Differential PIXE measurements for the stratigraphic analysis of the painting Madonna dei fusi by Leonardo da Vinci

Abstract

Traditional PIXE does not provide information about the layered structure that is characteristic of wood and canvas paintings. In such cases, a solution to discriminate the depth sequence of elements within the analysed sample is to use differential PIXE, i.e. by measuring on the same spot with different beam energies. At the Florence accelerator, laboratory differential PIXE measurements were performed on the wood painting Madonna dei fusi (ex-Redford version, 1501) by Leonardo da Vinci, in the framework of an extensive project aimed at discovering the 'secrets' of the painting and drawing techniques of the artist. The analysis allowed us to characterize the pigments and the substrate composition.

Differential and scanning-mode external PIXE for the analysis of the painting “Ritratto Trivulzio” by Antonello da Messina

“…Groups with different scientific expertise were thus involved in an extensive campaign of preliminary investigations, in the framework of which our laboratory was asked to characterise materials and painting techniques through Ion Beam Analysis. Indeed, IBA had already proven to be effective in providing crucial information about composition and structure of paint layers in a fully non-destructive way [1][2][3][4][5][6].…”

Design and optimization of a laser-PIXE beamline for material science applications

“…2). The first selector parameter that we analyze is the initial beam divergence: we aim at indicating a maximum initial divergence that is compatible with the final beam parameters that are required for the PIXE analysis (Grassi et al, 2005;Pichon et al, 2015).…”

“…Using a laser-driven proton source also has the advantage of an improved compactness of the acceleration section, compared to large conventional facilities such as NEW AGLAE (2 × 30 m 2 ) (Pichon et al, 2015) and INFN-LABEC (40 × 15 m 2 ) (Grassi et al, 2005). Using laser-PIXE, it is possible to scan larger volumes of the artworks with a single shot covering surfaces up to cm 2 , while the final spot sizes that are typical of conventional accelerators go from a few μm (~1-2 µm) up to 500 µm.…”

K X-ray production cross sections in aluminium for 15, 20 and 25keV protons

“…This multi-elemental analysis tool was shown to be particularly well suited in a large number of applications in various fields ranging from archeology to biology, medicine and environmental sciences [3][4][5][6][7].…”