The famous palladium of Venice, the Nicopeia icon kept in the basilica of San Marco, 1968 underwent spectral and micro chemical investigations. Their largely overlooked to the moment findings proved the existence of more superimposed images of Our Lady, not identical with the one visible today. The present paper analyzes the issues of these laboratory examinations from technical-technological point of view to the end to gain as many as possible insights into the composition, sequence and plastic construction of the original painting and its successive transformations. The visualization of the outcomes and the evaluation of the various work hypotheses are supported by imaging and post processing techniques ranging from digitization and optimization of old analogue photos to image manipulation methods. The results allow to draw conclusions not only about the appearance of the hidden Mother of God and about its original significance, but also to address for first time with scientific criteria the question of the icon’s date and provenance.

An ancient Crucifixion icon has been studied using imaging techniques integrated with appropriated visualizations. Relevant parameters and suitable algorithms have been selected in a proper sequence to segment the studied images into meaningful elements functional to the attribution of the icon through analysis of the employed materials and techniques. The cross-referencing of the results allowed to identify three main phases in the realization of the painting, to describe their extension, character and determine the possible authors as: Cretan/Ionian painters, '500-' 600 (1 st phase); Hristofor Žefarović, Western Balkans or Vienna, 1730-1753 (2 nd phase); Placido Fabris / Michelangelo Barbini, Venice, mid 19 th c. (3 rd phase).

Conservation of historic painting requires comprehensive and correct information to be analyzed during the diagnostic and decision making process in a systematic and rational approach. This paper aims to contribute for the setting of an optimal working process tailored for digital image processing of historic painting research documentation, to be used also in other interdisciplinary areas. To the end it integrates the purely algebraic approach with expediencies derived from the specific scientific background of multidimensional and multimodal images of different types (MMI). Following key tasks have been addressed: 1)Presentation involving non algebraic methods whose main advantages are the functionality to the objectives of the scientific study, the relatively reduced computational complexity and the possibility of parallel processing of MMI; 2) Simulation of new digital expedients based on developed methods by using test databases containing different types of MMIs; 3) MMI analysis based on non-algebraic intelligent segmentation methods that expand the possibilities for proper detection, recognition and evaluation of the changes in the surveyed objects; 4) MMI processing based on adaptive interpolation, which is of small computational complexity and provides high quality interpolated areas (objects) in 2,5D, facilitating the decision-making process on the basis of the relevant information. The effectiveness of the proposed approaches in terms of scientific functionality, accuracy of the diagnosis, and low computational complexity is demonstrated with examples of applications to typical real data in the respective subject area.