# Infrared Reflectography: Invention or Transfer > Reflectography separates a design invented on the support from one copied onto it. It cannot separate two hands that draw alike, which is why the Bosch attributions are still contested. > The Study - 2026-08-02 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/infrared-reflectography-invention-or-transfer/ ## Key points - Infrared reflectography works because carbon-based underdrawing absorbs where most pigments transmit, so a design drawn in iron-gall ink is effectively invisible to it. - The distinction it makes cleanly is between a design invented on the support and one transferred to it, which is what demoted the Metropolitan's Christ Appearing to His Mother. - Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks was recovered as an original in 1991 partly because its metalpoint underdrawing is too free and too inventive to belong to a copy. - In 2016 the Prado and the Bosch Research and Conservation Project read comparable infrared evidence and reached opposite attributions on several pictures. ## What infrared reaches, and what it is blind to ## The distinction it makes cleanly: searching line against transferred line ## Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks: a drawing a copyist had no reason to make ## Bosch at the Prado: comparable evidence, opposite verdicts ## How to read a reflectography claim in a report Infrared reflectography answers one question superbly: was this composition decided here, or delivered here. That answer constrains attribution more sharply than any surface examination, because it reaches a stage of work no later restorer has touched and no copyist has any incentive to fake. It stops short of a name, and the honest technical reports say so. The disreputable ones move silently from a drawing that invents to an artist who invented, and every contested Bosch panel in Madrid is evidence of how far that step can be pushed by people looking at identical pictures. ## Questions **Does the absence of underdrawing indicate a copy?** It indicates nothing on its own. Some artists drew in media invisible to infrared, notably iron-gall ink; some worked directly in paint over a brush sketch; and some underdrawings are hidden by pigments that infrared does not penetrate. The finding to record is that no underdrawing was detected with the specified instrument, not that none exists. **How does a transferred design actually look on a reflectogram?** As an even, continuous contour that coincides with the painted edges and contains no revisions, sometimes with the dotted trace of pouncing through a perforated cartoon or with incised lines. The Metropolitan's Christ Appearing to His Mother was described as mechanical and executed without changes, probably from a pattern or tracing. **If the underdrawing matches a known autograph work, is the attribution settled?** It is strengthened, not settled. The National Gallery's case for the Madonna of the Pinks rests on the style of the underdrawing being comparable to the Garvagh Madonna and on its inventiveness being incompatible with copying. A trained assistant working alongside a master can reproduce drawing habits, which is exactly the possibility the Prado and the Dutch Bosch team argued over. **Why do two teams reach different conclusions from the same images?** Because the images record events on the panel and attribution is an inference about a person. Both parties in the 2016 Bosch dispute accepted that the Table of the Seven Deadly Sins shows substantial changes in its underdrawing. One side read alteration as the master inventing; the other read it as a follower working freely within the workshop idiom. ## Sources - [1] The National Gallery, London, 'Studying Raphael: infrared examination' (metalpoint underdrawing of the Madonna of the Pinks; changes to the neckline; comparison with the Garvagh Madonna). - [2] Paul Jeromack, 'Dendrochronology and infra-red photography are giving surprising results among Netherlandish paintings at the Metropolitan Museum', The Art Newspaper, 31 March 1993 (van Asperen de Boer; Ainsworth on Cranach and on Christ Appearing to His Mother; the Faries reflectogram archive). - [3] Bosch Research and Conservation Project, 'Research and Technical' (imaging protocol: OSIRIS InGaAs camera, 900-1700 nm, documentation settings, stitching and registration). - [4] Martin Bailey, 'Prado opens landmark Bosch exhibition amid attribution controversy', The Art Newspaper, 31 May 2016. - [5] Diana Blumenroth, Jenny Nieberle and Gunnar Heydenreich, 'Moeglichkeiten und Grenzen kunsttechnologischer Untersuchungen: Heinrich Campendonks Gemaelde im Kontext des Beltracchi-Faelschungsskandals', CICS, Fachhochschule Koeln, 2014. - [6] Marjorie E. Wieseman, Alexandra Libby, E. Melanie Gifford and Dina Anchin, 'Vermeer's Studio and the Girl with a Flute: New Findings from the National Gallery of Art', Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 14:2 (2022) (multispectral infrared reflectography in false colour).