'X-ray reveals hidden Goya painting' review

Here's the link to the original article on BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15018174

I was scrolling through the BBC News website the other morning in AP Bio (like I do every purple 1st block) and stumbled upon this article, which I find oddly fascinating.

Apparently this painting, Portrait of Don Ramon Statue (left) by Goya, was actually concealing one of the artist's previous works. This was discovered using a new innovative x-ray technique developed by the University of Antwerp and the Delft University Technology. When you use powerful x-rays on an artwork, it causes atoms in the picture's layers of paint to emit "fluorescent" x-rays of their own which indicate the chemicals they originated form. This enables a "color map" of the hidden picture to be produced. This method was actually tried out on a Van Gogh painting two years ago, showing that a portrait of a peasant girl was behind the work Patch of Grass, from 1887. Anyway, historians believe that the original hidden Goya painting is actually of Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, and they think that it was obscured for political reasons after Ferdinand VII was reinstated to the Spanish throne. Obviously, Goya would want to distance himself from the old regime, especially since he was the first court painter to Ferdinand VII.

I think the reason why I find this so interesting is because everything you do is almost permanent. Even if it was just a mistake or if you're actually hiding something, nothing is ever truly erased. Like when we do watercolor and Stamp says "Act as if each stroke costs you a quarter." These artist hid paintings for whatever reason, but they're still there. They still existed and now we can see them too.