The author at work.
Alar Läänelaid is a docent of landscape ecology at the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences of the University of Tartu.
We’re all used to bar codes in supermarkets. In a way, the patterns of annual rings of trees turn out to be bar codes too, as they contain information about the condition the trees have grown in.
The only difference is that the bar codes of trees have a healthy portion of individuality, so distilling data from them is a bit harder than creating beeps with a bar code reader at a supermarket checkout. It’s amazing that the patterns of annual rings also contribute to art history.
What can the bar codes of trees show us? The width of an annual ring is influenced by climate. That is the key scientists have learned to utilize. As the saying goes, years are no brothers, and that’s why a unique pattern of wider and narrower annual rings forms in the trunk of a tree. When we have a long enough succession of annual ring widths, composed by the patterns of many trees, we can use it as a blueprint to detect an unknown individual succession.
Original work or a copy?
Now it’s time to link the biological part to the art. In past centuries, wooden panels were used for painting. Thin planks of oak were glued together edgewise. One can find many paintings without signatures in art galleries, with their closer origin shrouded in mystery. Paintings by famous artists were often imitated to multiply a piece of work. Continue reading →
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