Recovering and sharing knowledge of historic, weave draft canvases.

It was the discovery of a weave draft of the canvas of a painting from the 16th century which opened a new branch of art history research: the organic study of fabrics used as the foundation for historical paintings. Until recently this was considered an exceptional line of enquiry.

The focus is upon the occurrence, character, geographic spread and development over time and looks at how they compare with each other and or with textile fragments that were carefully stored in museum collections.

Reconstructions of canvases continue to be a starting point to focus the research of others onto this aspect of the artwork. 

The story pretends to tickle the brain of future researchers and weavers to ask profound question about the why and how of the use of canvases with a woven pattern. 

A database of the technical results of the research and reconstructions will be built and will be available as an open source product