Revealing the composition of organic materials in polychrome works of art: the role of mass spectrometry-based techniques

Abstract

The most recent advances in the identification and determination of organic constituents in paintings and other polychrome objects using mass spectrometry (MS)-based techniques are reviewed. The latest achievements in gas chromatography (GC)-MS and pyrolysis (Py-) GC-MS are mainly related to sample pretreatment protocols and to the employment of double-shot or laser desorption pyrolysis, respectively. MS techniques based on soft ionization methods such as matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) and electrospray ionization (ESI) are discussed. So far, MALDI and ESI MS have been mainly used in the characterization of proteinaceous materials, but further applications are definitely emerging, e.g., in the fields of lipids, resins, and organic colorants analysis. Chemical imaging by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF SIMS), formerly applied to the detection and localization of lipid binders and inorganic materials, has been recently extended to proteins. Finally, the potential of niche techniques such as direct temperature resolved mass spectrometry (DTMS) and direct analysis in real time (DART) MS are outlined.

Identification of the Painting Materials of a Unique Easel Painting by Mahmoud Sa'id

“…Some separation and spectroscopic techniques, including Chromatography techniques, e.g. Mass Spectroscopy (MS), Raman Spectroscopy (RS), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) are successfully utilized to provide detailed information about the organic and inorg-anic materials, either natural or synthetic, in the painted objects [17][18][19][20]. Although these techniques can reveal both the chemical composition and characterization of the investigated painting materials, most of them, as well as others require a destructive or non-destructive sampling or hard and time-consuming sample preparation.…”

Determination of Milk Products in Ceramic Vessels of Corded Ware Culture from a Late Eneolithic Burial

“…However, there are some papers dealing with the detection of milk lipids in archaeological ceramics by direct temperature–resolved mass spectrometry and nanoelectrospray mass spectrometry [13,17]. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization–mass spectrometry (MALDI–MS) has been used for the study of milk residues mainly in paintings, especially for the analysis of proteins after trypsin digestion and lipids [23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30]. Besides, MALDI–MS was used for proteomic analysis of a compact organic residue found inside a more than 4000-year-old container [7].…”

Identification of proteins, drying oils, waxes and resins in the works of art micro‐samples by chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques

“…Routinely used non‐destructive techniques include Raman and FTIR spectroscopy as well as X‐ray fluorescence . Moreover, highly selective and very sensitive hyphenated techniques, such as GC–MS and LC–MS, are able to provide detailed information about a specific natural materials present in the historical objects, which is often challenging for the spectroscopic techniques .…”