Analytical characterization of the palette and painting techniques of Jorge Afonso, the great 16th century Master of Lisbon painting workshop Vanessa Antunes a,b, ⁎, António Candeias c,d , José Mirão d , Maria L. Carvalho b , Cristina Barrocas Dias d , Ana Manhita d , Ana Cardoso d , Maria J. Francisco e , Alexandra Lauw f , Marta Manso b,g a ARTIS-Instituto História da Arte, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa (ARTIS-FLUL), Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214 Lisboa, Portugal b LIBPhys-UNL, Laboratório de Instrumentação, Engenharia Biomédica e Física da Radiação, Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal c Laboratório José de Figueiredo, Direcção-Geral do Património Cultural (LJF-DGPC), Rua das Janelas Verdes 37, 1249-018 Lisboa, Portugal d Laboratório HERCULES, Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade de Évora, Largo Marquês de Marialva 8, 7000-676 Évora, Portugal e Museu de Setúbal, Balneário Dr. Paula Borba, 2900-120 Setúbal, Portugal f Centro de Estudos Florestais, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Tapada da Ajuda, Universidade de Lisboa, 1349-017 Lisboa, Portugal g Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Universidade de Lisboa, Largo da Academia Nacional de Belas-Artes, 1249-058 Lisboa, Portugal abstract article info Article history: Received 15 September 2017 Received in revised form 9 November 2017 Accepted 4 December 2017 Available online 06 December 2017 In this work, a study on a set of paintings from the most significant altarpiece assigned to Master Jorge Afonso (c. 1470–1540) painting workshop is presented. This altarpiece is composed by fourteen paintings made to the church of Convento de Jesus, in Setúbal, Portugal, and was made circa 1517–19/1530, according to art-history. This set of paintings is compared to one of the other most important Portuguese altarpieces from the 16th cen- tury: the panels of the Round Church of the Convento de Cristo, in Tomar, made circa 1510–1515. The aim of this study is to characterize the wooden support, pigments, ground layers materials and technique used in Jorge Afonso workshop by means of complementary analyses. A dendrochronological approach was made in order to corroborate (or not) the historical date initially assigned. Infrared photography (IRP) and reflectography (IRR) allowed the study of the underdrawing technique and macro photography (MP) was used to recognize overlapping layers technique. Cross-sections from the paintings were examined by optical mi- croscopy (OM), and analyzed by μ-X-ray diffraction (μ-XRD), Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (EDXRF), Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), micro-Raman spectroscopy (μ-Raman), micro-Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (μ-FTIR), Pyrolysis Gas Chromatogra- phy Mass Spectrometry (py-GC/MS). The characterization of the palette and ground layers and the study of the overlapping of paint layers brought a new insight of the adopted painting techniques by the most important group of painters working in Portugal in the 16th century - the Lisbon workshop, leaded by Master Jorge Afonso. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Portuguese painting Ground layer Jorge Afonso Anhydrite Lisbon workshop Pigments 1. Introduction Jorge Afonso was the royal painter of the kings D. Manuel I and D. João III and the most important painter in the Portuguese panorama of the 16th century. His aesthetic and technical resources and materials stand out and influenced Portuguese painting through centuries. In his workshop, located near the Monastery of St. Dominic in Lisbon, this painter instructed and employed as officials the next most important generation of Portuguese painters: Garcia Fernandes, Gregório Lopes, Cristóvão de Figueiredo Francisco Henriques, Gaspar Vaz and Vasco Fernandes, being these last two the most significant painters from northern Portugal [1,2]. During his life, he worked overall in the center of Portugal, having paintings in Lisbon and Tomar. The prestige given to this painter in his lifetime made him being se- lected by king D. Manuel I in 1508 as a charge examiner, controller and assessor of all regal commissions. This engagement was reconfirmed in 1529 by king D. João III [3–6]. At that time, Jorge Afonso was also named by the king as quality surveyor of the blue pigment, collected from Aljustrel mines (Alentejo, Portugal) [1,3,6–8]. Along with the 14 paintings of the main altarpiece of the Convento de Jesus church, in Setúbal (Fig. 1), sponsored by Queen D. Leonor and characterized in the present work, some of the most important works assigned to Jorge Afonso workshop are the panels of the Round Church Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy 193 (2018) 264–275 ⁎ Corresponding author at: LIBPhys-UNL, Laboratório de Instrumentação, Engenharia Biomédica e Física da Radiação, Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal. E-mail addresses: vanessahantunes@gmail.com (V. Antunes), candeias@uevora.pt (A. Candeias), jmirao@uevora.pt (J. Mirão), luisa.carvalho@fct.unl.pt (M.L. Carvalho), cmbd@uevora.pt (C.B. Dias), anaccm@uevora.pt (A. Manhita). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.saa.2017.12.027 1386-1425/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/saa