Van Gogh's hidden woman portrait reconstructed

European scientists have reconstructed a portrait of a peasant woman painted by Vincent van Gogh that had been concealed beneath another painting for 121 years, according to media reports.

Joris Dik, a materials scientist from Delft University, and Koen Janssens, a chemist from the University of Antwerp in Belgium, used synchrotron X-rays from a particle accelerator to determine what the original painting looked like before he covered it up with his landscape "Patch of Grass," which is part of the large his collection in the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands.

"We visualized — in great detail — the nose, the eyes, according to the chemical composition." Dik said. Scanning a roughly 7-inch square of the larger portrait took two full days.

While not exact in every detail, the image produced is a woman's head that may be the same model Van Gogh painted in a series of portraits leading up to the 1885 masterpiece "The Potato Eaters."

The new method will allow art historians to obtain higher quality and more detailed images underlying old masterpieces.

Though his paintings are now worth millions, van Gogh was virtually unknown during his lifetime and struggled financially before committing suicide in 1890.

He often reused canvas to save money, either painting on the back or over the top of existing paintings, and experts believe roughly a third of his works hide a second painting underneath.

[A painting of Van Gogh's famous work 'Patch of grass' in Hamburg.]

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