Using X-ray imaging, conservation scientists at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge have found that the artist repurposed the stoppers to bulk out three sculptures of dancers that he made from beeswax, shedding light on his innovative and idiosyncratic process. The dazzling pictures of Degas’s figures — which bring to mind Étienne-Jules Marey’s early mocap suit pictures — actually reveal a junkyard of sorts beneath the sculptures’ shiny surfaces: aside from corks, the innards of these dancers include everyday, lightweight material Degas would have had lying around his studio, including bits of floor. These fragments would have helped stiffen out his figures, which he built around twisted wire frames.
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