要调查，这些肖像在熟悉的杰作之下不安地扭动：这些令人不安的存在永远近在咫尺，却又遥远无比。

Rembrandt's Old Man in Military
伦勃朗的《军事老者》

Think of Rembrandt and we tend to think first of that dim, imperishable realm in which his sitters sit outside of time – an eternal stage crafted from charcoal and sombrous umber. What we don't think of is giddy greens and garish vermilions igniting the space with vibrancy and verve. But that is exactly what researchers found staring back at them when they subjected the Dutch master's painting, An Old Man in Military Costume, to macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) imaging and infrared reflectography. Trapped beneath Rembrandt's meditation on mortality, a giddy ghost of jaunty youth clad in raffish reds and incorrigible verdigris intensifies the poignancy of his masterwork.
思考伦勃朗，我们首先想到的是那个昏暗、永恒的领域，他的模特们坐在那里，超越了时间——一个由炭笔和深沉的赭石色打造的永恒舞台。我们没有想到的是，明亮的绿色和鲜艳的朱红色点燃了空间，充满了活力和生机。但这就是研究人员在将荷兰大师的画作《一位身着军装的老人》提交给宏观 X 射线荧光（MA-XRF）成像和红外反射摄影时，所发现的情况。在伦勃朗对死亡的沉思之下，一个穿着俗丽的红色和不可救药的铜绿之幽灵，增强了他的杰作的诗意。

Artemisia Gentileschi's Saint Catherine of Alexandria
阿特米西亚·真蒂莱斯基的《亚历山大的圣凯瑟琳》

With some paintings, the more we see the less we know. Take Artemisia Gentileschi's portrait of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1619. X-ray analysis of the Italian Baroque artist's work undertaken in 2019 revealed that she began the work as a self-portrait – one that closely resembles an earlier, and similarly entitled, Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, begun around 1615. Disentangling the two works' faces is tricky but scholars now think that the final work – which swaps a turban for a crown and a piercing stare for a pious, heavenly gaze – blends elements of the artist's own likeness with those of Caterina de' Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici, who commissioned the work. The result is proof that while an artist may be able to let go of a painting, a painting can never completely let go of the artist. 
有些画作，我们看得越多，知道的就越少。以阿特米西亚·真蒂莱斯基的《亚历山大的圣凯瑟琳》肖像画为例，创作于 1619 年。2019 年对这位意大利巴洛克艺术家的作品进行的 X 射线分析揭示，她最初是以自画像开始这幅作品的——这幅自画像与大约在 1615 年开始的、同样名为《作为亚历山大的圣凯瑟琳的自画像》的早期作品非常相似。解开这两幅作品中的面孔是件棘手的事情，但学者们现在认为，最终的作品——它将头巾换成了王冠，将锐利的目光换成了虔诚、神圣的目光——将艺术家自己的形象与委托人费尔迪南多·德·美第奇大公的女儿凯瑟琳·德·美第奇的形象融合在一起。结果是证明，虽然艺术家可能能够放下画作，但画作永远无法完全放下艺术家。

Caravaggio's Bacchus
卡拉瓦乔的《巴克斯》

Caravaggio only signed one painting during his lifetime and did so with ghoulish flair in a squiggle of blood at the bottom of the largest painting he ever made, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, 1608. But that is hardly the only time the Italian master inserted a semblance of himself into his paintings. In 2009, scholars using advanced reflectography penetrated the cracked surface of Caravaggio's depiction of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, to rehabilitate a tiny self-portrait that he had secreted in the reflection of the carafe (an almost subliminal detail that clumsy restoration efforts had obscured after the portrait-within-a-portrait was first discovered in 1922). This strange, distorted, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't selfie in the vessel of wine is key to the work's meaning, amplifying as it does themes of drunken illusion and elastic identity that are central to Caravaggio's painting.
卡拉瓦乔在他的一生中只签署了一幅画作，并在他制作的最大的画作《圣约翰的斩首》1608 年的底部用血迹勾勒出一个鬼魅般的曲线来表现这种风格。但这并不是意大利大师将自我形象插入画作中的唯一一次。2009 年，学者们使用先进的反射摄影术穿透了卡拉瓦乔描绘的酒神巴克斯的画作表面裂缝，以恢复他藏在酒瓶反射中的微型自画像（一个几乎潜意识般的细节，在 1922 年首次发现这幅画中画后，笨拙的修复工作掩盖了这个细节）。这个奇怪、扭曲、时而出现时而消失的自我肖像在酒瓶中是作品意义的关键，因为它放大了卡拉瓦乔画作中酒醉幻觉和弹性身份的主题，这些主题是卡拉瓦乔画作的核心。

Van Gogh's Patch of Grass
梵高的《麦田》

A century before the late, great film-maker David Lynch unsettled viewers by taking them beneath a suburban lawn to find what is writhing in the soil in his film Blue Velvet (1986), Vincent van Gogh was busy burying things under his own deceptively sunny Patch of Grass, 1887. With the help of high-intensity X-rays from a particle accelerator, researchers succeeded in exhuming from beneath his sprightly blades of grass a sombre portrait of a peasant woman that the artist had painted years earlier. The discovery is further evidence that when it comes to Van Gogh, however joyful a work may seem, there is always something stirring beneath the surface.
一个世纪前，伟大的电影制作人大卫·林奇（David Lynch）在 1986 年的电影《蓝丝绒》（Blue Velvet）中带领观众潜入郊区草坪之下，揭示土壤中的蠕动之物，而文森特·梵高（Vincent van Gogh）则在 1887 年忙于在自己的《阳光下的草地》（Patch of Grass）下埋藏东西。借助粒子加速器的高强度 X 射线，研究人员成功从其活泼的草叶下挖掘出一幅阴郁的农妇肖像画，这是艺术家多年前所绘。这一发现进一步证明，对于梵高来说，无论作品看起来多么欢快，表面之下总有一股暗流涌动。

Seurat's Young Woman Powdering Herself
修拉《年轻女子扑粉》

On the surface, Young Woman Powdering Herself is a playful meditation on how subject and style overlap. Here, Georges Seurat employs his pioneering pointillist technique of countless tiny dots to depict his mistress, Madeleine Knobloch, as she scatters her own flurry of powdery specks across her face. The dabs of paint seem to swirl in the air, all but clogging it – metaphorically powdering, too, anyone who stops to stare. These deftly deployed dabs of paint reveal and erase in equal measure, as if conjuring a world only to blot it out again. That sense of brilliant obliteration is intensified with the discovery of a hidden self-portrait – Seurat's only known one – in the open window which he later concealed beneath another flurry of dots depicting a vase of flowers. How dotty is that?
表面上，《自行扑粉的年轻女子》是对主题和风格重叠的一种轻松冥想。在这里，乔治·修拉运用他开创性的点彩技法，用无数的小点来描绘他的情人玛德莱娜·诺布洛克，她将粉末般的细小颗粒散布在脸上。这些颜料点似乎在空中旋转，几乎堵塞了空气——隐喻性地也为停下来凝视的人撒上粉末。这些巧妙部署的颜料点在揭示和抹去之间达到平衡，仿佛在召唤出一个世界，然后又将其抹去。这种精彩的抹去感在发现一幅隐藏的自画像——修拉唯一已知的自画像——时得到了加强，这幅画后来被他隐藏在另一阵描绘花瓶的点彩之下。这得多无聊啊？

Modigliani's Portrait of a Girl
莫迪利亚尼的《女孩肖像》

Some people refuse to be forgotten, no matter how hard you scrub them from your memory. Italian modernist Amedeo Modigliani's famous Portrait of a Girl, 1917, is a compelling case in point. Some scholars suspect that the full-length portrait of a woman, concealed beneath the visible image, may depict an ex-lover with whom Modigliani ended a relationship a year earlier. In 2021, two PhD candidates at the University of London used Artificial Intelligence to reconstruct this hidden portrait, which strikingly resembles Modigliani's former muse and mistress, Beatrice Hastings. While the identity of both women, surface and hidden, remains uncertain, the layering reinforces themes of concealment and masking in Modigliani's work.
有些人不愿被遗忘，无论你如何努力从记忆中抹去他们。意大利现代主义艺术家阿梅德奥·莫迪利亚尼著名的《女孩肖像》，1917 年，是一个引人入胜的例子。一些学者怀疑，隐藏在可见图像之下的女性全身肖像可能描绘了莫迪利亚尼一年前结束关系的旧情人。2021 年，伦敦大学两名博士生利用人工智能重建了这幅隐藏的肖像，它惊人地类似于莫迪利亚尼的前灵感来源和情人，比阿特丽斯·黑斯廷斯。尽管表面和隐藏的两位女性的身份仍然不确定，但这种层次感强化了莫迪利亚尼作品中隐藏和伪装的主题。

René Magritte's La Cinquième Saison
雷内·马格利特的《第五季节》

In his painting La Cinquième Saison, 1943, René Magritte portrays in profile two nearly identical men in dark suits and bowler hats – props that often signal the presence of his alter-ego in the artist's work. Both men hold small, framed paintings under their arms as they walk towards each other. The trajectory of their strides suggests not so much an imminent collision as a near miss – an eclipse, as one figure and painting slips behind the other. It somehow seems fitting that this painting – this painting of shuffling paintings – has been found, with the use of infrared reflectography, to be hiding under its surface another painting altogether: a portrait of a mysterious woman, who at once bears a strong resemblance to the artist's wife, Georgette, and has features that are wholly distinct. The discovery of the hidden portrait merely amplifies themes of riddling duality in the work of an artist known for his treacherously teasing images.
在他的画作《第五季节》，1943 年，雷内·马格利特以侧面描绘了两个几乎一模一样的穿着深色西装和圆顶礼帽的男人——这些道具通常预示着艺术家作品中另一个自我的出现。两人都把小画框夹在腋下，向对方走去。他们步伐的轨迹与其说是即将发生的碰撞，不如说是几乎擦肩而过——一个日食，因为一个人物和画作滑到了另一个人物和画作的后面。似乎很合适，这幅画——这幅描绘移动画作的作品——通过红外反射摄影被发现隐藏在其表面下另一幅完全不同的画作：一幅神秘女性的肖像，她既与艺术家的妻子乔治特有很强的相似之处，又有着完全不同的特征。隐藏肖像的发现仅仅放大了这位以狡猾逗弄图像著称的艺术家作品中充满谜团的二元主题。