This lecture highlights the role scientific imaging of paintings, more precisely molecular and elemental imaging spectroscopy, has played in helping to address questions from conservators, curators, and art historians. Case studies will include understanding the original composition in Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s “Young Girl Reading” (c.1769) before it was reworked, visualizing the painting stages in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Ginevra de’ Benci” (c. 1474/1478), determining the original appearance of Italian Renaissance masterpiece “Feast of the Gods” (1514/1529) as completed by Giovanni Bellini before it was reworked, and elucidating the working methods of Johannes Vermeer from studies of “Woman Holding a Balance” (c. 1664) and “Girl with the Red Hat” (c. 1669).