The Portinari Project - Science and Art Team Up Together to Help Cultural Projects

Candido Portinari (1903–1962) is the most famous Brazilian painter, whose production of more than 4500 works is spread all over the world. We are currently undertaking the design and production of the Catalogue Raisonné of his complete work. We developed a multimedia database, containing all the information needed for the catalogue. To load the pictures into the database, slides of the painter’s works are digitized, using high-end scanners. Some problems arise, then, from the necessity of reliable methods for color control, correction and compression. We have used extensively computer-based techniques to support the development of the Catalogue, the Hypermedia Database and other scientific problems entailed by our research. This work summarizes the effort involved in such tasks, pointing out the technical problems and the solutions found.