Analysis of mural paintings using in situ non‐invasive XRF, FTIR spectroscopy and optical microscopy

Abstract

An analytical protocol consisting of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, optical microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to study the origin and the nature of the materials (pigments, binders and coating preparation) of the Fundenii Doamnei church mural paint from Bucharest. The main interest of the present study consisted in the original votive paint from narthex, painted in 1757 in a secco technique.During analysis, an unexpected pigment in the votive paint could be detected by the combined analytical techniques: ultramarine blue. Along with this pigment, the presence of gypsum binder based on egg and flax seed oil could also be evidenced. These results demonstrated a secco execution technique of the votive paint and also the presence of a restoration treatment. Moreover, during the present study, the components of the preparation layer and the constitutive pigments from both 1699 and 1757 years mural paints have been analyzed. Hence, the following pigments could be identified: vermilion, azurite, cinnabar, lead white, ochre, natural umber and gold, by using the combination of the analytical techniques.The novelty of our results consists in detecting the composition of the materials used in this church painting (fresco and a secco) during these 254 years since its first restoration.The results of these investigations pointed to the suitability of the non-destructive and semi-destructive analytical techniques in the complex characterization of the paints realized in different techniques, at different periods. Copyright

Multi‐analytical non‐invasive study of modern yellow paints from postwar Italian paintings from the International Gallery of Modern Art Cà Pesaro, Venice

“…X-ray Fluorescence atomic spectroscopy has proved to be valuable for in situ identification of pigments and a guide for further investigations with complementary analytical techniques. [19][20][21][22] XRF is a mature analytical technique for the determination of the elemental composition of a material. This method is non-destructive, multi-elemental, fast and cost-effective.…”

A pXRF In Situ Study of 16th–17th Century Fresco Paints from Sviyazhsk (Tatarstan Republic, Russian Federation)

“…The pigment palette depended on local sources and the trade network. The pigments used in the Medieval Ages in Western [61,69] and Eastern-Southeastern Europe, including Byzantine churches [16,46,[70][71][72][73], were slaked lime, calcite, Fe-ochres, azurite, Cu-minerals, white lead, red lead, green earth, carbon black, cinnabar, and lapis lazuli. Blue vivianite was "a specialty of the European medieval times" [48].…”

“…The use of a portable XRF (pXRF) brought the possibility to study frescoes in situ, while minimizing damage to the archaeological material [4,[15][16][17][18]. Simsek et al [19] stated, "this noninvasive technique in fact allows the study of a large number of samples, thus giving a more representative, statistical view of the production variability."…”

Recent progress in instrumental techniques for architectural heritage materials

“…With the spirit of International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (Venice Charter) adopted in 1964 [44], the conservation and restoration of monuments must have recourse to all sciences and techniques, which contributes a lot to the study and safeguard the architectural heritage. An increasing number of researchers apply modern high precision instruments to characterize the architectural heritage materials [14,18,45,46]. In this review, an overview of different types of characterization techniques used for historic building materials was presented (the major characteristics and the typical applications of each technique were summarized in Table 1), which included the optical microscopy (OM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), infrared spectroscopy (IR), Raman spectroscopy (RS), microscopy both in SEM and TEM, environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM), energy dispersion X-ray analysis (EDX), thermogravimetric analysis (TG), differential thermal analysis (DTA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray photo-electron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), ion beam analysis and mass-based molecular techniques.…”